Monday, January 31, 2011

100 Flowers - Craft Activity

I saw this idea posted on Skip to My Lou last week.
I LOVED it and thought it would be perfect to go with our 100 Flowers study.

I'm lazy though and changed up her process a little bit.

To make our seed paper we tore up lots of scrapbook, construction and computer paper. Lots.




We filled the blender about 1/3 full with the paper, and then added water to the half way mark and blended until there were no pieces of paper left. Two batches like this made 35 seed paper hearts.


Then I poured the papery pulp into a bowl and stirred in a whole packet of wildflower seeds.



I decided to shape my hearts instead of cut them out. I didn't have a frame or screen on hand to make the paper-maker (for lack of a better word) and I thought it would be faster to just make the shape that I needed.



I originally strained the water from the pulp but found it hard to manipulate in the cookie cutter. Instead I strained only a little water leaving the pulp soggy enough to mash into place.



Then we spread it around in the cookie cutter on a piece of flannel. For the first round I used a piece of fleece but found that it held too much water.




After we had all the seed paper hearts shaped we blotted them first with a sponge to absorb water and then with a microfiber cloth to soak up even more. I dried them a little further with a hair dryer for about 5 minutes (mostly to dry the fabric) and then let them sit over night.



By the next morning our seed paper hearts were dry and ready for Valentine construction.



I took another short cut and printed out the smaller hearts intended to be leaves ... on the front it has the saying "If friends were flowers I'd pick you." and on the back it says Happy Valentine's <3 Kennedy & Aubrey.



And though it took me a bit to pre-tie bows for the front, it was easier for the girls just to glue on the tiny bows than to tie them directly around the stems (popsicle sticks they had painted earlier).



Other than a few shortcuts, we followed the basic instructions for construction of the Valentines and we are super pleased with the result!



Not only pretty, but functional!

3 comments:

Ticia said...

Cool! I might have to give that a try for some of our valentines.

Anonymous said...

I bookmarked that project too! :) I like your idea of forming them in the cookie cutter. We haven't tried it yet.

postcardgirl said...

I love it! I too bookmarked it when I saw it on Skip To My Lou, but was worried about all the work -- your process looks do-able! Thanks!