Mar 10, 2009

Cardboard flowers

This craft was kind of a follow up from the heart crowns we did for Valentines day. The kids liked threading the corrugated card shapes onto the straws and arranging them, so I thought we'd try making a vase of flowers in a similar way.

I glue gunned a toilet roll tube to a circle of card to make the vase and then rolled up a strip of corrugated card to go inside the vase, so the flowers could be poked into it.

Me and the hubs cut out a load of cardboard leaf and flower shapes the night before and when the kids came over they painted the vases and the leaves and flowers with kiddy paint, then threaded the flowers onto green pipecleaners (what do americans call them?) and arranged them in the vases. I actually soaked some wooden kebab skewers in green food colouring to use as stems, but the pipecleaners seemed a lot more versatile and a lot less likely to take an eye out when I thought about it.


Some of the flowers we made were a bit too big and the pipecleaners couldn't hold them up proparly, so watch out for that if you decide to have a go at this.

Lastly I made each kid a bumble bee out of a packing peanut, some craft foam for wings and two goggly eyes (I'm not going to rest until the packet of goggly eyes is empty!)
These would make a lovely gift for grandma or auntie, or if there are any dads reading, it would be a pretty sweet mother's day gift too. As usual, the kids really enjoyed it because it involved lots of sloppy paint.

9 comments:

tracey (aka rainbowmummy) said...

This is great, I had a flower making thing prepared for valentines but it I decided against it as I just new it wouldn't be fun. This looks perfect for us!

I didn't notice you had been posting..lots to read :0)

Anonymous said...

I wonder if straws would work for the heavier flowers. Oh, Americans call pipecleaners... pipecleaners. Boring, I know. :)

Unknown said...

I think this may work well in a class. May try it some time....

Karin said...

This post is getting me one step closer to letting go of my fear of kids near paint. (And exchanging all our carpeting for tile.)

when I read about the top-heavy flowers and noted the "recycling" category at the bottom of the post, I thought one could also use tin cans for the vase. One could even throw a big rock in the bottom before putting in the cardboard roll. BUT then realized cans would not soak in/hold the paint the way cardboard does. So maybe not... : )

And sometimes pipecleaners are called chenille stems.

Valerie @ Inner Child Fun said...

Fabulous! These look great, and the kids must have had a great time making them. Can't wait for Spring!!

Valerie
http://www.frugalfamilyfunblog.com

Term papers said...

Your Blog is Excellent. Love all the pics of Cardboard flowers. i Really liked it. Thanks for sharing here..

Flowers said...

Its very nice. excellent blog with very nice flowers made items. I really love these.

Anonymous said...

çok güzel...very nice...!

Kirsten said...

you mean "chenille stems?"

I'm especially impressed by the idea of putting rolled corrugated inside for holding the flowers. Brilliant.