How to Make a Paper Rose Kissing Balls


Roses are one of the most beautiful flowers on earth, and so it’s a pleasure to create artwork that’s inspired by them. For an easy project, you can create a circular ball of tissue or crepe paper roses, popularly named as a rose kissing ball. It is made with materials that are easy to acquire, and cost less than the average twelve-rose bouquet, and will at least last indefinitely.

With these tissue/crepe paper rose kissing balls, you can hang your projects from banisters and balconies, use them as centerpieces for dining tables, or use them with safe LED lights to create a display of light and colour that’s sure to dazzle, adding texture and style to photographs.

​What you need in order to make a rose kissing ball is relatively simple. All you need is your preference of tissue paper – preferably enough to make a rose kissing ball with one colour or with various shades of one colour, since they tend to look better this way – jute twine or any other string or ribbon of your choice, hot glue or PVA glue, and a styrofoam ball that you can glue the paper roses onto.

You will need:

  • Tissue paper
  • Styrofoam ball
  • Hot glue gun or PVA glue
  • Jute twine or other ribbon if your choice
styrofoam ball
A styrofoam ball.

When picking out tissue paper, make sure that the paper you’ve picked out is soft enough to rumple and roll easily, to make the work of rolling the roses into shape easier, but also sturdy enough that it doesn’t tear or crumple too severely when you’re preparing the roses. Similarly the ribbon or string of your choice should be long enough to wrap around the body of the ball, all the way around the styrofoam ball twice, once horizontally and once vertically before trying off.

You should have enough string to both wrap the ball securely to be hung up once the rose kissing ball is completed, leaving slack once it is tied off. This is the first step in preparing the rose kissing ball, and, once you’ve wrapped the styrofoam ball securely, you should use a small amount of hot glue, or tape if you have it, to secure the string in place, so that it does not shift or become detached from the sphere. Now that that’s done, you can start on making the roses!

styrofoam ball
Wrap a piece of twine all the way across and down. You will need to put some tape on the twine on every side to keep it in place. You should have a piece dangling off at the top (you will need this piece to hang it on to something when the balls are finished, so it is up to you how long you want to keep it).

​Making the paper roses from the tissue paper is a bit of a learning process, but it is also your opportunity to add a lot of personality and your own style to the final result. Whether you prefer larger or smaller roses, you can alter the dimensions of the tissue paper strips to match, as well as using different colours based on your preferences, or more fraying at the edges of the petals to create a more rugged look to the finished project.

However way you prefer to do it, there’s one major way to create the paper roses, and it begins by layering tissue paper so that you have a sheet that is several layers in thickness, and then cutting that sheet into multiple strips, keeping the layers in one piece to the best of your ability.

Once you have these sandwiched layers of multiple sheets of tissue paper cut into long rectangles, each resembling ribbons, you fold them in half horizontally to better keep the layers together, create a long rectangle that is much longer than it is wide. Once you have this slightly more tight ribbon of tissue paper, you should place it upright on your surface, and starting at one end, begin to fold it in the shape of a spiral, firmly smoothing down each bend you make to keep it tightly compacted.

As you begin to make larger and layer portions of the spiral, you may allow the layers of tissue to fray somewhat, creating the illusion of many petals, and crumple the layers as you go, creating natural shapes that better resemble the rumpled petals of wild roses. As you spiral, make sure to pinch the base tightly and to spiral further and further out, to create a funnel shape.

​Once you have created a rose that is large enough and is of a shape that you’re happy with, you should trim the back “stem” created by fanning the rose out into the spiral shape, in order to create a rose that is flat on the back and can be hot glued onto the styrofoam ball, which is the next stage.

Tissue paper flower decorations
For each rose, you will need to cut off the point at the back. The glue will need to be applied to this flat part and then stuck on to the styrofoam ball.

As you make more and more of the roses, you may find that you become better and better at making them, so you should have more tissue paper than you expect to need, since you might want to make a few practice roses at the very start of the project. You can either make roses all of the same size and colour, or, based on your own taste and the purpose of these kissing balls, vary in making smaller and larger roses, or roses of various shades of colour to create a more intriguing design.

Either way works, but make sure to not use an excessive amount of glue when adhering the roses to the styrofoam ball, as too much glue may soak into the tissue paper and ruin the integrity of your rose, or drip down onto the roses you’ve already glued and show on the surface of the ball. As such, use glue as you need it, and make sure that it is completely dry and does not readily drip between applications of roses to the ball.

Tissue paper flower decorations

When you’re finished, you should be left with a circle of beautiful flowers that you can hang from anywhere you like using the tail of string that you left from tying the ball originally, and use it in all sorts of decor or backgrounds, either alone, or in a big set of rose balls of various colours and textures, all depending on the type of tissue paper you use. Once you’ve completed the one, making the next few should be far, far easier, and come naturally to you.

Tissue paper rose kissing balls
Tissue paper flowers diy
blush flower decorations
Diy paper decorations
tissue paper flowers
Paper hanging decorations

If you’re struggling to make the individual roses, or simply don’t have the time, then you can just use scrunched up tissue paper pieces and glue them on. This simpler and quicker method gives a similar effect of a flower ball, as shown below.

rose kissing ball
Cut or tear little square pieces…
Tissue paper flower decorations
…and scrunch them up
Tissue paper flower decorations
…and stick them all on with PVA glue…
Tissue paper flower decorations
…until the foam ball is fully covered…
Tissue paper flower decorations
You may embellish it with glitter dust, chunky glitter, sequins, etc.
Tissue paper flower decorations
Tissue paper flower decorations
You can even use mixed colours
Tissue paper flower decorations

Good luck!


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