Indoor Craft Day: Multi-media flowers

I'm an extremely crafty person, and I'd like to think I am rubbing off that trait onto Bug. Regardless of his creativity level, he has the enthusiasm I have towards craft activities; and on numerous occasions, he asks if we can do a craft. Today was my first day off, and seeing as how the weather has been somewhat torrential these last few days, our outdoor Camp Mommy activities will have to be put on hold. Hopefully when it's supposed to be nice out in a couple of days, we won't be subjected to being eaten alive by the plague of mosquitoes that have suddenly appeared with all this water. When I started getting our craft materials ready, he asked if we were doing Camp Mommy...it made me smile and realize I'm doing something right as a parent if my child is looking forward to our weekly activities together!

Back to today, some days we just do crafts to get his mind working; but most days we bring out our creative sides to have a final project. A lot of the times, the products of Bug's artistry end up as artwork that goes on my walls or on the VDV galleries of our esteemed clients (ie: Grammas and Great-Grammas). I like telling Bug where the final product goes, especially if it is meant for a "just because" gift for someone. I want him to grow up with the joys of giving, and preparing something special for someone you love...for no specific occasion; just because he loves them. So today was that day. We had 4 special ladies in mind with this craft.

I collected an egg carton a few weeks ago in preparation of doing this craft in the future. I think most people would have cupcake liners and coffee filters; however, if you do not, those are easily and cheaply purchased at Dollarama. Each mini flower bouquet consisted of one of the twelve cups of the egg carton, one cupcake liner and one coffee filter. I then got Bug to bring out his artistic skills and paint each potential flower with one of the three painting techniques I set aside. The egg carton cup was painted with arcylics, and Bug was very meticulous on getting the whole cardboard covered in paint. There was no rhyme or reason to his painting, I just told him to pick three colours for each flower. Then the coffee filters were painted with watercolours; and once again, Bug had free range with all the colours (I had one of those cheap watercolour trays from Dollarama with 12 different colours). After those were done, we "spray painted" the cupcake liners. I had a few spray bottles from Dollarama we used for a previous craft, and I filled them with water and some food colouring. Then I got Bug to spray the liners. A tip if you are going to do this: hold the spray bottle pretty far away if you want coloured droplets. If it is too close, the water just blends in one big spot and the desired spotted look is lost. We sprayed the one side of the liner, and once it was finished, we turned them over and sprayed the other side. The coffee filters didn't need to be turned as they are pretty thin and the colour just bled through. After we were done our painting, we went off to play so the flowers could dry.

Once they were dry, we (well, it was me for this part...it was a bit difficult for my almost four year old) took some pipe cleaners out of our craft stash to use for our stems. I purchased a pack of green pipe cleaners with three different tones of green from Michaels. I believe it was $6; however, Dollarama sells a variety pack for $1. If you don't mind different coloured stems, then those will work perfectly...I'm just too type "A" to stray from the natural colour of flower stems. For the coffee filters, I folded them almost in half and then rolled them up into a lily looking flower. I didn't fold them exactly in half as I wanted the rolled flower to have two levels of petal. Once the filter was rolled, I took my hole puncher and put a hole in the base, then wound the pipe cleaner through. With the cupcake liners, I just scrunched the middle circle together to create a carnation type flower. Again, I took the hole puncher and put a hole through the srunched up center and wound the pipe cleaner through. I used a nail to put two holes through the center of the egg carton cup and put the pipe cleaner up through the base into the cup, then bent back down through the second hole. I then twisted the two ends of pipe cleaner around each other to keep it in place. To finish of these little bouquets, I had some ribbon lying around (like I said, I dabble in many crafts), and tied the three flowers together. If you don't have any ribbon, string or yarn can work...but once again, some ribbon can be bought at Dollarama for $1.00! We made four bouquets for our four special ladies.

Bug wasn't too involved in the last part of the project; but since we are sending these to our loved ones, we got out some markers and paper to make some cards. Since Bug is just shy of 4, he can't personalize the message inside the card with his own writing. I got him to choose the card he wanted to give to each individual person, and then as I wrote, I got him to tell me what he wanted to say to them. Most of his sentences were "I love you", "I like you", "I miss you" but he was sweet and added some "you are beautiful", and "she is so pretty". He sure is a love bug...which is where his original nickname came from!

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