How To Get Tissue Poms (AKA Stupid Puffs Of Cuteness) To Open More Easily

Why is this post necessary you may ask? You don't ever have problems opening tissue paper poms? They already ARE easy for you to open?!

Well, goooooooood for you.

But, right now I totally have a love-hate relationship with tissue poms!!! (And this little tip may have just saved my sanity.)

They are beautiful when they're open and hanging, but I must be party-decor-challenged or something because they take me FOREVER to separate the layers {without TEARING them!} to get them to open up.

I have twelve of them hanging in my dining room this morning, looking all cute and innocent like they were no trouble at all.

Hrmph, ya, right.

This morning, after spending most of yesterday opening my poms for an upcoming party, it occurred to me that if I cut juuuuuust ever so slightly into the inside edge of the fold, close to the center, that maybe they'd open up more easily.

Well, dontcha-know, it worked...when I only had 2 left to open.

Now, this tip has only been tried by me on an 8" pom because I already opened up all of my 18" poms before I got brave enough to try it. Don't go ruining your poms and come running to me for advice, cause I don't know what it will do to larger sizes or even other brands than the ones I bought. But hey, if you are throwing your hands up in desperation like I was last night trying to open those stupid puffs of cuteness, you may want to give this little tip a shot.

INSTRUCTIONS:
Remove the hanging string (or wire, or whatever your poms came with) and cut a small curve out of the center of the folds on each side of the tissue paper. The widest part of my cut is between 1/8th to 1/4 inch. Tie your hanging string back on and be amazed at how a pom that previously took 20 - 30 minutes to open will now open in under 5 minutes. Tada! (And, um, please excuse my low-quality cellphone pic, I really wasn't sure if this was going to even work!)

Young Women Gifts 2014 - Depend On The Savior

For our young women gifts this year to somewhat go along with the mutual theme "Come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness," we decided to do a polka dot themed gift, with DOTS standing for "Depend On The Savior".

At first we wanted to find polka dot scarves for the girls. When we couldn't find those within our budget we looked for just the right material to make scarves. Well...we couldn't find that within our budget (or timeline) either so we opted to get polka dot socks (from the dollar store), even though we did socks last year, too.

I made a bookmark and got some Dots candy to go along with them and packaged them up in a 5x11 inch treat bag with a cute little Happy Birthday tag. The sock design shows on the back so the girls can choose their favorite polka dot pattern when it's their birthday.

Of course, so the candy stays fresh, we'll only package them a few at a time as birthdays come up, but it's quick and easy. The girls actually loved them and didn't care that they were getting socks again.

For the bookmark, I printed 5 to a page on white cardstock. Just open your word program, set your page layout to landscape and leave your pages set to the normal 1" margin. Insert a table with 5 columns and only 1 row. Then insert the bookmark jpeg (rotate it to the side after you save it so it will be vertical as you insert it into the document.) It is sized at 6.5" high and 1.58" wide. Copy and paste so you have 5 to a page. Remove the table borders so you don't have black lines, and then print and cut. Afterwards I punched a hole in the top, center, and added a cute polka dot ribbon (can't see that in the photos, sorry).

This is how I printed the tags 12 to a page on white cardstock: In portrait page layout, with margins set at a custom setting of 0.2, insert a table with 7 rows and 3 columns. Insert the tag jpeg and then change the size to 2.49" x 2.49". Copy and paste it into every column, but only every other row (so you have a space for cutting). Remove the borders. Print and cut.

So, this isn't the best photo of the gifts all packaged up because I snapped it in a hurry on the way out the door to church, but you get the idea.