Welcome back to kids crafts! This week’s craft was inspired by, the kind people at Interflora. About 4-6 weeks ago, they were super lovely and send me a huge bunch of flowers. They were beautiful. And Red Ted thought they were beautiful. So I thought we could make our own bunch! We save all the tissue paper and wrapping paper from the flowers and collected more over the weeks that followed. It was also a very timely craft, as Red Ted is doing lots of things about “growing” and flowers in nursery. So it is nice when our home activities tie in with those at school. We put a photo of our finished craft in his homework book!
A print out of the photo of this craft will be going into our Calendar for May!
But first our book:
Planting a Rainbow, Lois Ehlert
Firstly, I want to say, how much I am being (positively) influenced by my American crafty blog friends – Lois Ehlert is another author I came across thanks to them. It is what I love about blogging: the world becomes very small all of a sudden and I am inspired by people from the US, Canada, Down Under, Scandinavia and Croatia to name but a few… And Ehlert is of course a “classic” in the States. So here we are: Planting A Rainbow.
Planting a Rainbow is a beautifully illustrated book about well.. erm.. planting a rainbow: it begins with a trip to the garden centre to buy bulbs and seeds. It then shows them growing and turning into beautiful flowers. Wonderfully illustrated and colourful. Talking about lots of different pretty flowers. However not one our “favourites”.. as some of the drawings are a little to abstract for us – e.g. the daffodil looks like a star or sunflower to Red Ted. Also, we like to get excited about plants that turn into fruit and vegetables – especially since we have a lot of tomato and strawberry plants in our garden. But it is still a lovely book – especially for flower loving families. Pip Squeak (18mths) however adores all the colours. And it is a great book that you can use to explore the both flowers and rainbows! So I guess it is down to personal tastes and interests!
The Craft
We decided to make a big bouquet of flowers! I had a rather “grand” idea of taking all the wonderful flower craft posts that have recently been linked to kids get crafty and create this “awesome collage”.
Like Pinkie Says Paper Flowers or Serving Pink Lemonade’s Thumbprint flowers or Blekit Nieba’s Flower Bouquet or Putti Prapancha Shell Flowers
But I soon realised taht I was overcomplicating things dreadfully and that we needed to keep things simple!
So we made some Tissue Paper Flowers and we cut out lots of leaves and “blossoms” from the clear printed wrapping paper that the flowers came in.
Materials: One large sheet of paper (we used some off a roll), paint for background and vase (the vase is made from an old craft where we used poppy husks to stamp with), tissue paper, pipecleaners, paper, clear foil with leaf and blossom prints, scissors and glue.
1) First we painted out background – Red Ted did the sky (and decided to add clouds), Pip Squeak did the grass
2) We cut out a vase from an old craft and stuck it on
3) We stuck on our leaves and blossom
4) Made some tissue paper flowers: cut out 4 circles of tissue paper (all salvaged from the bunch of flowers/ gifts) – pierce with pipecleaner and twist to make a little centre. We also cut out yellow circles and Red Ted practice his cutting skills but cutting some petals out and some “red centre bits”. We also cute out pink petal shapes and added scrunched up tissue paper as the centres.
5) Glue on
Sit back and enjoy!
For more Kid’s Craft ideas, click here for a full list.
If you have been crafty with your kid’s be it at home, in the kitchen or outdoors, I would love for you to link up:
thanks, love these. These will be the Sunday craft of the week 😉
What a lovely bunch of flowers! We love making flowers too:)
Beautiful bunch of flowers! The book looks so colorful. Thanks for sharing!
Oh how lovely to have them as Sunday Craft! Thank you!
Maria – yes, I saw your wonderful poppies… they are fabulous!
Esther – thank you 🙂
Since the theme is flowers… sent you some, enjoy!!! Thanks for hosting!!!
Oooh fab! Love flowers! 🙂
Your artwork is LOVELY!
Sending you some flowers as well.
Beautiful bunch of flowers!! Thanks for hosting the linky and sharing our pista shell flowers 🙂
Oh thank you – lovely to have more flowers join the party!
And Roopa thought your shell flowers were lovely!
Love the book and the project!
Lovely idea for children crafts activity. Thank you for stopping by at my blog earlier and commenting.
My pleasure and ditto!
Ehlert is from Wisconsin, and we had the pleasure of attending one of her book signings last fall. Love your craft!
Oooh you are lucky! And thank you!!
WE LOVE Ehlert, and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the craft! Thanks for linking up to RAT!
Oh thank you Amy! 🙂 you are lovely!
Love this!
Great for so many ages, too!
I would love if you would share this at our weekly Playdate at http://beneaththerowantree.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-and-improved-playdate-link-party.html
Cheers!
Lori
http://www.beneaththerowantree.com
Come & Play :: Playdate
Aww that came out great and looking at the links, you weren’t the only one inspired by all the flower posts lately!
Thanks for popping by my blog and saying hello!
Beautiful collage! That’ll cheer you up every rainy day 🙂
I love the 3d effect of these Maggy! Thank you for linking ot the Resource Centre!
Going simple was a good idea – they turned out beautifully!
I am a huge fan of Van Gogh- and I think he would be pretty jealous of these flowers! Thanks for linking up with The Sunday Showcase- I added a craft to yours 😉
So pretty – what a fantastic idea! Thanks for joining WMCIR!
Oh my, to be compared to Van Gogh.. Aimee that is just too lovely a thing to say!! Must go and look at the Sunflowers with Red Ted now.. we have a nice artbook we can look at!
Thanks to you all for you oh lovely comments 😉
That looks beautiful. Really soft and delicate – and you don’t have to change the water in the vase which is a bonus!
Great to meet you and Red Ted today x
Oh, this is beautiful! I love the idea of recycling old artwork into new pieces! I always feel guilty throwing the kids’ old art away.
How about making their own African Masks? Explain the purposes behind the masks, their uses, beliefs, etc., and have them make their own!
Tribal Art Hunter
Hello there mama- just stopping by to let you know that we featured this craft this week at The Sunday Showcase! Have a great weekend!
Love the combination of illustrations from Ehlert’s picture book, thru the process. Three cheers for simplicity.
Aimee – ooh thank you! Very much appreciated!!
And Debbie – yes, simplicity is often best!! Especially when crafting with kids!
I just wanted to let you know that I featured this adorable craft in this post: http://marvelouslymessy.blogspot.com/2011/06/marvelous-mess-16-and-features.html
Feel free to grab a featured button!!
I’d love it if you would come back and link up again this week. I always look forward to the crafts you bring to the party!!
Oh thank you! So much appreciated! and have been back already!
What a fabulous idea! I am going to help my children make this for their nana’s birthday! Thank you for the idea 🙂
Well this sure will keep my little sister busy as gift for our parents. Thanks for this idea!
Beautiful and a fun thing for kids to make, they will enjoy making it.
thanks!