Flowers serve as wonderful inspiration for all types of paper crafts.
With their assorted colors, shapes and sizes, flowers are ideal subjects around which to devise craft projects for children. While all manner of media may be used to artistically render flowers, including wire, paint and clay, paper has the advantage of being inexpensive, readily accessible and easy to work with. There are a number of fun paper flower crafts for kids, who may use their imaginations to make floral specimens more elaborate and whimsical than any found in nature. Does this Spark an idea?
Flower Decoupage
Decoupage is the art of cutting images from paper and affixing them to a surface with clear craft adhesive. Kids can craft decoupage projects featuring images of flowers cut out of magazines, catalogs, newspapers and other paper resources. After painting a thin coating of clear adhesive onto a surface, such as a wooden box or tabletop, or a piece of heavyweight poster board, they can arrange the cut-out flowers in any pattern or design they desire, and protect the cutouts with another thin, glossy coating of the clear craft adhesive.
Tissue Paper "Stained Glass" Flower
Colored tissue paper has a translucent, watercolor-like effect that makes it ideal for simulating stained glass. Kids can create a "stained glass" flower using torn bits of tissue paper in a variety of hues. After lightly brushing clear craft adhesive onto a large sheet of clear or translucent white paper, such as glassine paper, they can arrange the torn bits of colored tissue paper over the adhesive to form a flower. Once dry, the "stained glass" flower may be hung in a bright, sunny window.
Recycled Paper Flowers
Kids can learn about recycling and turn trash into treasures by crafting flowers out of paper that would otherwise be discarded. Kids can trace the shapes of different types of flowers, including irises, daisies, tulips and roses, onto old homework assignments, unneeded printed documents and other types of used paper. They can cut the flowers out of the used paper, and add color with crayons, colored pencils or watercolor paints, or simply allow the interesting bits of text and print to lend character and interest to the blooms. Recycled paper flowers make fun decor for classroom walls.
Paper Flowers with Flexible Stems
Kids can attach flexible stems to flowers made of recycled paper or any other type of paper by using green pipe cleaners, which are also known as chenille stems. By dipping the tip of a chenille stem in hot glue and pressing it to the base or backside of a paper bloom, kids can give their flowers something to stand on. Once the stems have dried in place, kids can arrange bouquets of paper flowers in vases or other containers to make colorful displays. For added interest, kids can use scissors to shorten some of the stems, so the paper flowers vary in height.
Paper Flower Garland
A paper flower garland is a long stream of paper flowers that may be wound around an indoor tree, strung along a wall, or hung from a ceiling. Kids can craft paper flower garlands in different ways: they may cut out dozens of individual paper flowers and attach them to each other with glue, staples or pieces of chenille stem to form a long garland; or they may fold up a long piece of paper accordion-style, cut a flower out of the folded paper accordion, and unfold the flower to reveal a long garland of joined flowers.
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