Spring Streamers… Little Flower Bunting.

So we needed to celebrate the coming of Spring. Only the weather was so inclement and the outdoors so freezing that it had to be a nice clean and quiet project indoors. Hahahaha!!! So we made a bazillion paper flowers and turned them into streamers – just for fun.

Let’s start with the flowers:

We started with a sheet of paper to work on and markers. And to keep the flowers small, you know slightly contain the exuberance, we used Post-it-Notes.

Oh! Did I ever mention:
How I love post-it-notes they should be a requirement on every birthday list;
Attached to every gift;
Don’t bother to wrap them I will take them as they are;
I will take them as payment for jobs well done;
I will take them anyhow…

Unfortunately, I seem to have produced se7en that love them as much as I do!!! 

Let’s focus and get drawing flowers.

Or whatever!

Then we took white wax crayons. I always take these out of any new box of crayons and hide them so that they are good and fresh for projects. We drew some more invisible flowers with crayons and then drew over them with markers.

Then still with white wax crayon we moved onto watercolors.

And finally we did some potato prints.

The trick with a good sharp edged print is:
Cut your potato in half;
Then score your potato about a centimeter from the top and about a centimeter into the potato;
Then cut your shape carefully from the top and the leftovers should just fall away;
And you are done.

We dipped the potato’s into old vegetable trays of paint.

Trying very hard to keep a potato per color, so the colors stay sharp and crisp.

Well some tried harder than others, and some were just more trying!

Then we needed centers for our flowers…So each hood took a heap of little tiny, did I say cute, post-it-notes in very subdued colors, not insect attracting or anything and stuck a bunch on their work page.

Then with puff paints and glitter we made a heap of circles – flower centers.

And we left everything to dry overnight.

Cut, cut, snip, snip… and we are left with fields and fields of little flowers.

And here is a tray of the centers for the flowers.

Finally, we chose some string – I had some left over pretty streamers… and we laid the flowers in stripes, alongside the string…

Place a dab of clear glue on each flower and then place the string on top of the flowers.

Lastly, put a blob of glue in the center of each flower, on top of the string. Place a flower center on top (string sandwich!) and leave it to dry.

I said leave it – clever little creature!

And now we have se7en flowery spring streamers and we are ready and waiting for Spring to catch up with us.

What I love about this craft is that it is easy for all ages, requires very little help and can be adapted for any number of shapes and styles. Butterflies, Stars, Handprints, whatever.

A great dangly window decoration, not to mention a wonderful gift for a poor unsuspecting aunt.