Mother’s Day Spoon Flower Craft

Beth at the library asked me to come up with a fun Mother’s Day craft for our library magazine this month, and this was the first idea that came to mind.  I did this craft many years ago when I used to do storytime at a Borders bookstore.  It was a huge hit and I thought it would be fun to do for Mother’s day this year.  I’ve never done it at the library as we usually have much larger crowds of kids and also because the nail polish gets really stinky!  But in smaller groups or working one on one with a kid makes this a really fun craft!

I’m not sure exactly where I originally found this craft, but I’m pretty sure it was from one of the many fabulous craft books by Kathy Ross.  She has some really great ideas for making awesome crafts from items you can usually find around the house.  If you haven’t checked out any of her craft books yet, I highly recommend tracking them down at your favorite library.

Materials you will need for each flower:
3 plastic spoons (clear or colored)
nail polish
pipe cleaner
tape
green paper/felt/or florists tape
ribbon
Easter basket grass
small, empty margarine tub or small Styrofoam bowl

Directions:
1.  Paint your spoons with nail polish.  I prefer using clear spoons and just painting the inside of the spoons (the bowl part) then the color shows through to the outside and looks nice and smooth.  Also you can do fun effects by layering colors.  Of course you can also simply purchase colored spoons and leave them the color they come in or add details with the polish.  Let dry completely.

Fi does a nice job putting a smooth layer of nail polish on her spoon

Lexi works hard on her spoon too, while I panic about her flinging nail polish everywhere!

2.  Fold your pipe cleaner in half and arrange the spoons together around the pipe cleaner so that they form a bud with the spoon end, then tape the handles together.  The pipe cleaner should stick out by an inch or so from the top of the “spoon bud”

3.  We used green construction paper to make our stem, but you could also use felt or florists tape.  Cut your paper/felt into a long thin strip, about an inch wide by 11 inches long.  Secure one end of the strip to the top of the spoon stem with tape and wrap the paper around the spoon.

4.  Cut two leaves from paper/felt fold them in half vertically and then wrap them length wise around a pencil to give them a nice curve.  Attach them to the base of your stem with tape.

5.  You can be finished at this point and have a pretty flower or you can put your flower in a pot.  Tape or glue your flower to the center of the bowl and put the Easter grass around it in the bowl.

6.  Cut a square of tissue paper that’s just large enough to wrap around the small bowl.  Secure the tissue paper to the bowl by placing a small piece of looped tape to the bottom of the bowl before wrapping the tissue paper around it.  Tie a pretty bow around the bowl and tissue paper for a finishing touch.

7.  Give your beautiful flower to a special mom in your life! 🙂

Miss Meghan’s Craft Corner ~ Growing Flower

In this month’s edition of our library magazine we are beginning a fun new series where families with young children can find a simple and yummy recipe and a fun and easy related craft both of which will usually reflect the seasons.  So here is the first round of ‘Baking with Miss Lucy’ and ‘Miss Meghan’s Craft Corner’

For the March/April Magazine, Miss Lucy and I decided to feature a snack and craft for spring.   In the magazine, Lucy shared a recipe for making yummy dirt cups complete with worms!  And I am sharing a cute growing flower craft.

Growing Flower Craft

Materials needed:
Popsicle stick, paper or styrofoam cup, paper, glue
Optional: markers stickers, etc.

1.  Ask an adult to make a small slit in the bottom of your cup, just large enough to fit the popsicle stick through.
2. Cut out your flower and leaves using the provided pattern.

3.  Glue the flower and leaves to the popsicle stick and insert the stick through the bottom of the upside down cup.

4.  Reach your hand in from underneath (the opening of the cup) to raise and lower the flower so it looks as if it’s growing.

If you’d like you can color the popsicle stick ahead of time with a marker
Decorate the cup with markers, crayons, and stickers for a fun spring look!
Use pretty sheets of scrapbook paper for fun patterns on your leaves or flower.

Pattern for flower

cut two leaves and one flower.

Designer Darling Challenge Round 3 and CU Freebie

So there are 20 of us left for round 3 of the designer challenge and this week we were asked to find three items to either scan or take photos of to make available as commercial use items which other designers could use. This set of items can be downloaded from the STS forum and I have a set of personal use freebies created with the commercial use ones that you can download below as well as an extra CU item I had extracted.

For those of you unfamiliar with the whole scrapbook kit making process (I keep having to explain it to my family!) it often involves using a mixture of elements and papers that someone else scanned and extracted (the kit designer can then add their own tweak to it, like colors, glitter, or textures, etc.) as well as making your own elements and papers.  So for instance in my previous challenge kit “A Road Less Traveled” (the yellow one) I used a flower that another designer scanned and made available to use commercially and I re-colored it and added glitter.  Then the leaf in my yellow kit I cut from a piece of silky fabric, ironed the creases in, scanned it, removed the background, recolored it, and added shading with the burn tool on photoshop.  The funny thing is that I originally wanted to  have a burned look to the edges of the leaf, but when I held the match flame to the fabric it just caught fire!  Fortunately I’d scanned it first, just in case 🙂

For my challenge I wanted to make items that could easily be recolored to fit any color scheme.  I love CU items that you can really tweak to your heart’s content.  So I collected a fun key I found in the dollar bin at Marshall’s with a pretty ribbon, a pretty fabric flower, and an awesome looking frame (also from the dollar bin and I picked up a round and square one too)  I thought it would be great if people could change the color of the ribbon (which was originally burgandy-ish) to match any kit they are making without also changing the color of the key or having to mess with the color replacement brush.   So here is the end result.  You can download this set from Stuff to Scrap by clicking on the image which will redirect you to their forum.

If you like these items, I’d love it if you vote for me for this round by clicking HERE 🙂

Again thank you to everyone who voted for me in the last two rounds. 🙂
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And now some personal use items that I made using the above elements recolored to look fun and springy-I’m feeling really ready for spring 🙂
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And an extra CU OK item for you 🙂 download expired