I was talking with a mom friend of mine this week who was extremely anxious about the current limbo her kid’s school is in. With the new covid variant exploding in our area, she was having to make tough decisions (or having decisions made for her) about her kids would be going back to in person or distance learning on Monday.
I can’t imagine the stress you must be feeling. Trying to keep your children focused on zoom for 4-6 hours a day, while trying to also be productive yourself is mind-blowing to me. You all know I am not a parent but I sympathize so much with you amazing people raising your own tiny people.
I want to help in any way that I can, so I came up with a small list of dried flower crafts you can do with your kids or leave them to do themselves if trusted with the glue unsupervised. My hope is this will save a small portion of your sanity in the coming weeks. We would love it if you snapped a few pictures too and tagged us on social media with the finished projects. You can also email us the pictures directly.
Project 1:
Who doesn’t love a handmade card?!?! For this project you’ll need:
A sheet of paper (any size)
Glue or paste
Flower confetti
Something to draw with like crayons, colored pencils, markers, etc
Any other craft supplies you want to trust your kid with…dare I suggest glitter
HOW TO:
This one is pretty self-explanatory…go crazy. Let your kids glue the flower heads, petals, bits and pieces to the paper and decorate with crayons until their imagination is content. Heck, dump glitter all over the thing if it makes you happy and keeps them quiet for 5 minutes. Just maybe do the glitter outside unless you want to look like a sparkly vampire for the next 4 months with glitter on every surface of your house. LOL
Dried flower card
Project 2:
Floral hair pieces! For kids that are a bit older and trustworthy you might let them use a hot glue gun for this. For this project you’ll need:
Flower confetti
A piece of blank or repurposed jewelry or hair accessory
Glue (a hot glue gun works best for this so supervise as necessary)
Start with any pack of headbands, barrettes, earing or necklace bases from the dollar store or repurpose one you already have! Just lay out your design ahead of time on the table until it’s perfect and then glue them to any surface in the same order. You’ll have your own unique fashion jewelry and hair accessories. This is a fancy cuff corsage I did for a wedding this spring but same idea!
Wrist corsage can easily be made with all dried flowers
Project 3:
For a more advanced kiddo you can help them make a flower wreath for spring. For this project, you’ll need:
A wreath base of any size. I usually like 4-6”
A hot glue gun or floral adhesive (found at most hobby stores)
Flower confetti and other bits of nature
To start this project you can go for a short nature walk in your neighborhood or local park and collect anything that catches your eye. Cool leaf? Grab that sucker. Neat looking branches? Put them in your pocket. Acorns? SCORE! Anything short of coming back with pockets full of vegetation that would make a squirrel jealous with rage is unacceptable.
Lay out all your hoarded garbage, I mean beautiful bits of nature your kid made you carry for 3 miles and add the flower confetti to make a sweet spring display. Once it looks cool get to work gluing the individual bits on the wreath base with your chosen weapon of adhesion. Here’s a wreath I created a few years back to help with some inspiration.
Dried flower wreath using his, strawflower, globe amaranth, lisianthus, marigolds and statice
Above all: Have fun, get creative and I hope this entertains your kids for a few minutes so you can down that glass of wine between your “lunch hour” and that 1pm zoom meeting while picking smashed goldfish crackers out of your keyboard. We won’t tell anyone, promise.