{diy mini triangle garland backdrop}

The mini triangle fringe garland I created for our birthday party is basically a super simple version of the garland I made for our wedding (see the wedding tutorial here).  The difference with this garland is it uses inexpensive colored tissue paper rather than fabric.  The best part about using tissue paper is if your rotary cutter is sharp enough you should be able to cut through 10+ sheets at a time which makes this project extremely quick!  I created seven pieces of garland about 6 to 7 feet long to cover the window behind our appetizer and sweets table.  Since the table was against a wall, I was able to simply tape the garland directly to the wall behind our curtains.  I you don't have a wall to anchor the garland to, you can still create the "backdrop" effect by attached the garlands to two thicker dowels which you can anchor into floral arrangements on the edge of your table- similar to this photo.  

what you need:

• rotary cutter & mat
• glue gun
• 1/2 inch wide ribbon (i used a mixture of gold and white twill ribbon)
• colored tissue paper (each 7' garland requires about 5 sheets of tissue if you are cutting them to the same size that I did)

1. Take five sheets of tissue and fold them lengthwise, cut the tissue using your rotary cutter so that the long folded side is 20 inches long and the short side is 7 inches tall. 
2. Keeping all the sheets of tissue together and straight, begin cutting your fringe.  Start about 3/4 inch down from the folded side of the tissue.  Cut pieces of fringe about 1/2 inch wide.  There is no need to be exact here just try to keep the fringe pieces straight!
3. Once you have cut the length of the tissue, make a full cut down the center which will give you two rectangular pieces of fringed tissue about 7" tall by 10" inches wide. 
4. To cut into a triangle, fold the tissue in half (keeping all the sheets straight and together). Then cut a diagonal line from the bottom corner of the new folded side up to about 1 inch down from the top of the non folded side. 
5. Now you can carefully separate your five sheets of tissue into 5 pieces of folded triangle fringe!
6. To attached fringe to ribbon, simply place a thin strip of hot glue down the center of the ribbon and carefully place a piece of fringed triangle along it so that no tissue goes past the top of the ribbon.
7. Continue placing fringed tissue pieces end on end until you reach your desired garland length.  Then simply cut the ribbon and turn the garland around when you hang it so that the ribbon shows on top of the garland covering up the ugly glue-gunned side! 

With the scraps leftover from cutting the triangle, you can make yourself some festive confetti!  Simply place a pile of scraps on your mat and cut across them with the rotary cutter in a few different directions.