Flower and Star Clay Ring Bowls

Have you ever worked with clay?  I'm a clay novice and I always get slightly nervous thinking that we need a kiln.  But I was totally wrong! There are lots of great, affordable air dry clay options out there.  Since my son loves play dough, working with clay has been a really great activity for us to do together.  With Mother's Day right around the corner, here are some super easy DIY flower and starry night clay ring bowls that you can whip up with your children!

DIY Flower and Starry Night Clay Ring Bowls

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How to Make Colorful Kirigami Flowers

Spring is here! La la la! Although our current grey skies don't exactly scream "warm, sunny, bursting-with-new-life weather," today's kirigami flower craft certainly does!

How to Fold and Cut Kirigami Flowers

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Now, I had a lot of trouble naming this craft.  These flowers kinda felt like origami... and yet they weren't quite origami because I used scissors to make the designs too.  Luckily Mr. Google taught me the term kirigami.  It's a Japanese term that basically describes origami that also involves paper cutting too.  Bingo!  So cool right?

By the way, if you love these flowers, you'll also love these

• AWESOME paper stars  
• Lego Snowflakes! 

Egg Carton Flower Pins

I love seeing kids' homemade gifts.  Don't you?  There's something beautiful about receiving a gift made by tiny hands.  Today several kid-craft loving bloggers and I took on an egg carton craft challenge.  We came up with different ways to craft with  egg cartons.  Since Mother's day is coming up next month, I thought it would be great to make some egg carton flower pins!  Like our styrofoam mosaic tile picture frames, this craft turns "junk" into lovely gifted treasures.

Egg Carton Flower Pins

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5 Flower + Plant Activities for Preschoolers!

Spring is here! Spring is here!  In honor of this lovely season, here are 5 flower and plant activities that are just perfect for preschoolers!

5 Preschool Flower + Plant Activities

Painted Tin Can Succulent Pots

Spring has sprung!  Are you enjoying all the lovely blooms popping up around your neighborhood? In honor of Spring, today's Creative Preschool theme is.... plants!  So I wanted to share how we painted and repotted these tin can succulents.

Because this is part of the Preschool Collaborators Series, there are links at the bottom of the post to 4 other bloggers' great ideas for teaching preschoolers about flowers and plants!  (So scroll down to the bottom of the post to check those out!)

How to Repot Succulents in Painted Tin Cans 

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Duct Tape Daisy Flower Pens

I miss our old home.  But, slowly, slowly we're growing to love living on the West Coast.  The sunny weather really can't be beat.  Oh yeah, that and the flowers.  When we moved here a month ago there were flowers EVERYWHERE.  Lovely colorful blossoms greeted us from neighbors' yards, in front of super markets, along the highway, near bus stops.... it was so beautiful.  I think that's what inspired me to create these duct tape daisy flower pens.  They're bright and cheerful and make writing really fun.

To make yourself some daisy pens, check out my full tutorial on DIY Candy!

6 Fun Flower Activities for Kids

I've had flowers on my mind lately.  But can you blame me?  Spring is here and the world is bursting with color!  Plus, Mother's day is coming up and I imagine mothers all over receiving flowers as gifts.  So that's why I put together this list of 6 fun flower activities that you can do with your kids.   You can turn flowers into works of art, use them to decorate stationary, or place them in a sensory bin!  Let's get started!

6 Fun Flower Activities 

DIY Dandelion Crown

What are your thoughts on dandelions?  Love em?  Hate em?  Since we live in the city and I don't do any yard work, I love the little suckers.  Their bright yellow color always cheers me up.  So dandelions can sprout anywhere as long as I'm concerned.  Like his mama, Chuck adores these little yellow flowers too.  He picks them from our neighbor's yard (shh, don't tell them!)  And he loves blowing them once they turn all white and poofy (again, shhhh, don't tell the neighbors... but they're probably going to get a bumper crop of dandelions next year.)  Because we both love these yellow flowers, I had to make a dandelion flower crown for Chuck. 

How to Make a Dandelion Flower Crown

Full confession here- I'm an impatient crafter... so this DIY dandelion crown was right up my alley. It only took a couple of minutes to make and then voila!  My son now has a crown fit for a little story tale prince.  Let's get crafting!

How to do Flower Pounding

Happy Earth Day everyone!  How's the weather where you are?  It's slowly getting warmer and sunnier over here, so Chuck and I have been taking nature walks around our neighborhood.  I was surprised to see so many tiny flowers blooming.  (Nature is so resilient, isn't she?)  Chuck really loved seeing the colorful blossoms too.  We ended up picking quite a few and bringing them back to do some flower pounding. 

How to do Flower Pounding With Kids

This craft basically involves hitting flowers (or grass or leaves) with a hammer or rock to release their pigment.  As you can probably guess, it was a big hit with the little guy.  (Sorry downstairs neighbors!)  Keep reading to see how we pounded our flowers!

Kid Made Stenciled Artwork

Greetings from Australia!  Sorry for the lack of posts this week.  We're currently visiting family in Brisbane, so posting will be sporadic till we get back.  Since I had a couple of free moments today, I thought I'd share these handmade gifts that Chuck and I made for this trip.  Chuck currently enjoys painting, so we created some lovely pieces of contact paper stenciled artwork.  We gave them as gifts and I think they're extra special because they were handmade by Chuck.

Kids' Contact Paper Stenciled Artwork

Keep reading to see how we made them!

Toilet Paper Roll Flowers and Cacti

I've said it once, and I'll say it again.  I've got a black, black thumb.  And this saddens me because deep down, my heart is really green.  I love looking at plants, I love eating plants, and goodness one year I was even a tree for Halloween!  But I'm a plant killer.  So this makes today's toilet paper roll craft perfect for me.  These cardboard roll plants are pretty to look at, and impossible to kill.

Make Toilet Paper Roll Flowers and Cacti

Yup.  Aren't they pretty?  If you're interested in making yourself some everlasting recyclable plants, keep on reading!

Stained Glass Craft with Aluminum foil and Cellophane

Are you looking for another take on kids' stained glass window crafts?  Instead of using contact paper, why not use aluminum foil!  Glue pieces of cellophane on top of aluminum foil to create a lovely stained glass effect.  The colorful cellophane really stands out against the shiny aluminum foil background. 

Oooh!  And it's spring themed! Spring.... glorious spring....

Not sure if you can tell, but the black outlined tulip stands up against the aluminum foil.  Yup, it's my faux leading.  Nice, right?  Keep reading to see how we made these aluminum foil and cellophane stained glass panels.

Make Coffee Filter Flowers

Today we're continuing our spring flower theme with these easy to make coffee filter flowers.  Now I'm not a coffee drinker, but I bought a pack of filters anyway because I really wanted to try making these with Chuck.  He had a lot of fun helping me to dye the coffee filters different colors with food coloring.  Then, I had a lot of fun cutting them up and turning them into a lovely and everlasting bouquet of colorful flowers.

Do you need a colorful boost today?  Or do you need a quick and fun activity to do with your kids?  Why not try your hand at making a lovely bouquet of coffee filter flowers too?

Make Rainbow flowers

Rainbows and bright colors are currently on my mind.  Chuck and I are impatient for spring to come.  So when I stared at our white flowers (leftovers from Valentine's Day- can you believe they lived that long?) I knew the perfect "almost-spring-but-not-yet" craft.  Painting rainbow flowers!  
 

Heh heh.  We couldn't wait for Mother Nature to give us colorful blooms, so we painted our own.  Keep reading to see a super easy way to make your own rainbow flowers!

Printing with Flowers

Do you have wilting flowers?  Before tossing them away, why not try making some flower prints with them?   Chuck and I dipped flower heads in paint and made some lovely prints.  Then, once the prints dried, I turned them into some personalized, springy stationary.

So don't throw away your Valentine's Day flowers just yet.  Keep them and make some cards! 

Cherry Blossom Tissue Paper Flower Craft (Tree printable included!)

I know, it's a little early for cherry blossoms crafts.  But this mama is seriously over winter.  Buh-bye!  With yet another snow storm scheduled to come tomorrow, this tissue paper cherry blossom tree craft is my attempt to kick winter in the face.  Hiyah! 

Ahh, cherry blossoms... so beautiful... so springy...

Like the tree?  You can use it for your kids' crafts too!  I turned my painting into a pdf so you can just download it and print it out....

Make flowers and leaves from gumdrops

What would you do with a bunch of leftover gumdrops?  Would you eat them or toss them out?

Or, would you try something a bit different?  Would you burn them... or melt them... or nuke 'em?  Eeek. What evil candy torturer would do that?  Oh wait,  I already did all those things in my 6 strange things to do with gummy bears post... muah ha ha.

This time I took a different route and turned my colorful gummy candy into gumdrop flowers.  Why, you ask?  Why not!  After seeing these lovely gumdrop rose petals I pulled out my candy and got a'smooshing and a'cutting.  By the end of the night I had me a lovely bouquet of gumdrop flowers:

Ooooh.  Perrrrrty....

Have I intrigued you?  Keep on reading to see how these lovely flowers were made...

Make Borax Crystal Flowers

Why make borax crystal flowers?  Well, do you love the look of freshly cut flowers sitting in a vase?  I do.  But I never buy them because of my cursed black thumb.  While most people's cut flowers last for weeks, mine always start turning brown and wilting within a day or two.

Boo, black thumb!   

Last week our craft store had a sale on fake flowers.  I was so tempted to buy them, but they looked kinda cheesy and screamed, "I'm fake and I attract dust."

But I ended up getting the flowers anyway, because I wanted to make something pretty with them.  Here's what I came up with:  Crystal Flowers 

Make Crystal Flowers!

Yes.  My fake flowers are covered with real crystals... that I grew from Borax.  Lovely, aren't they?

Would you like to make your own frosted-looking flowers?  Read on!
  

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Using cooking oil to blur oil pastels

I had no idea that plain old cooking oil could be used to blur oil pastels.  But once I found out, I had to try it for myself.  One afternoon I doodled away on some computer paper while Chuck napped.

Then, I used Q-tips and swabbed my pictures in canola oil.

The colors and lines blurred together.  The images also became translucent.  Here's how a picture looked before:

And here's how it looked after:

But what to do with my oily pictures?  After drying up the excess cooking oil, I traced and cut out some circles.

Then I taped my circles to the window and made some lovely sun catchers.

Hrmm... I wonder what kind of art Chuck would make....

(On a more serious note- Given the terrible tragedy that happened in Boston, I debated whether to put this post up.  Is writing about crafts too frivolous?  *Sigh*  It's just so sad that people could do something so horrible to others.  *Sigh*  In the end, I've decided to upload this post.  I can't do anything to directly help those affected.  However, I can keep praying and writing posts that hopefully bring a bit of cheer to anyone who reads them...)

Make your own rainbow flowers

Last weekend, I made these rainbow flowers.

Aren't they purty?

Wanna bring some rainbow cheer into your life? 

They're easy to make.  Plus, you get to see science at work.