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- We're gonna start with the peach tissue.

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Often people don't know that tissue paper has a grain.

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It's very important to work with a grain

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and to know where it is.

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I like to bleach a whole bunch at one time

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because it is fun and you get to experiment

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with all the different types of textures

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and different patterns that you can create.

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It's such an inexpensive material

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that I recommend messing around with it as much as you can.

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And you can pick the prettiest pieces

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to make your flowers with.

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This is a standard size sheet of tissue paper.

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And I cut quite a few sheets at a time.

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You can experiment as you go.

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Using your rotary cutter

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and just kind of using a lot of pressure,

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you should be able to cut quite a few at a time.

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A good way to tell if you're working properly

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with the grain of the paper is to look at the sheet.

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This is a very standard size

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that the tissue paper comes in

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and you're always gonna be working with 20-inch strips.

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It's always folded perpendicular to the grain,

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so you always wanna cut in the same way

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that the paper is folded.

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And I like to work with these kind of large,

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I call them, like, a swash of paper kind of,

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I don't know why I do that,

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but we fold the paper in two different ways

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once we dip it in bleach.

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I would normally cut all this at once

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and I would mess around with all this.

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Maybe we should cut a little bit more.

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We wanna always cut our paper in either three-inch strips

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or four-inch strips,

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depending on what flowers we're gonna make.

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In my book, we make one or two blooms

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that are more like six-inch strips,

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but for the most part I cut everything in a combination

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of three and four-inch strips.

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And they're always gonna be 20 inches long,

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and that's always gonna be a great way to know

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that you've done it correctly.

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And none of this has to be perfect

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because it's always gonna be trimmed off.

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So this is a three-inch strip, that's a four-inch strip.

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When you come to this seam, you wanna always make sure

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that you're cutting on it, you don't wanna have that

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in the middle of your strip because it will show up later

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in the flower and it won't look great.

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Once we have all the strips cut,

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then we can start experimenting with the bleaching,

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trying to get a few different effects.

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We have our container here that's full of water,

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probably two inches of water.

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I just usually add some bleach.

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I've noticed that a lot of the bleach that is available

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is a concentrated bleach,

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and so I really recommend stirring it

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and that kind of really helps move it around.

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It's a little bit thicker than traditional bleach.

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So to create that effect that we use in this flower here,

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I grab, ya know, it looks like 12 sheets.

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It's really not an exact amount.

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If you try to do one at a time, it'll fall apart,

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so when you cut petals later on,

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it kinda helps that they're in these little swashes

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or packages.

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And then you just dip it into the bleach.

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You can have this bleach line go about halfway,

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you can have it go further,

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if you'd like to just kind of have this part of the grouping

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remain colored and the rest is white.

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And then you take your grouping and you unfold it

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and clip it on the rack to dry.

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You wanna give it a couple minutes

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to see how the bleach is affecting it.

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This is basically a test run, a sample run,

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and you can see that this is an unusual colored

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tissue paper.

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When you bleach it, it goes to yellow instead of

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to a true white.

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But you wanna give this a couple minutes to dry

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and see how strong your bleach solution is.

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If you'd like to get it lighter,

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then you can add a little bit more bleach.

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If you'd like to have it be less of a color variation,

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then you can add some water.

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You don't wanna make your solution of bleach too strong

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because the paper will become brittle.

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So you always wanna have a pretty diluted solution.

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I like the way this color combination's turned out.

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I'm gonna dip some more paper.

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And basically I just fold the paper

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every two inches,

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just real loosely, it doesn't have to be perfect.

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It's just so that it easily fits

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into the container for dipping.

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I dip it in,

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let it get the big stuff off,

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and then unfold it,

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and then we're gonna hang it up to dry.

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So the paper takes about an hour or so to dry,

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depending on your climate.

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If I need to speed up the process,

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I often just rig a blow dryer on there

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and that'll speed things up quite a bit.

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Cut all the different colors that you wanna use,

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the red, purple, plum, pink, hot pink,

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whatever you'd like to include in the bouquet.

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You're gonna cut it all at the same time.

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It works much better to cut everything and bleach it

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as one stage in the process.

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And then sit down and assemble everything later on.

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I call this dip-dying technique.

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There are many other wonderful techniques

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that you can use to transform the petals in my book,

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The Exquisite Book of Paper Flowers.