A Haunted But Haute Bouquet

Boo! Help us countdown to Halloween with a month's worth of spooky decor tips, creepy crafts and DIY projects that are positively ghoulish!

Take a simple, grade school craft and make it into a sophisticated-but-spooky Halloween decoration. This black-blossomed arrangement is a grouping of simple, tissue paper flowers made with pipe cleaners and an accordion fold. If you need a refresher course in paper-flower making, here's a quick primer.

To make your own, you'll need black tissue paper, black pipe cleaners and a pair of scissors:

1. Cut six 6-inch squares of black tissue paper for each flower.

2. Stack the sheets up so they form a neat pile with edges lined up (see below).

3. Fold the stack of tissue paper accordion-style, making a fold every inch, so that you end up with a 1" x 6" rectangle (see below).

Stack of tissue paper folded accordian-style to create one 1" x 6" rectangle. Photo: Laura Fenton

4. (optional) I like to cut the corners off the ends of the folded stack of tissue paper to create rounded edges that gives the flowers more defined petals, but you can skip this, if you like (see below).

5. Next, fold the folded tissue paper in half lengthwise and pinch it at the center. Fold a pipe cleaner over the pinched section and twist the two sides of the pipe cleaner together to hold the pinch papers in place (see below).

6. Fan out the tissue paper to form a bow-tie-like shape (see below).

7. Carefully pull each layer forward to form "petals," working layer by layer (see below).

8. Repeat until you have enough flowers to fill a vase.

Plus, here is a link to an instructional, YouTube video of tissue-paper flower making, if you get stuck.