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DIY Paper Flower Backdrop

DIY Paper Flower Backdrop

We’re delighted to have Jenny of Hank & Hunt back with us today to share another DIY tutorial. Last week you saw her DIY Feather Clips, and today she’s teaching us how to make a low-budget, high-impact paper flower backdrop! We love the idea of playing around with colors and perhaps even patterns to fit the feel of your wedding day perfectly. Let’s get to it:

diy tissue paper flower backdrop

From Jenny of Hank & Hunt: The best part about this backdrop is its portability. Ever wonder how they manage to move those huge photobooth backdrops? Or even how they set them up when you have a million and one other things to be doing on THE day of. The solution is this fun yet modern take on the traditional kid’s art project, a tissue paper backdrop. It’s cheap, it’s light and it’s fully customizable. I’m obsessed with deep blues lately and stayed solid, but think about doing patterns or watercolor styles with it.

For each board, you will need:
-white foam core board
-pack of 20×30″ 24 sheet fold of tissue paper
-roll of double stick tape
-scissors
-empty water bottle

Simply multiply your list by the number of boards you want; I made four. Each board takes about 30-45 mins depending on how fast you are; the first usually takes the longest. Bribe some friends to help and knock out a ton at the same time!

diy tissue paper backdrop

1. Unwrap the fold of tissue paper, keep stacked and cut 6″x6″ squares. Don’t worry about being exact, it doesn’t matter… yet another beauty of this project.

2. Take your board and make a row of double stick tape across the short side of the board. Take your squares and loosen them up from each other — this makes it faster to pick up while pressing.

3. Take one square and center it over the top of the water bottle and press down. Remember the pencil eraser trick from elementary school? Just like that, but we’re working bigger.

4. Hold the paper in place, flip and press into the tape. Presto. Repeat this down the entire line of tape.

5. Add another row using the same technique about 1-2″ over, depending on how dense you want the backdrop to be. Repeat until the board is covered.

6. Repeat on as many other boards as you want.

7. Hang your first board square to where you want it to start and use two small nails to hold it up. I know some venues are anti-holes, so you can use command strips if you need to. They are super light and it doesn’t take much to hold them up. Now that the first one is up, just line up additional boards, tack into place, fluff the lines and you have an instant backdrop with minimal setup time at the location.

After I made these, I realized how pretty an ombre version would look. The light plays off the different corners of the paper and is really pretty even in a solid color. Perfect for a simple shower or party as well. Photographers could even carry one around for some detail shots!

Project and images by Jenny Batt of Hank Hunt for Ruffled

View Comments (21)
  • Would this be possible using spray adhesive or some type of glue? It seems like this would take quite a lot of double stick tape which can be expensive, so I might try this with some type of glue, I’m just not sure if using a glue would be too wet for the tissue paper. Has anybody tried it? I’m thinking of making this to use as a backdrop for a photo booth, and maybe even behind our altar.

  • Very neat! I always do this similar project on a much smaller scale with my kindergarten kids and it always turns out really nice with all the different colors.

  • You can get the same look with a more structured backdrop by using lumber to make a frame and attaching chickenwire to the top. After your frame is complete, put some glue on the area of the chickenwire you are working on and stick the tissue paper squares into the chicken wire holes. This is how we made homecoming floats in college. It is very easy and can be done ahead of time and transported to the site!

  • Oooh I like this! It would be neat to do with letters cut out of foam board, too. You could spell out something cute!

  • I did this this weekend! It came out just like the picture, but oh my goodness it was SO time consuming! Fortunately I got my bridesman to help me out, and another friend sweetly offered to help too – she dispensed all the tape and lined it up ont he edge of the coffee table for easy grabbing. All in all, it was a lot of work. but friends and trashy tv made it better 🙂

    Summer, you can just use regular tape rolled on itself like we did (like you are wrapping a present). It worked perfectly.

  • I tried this yesterday with an ombre look, I went from dark purple and faded down to a light pink. It looks absolutely gorgeous. However I have had quite a few pieces fall off once I hung it up so I’ve been taping them back on as I find them, but I think the tape that I used may have been poor quality or maybe I just needed more of it. Apart from that, I absolutely love this idea! Everyone I’ve shown has just wanted to run their fingers through it and feel it! Haha.

    • How did you do an ombre? I’m artistically challenged but would love the look of ombre!

  • This is awesome! Thanks so much for sharing! I’m going to need to steal it one of these days. =)

  • How big did your boards end up being? I’m a middle school teacher and we are using this idea for a dance. I was just wondering how much space your 4 boards took up so I can estimate how much materials we will need.

  • I don’t understand your descriptions at all and some pictures would help!

    • here are step by step pictures shown, can you not see them?

  • I made a variation of this for my daughter’s 5th birthday coming up. It turned out so cute!!! We cut out a giant “5” and put white tissue paper on it. Then we let her choose the color spray paint and she helped us paint it.

  • I bet you could use spray adhesive and spray small sections at a time, that stuff is awesome!

  • What were the dimensions of your board? Trying to figure out how much tissue paper I need to buy. Going to try your idea for our school float.

  • Do you guys think a got glue gun would work better? I want to try it out but i’m unsure

  • I’m a teacher and have done this craft on a smaller scale with my students over the years. Children from second grade on up love this! We used white glue in small sections(spread with q tips). The kids would wrap tissue paper around their pencil eraser to shape it and place the shaped tissue in the glue. Sometimes children took longer to shape their paper and their section of glue dried. The solution for us was to shape several pieces of tissue paper and THEN cover a small section of canvas with white glue. This order made placing the tissue go fairly quickly. It also broke up the monotony. Kids loved it because there was no perfection required! I love the large scale of this!

  • Think this would work with fabric? I was thinking of using this method for a headboard….

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