Download this letter set as a font here.

Blooming Flower Bubble Letter Set	Flower Bubble Letter A	Flower Bubble Letter B	Flower Bubble Letter C
Flower Bubble Letter D	Flower Bubble Letter E	Flower Bubble Letter F	Flower Bubble Letter G
Flower Bubble Letter H	Flower Bubble Letter I	Flower Bubble Letter J	Flower Bubble Letter K
Flower Bubble Letter L	Flower Bubble Letter M	Flower Bubble Letter N	Flower Bubble Letter O
Flower Bubble Letter P	Flower Bubble Letter Q	Flower Bubble Letter R	Flower Bubble Letter S
Flower Bubble Letter T	Flower Bubble Letter U	Flower Bubble Letter V	Flower Bubble Letter W
Flower Bubble Letter X	Flower Bubble Letter Y	Flower Bubble Letter Z	Check out all the bubble letters on the rest of the Woo! Jr. Websites for Kids!

As I ate lunch from the freezer last week, I was left with a little black plastic tray that I would normally toss in the trash. But I had a feeling I could turn it into something cool, so I washed it out and held onto it until inspiration hit me – and it did when I saw my grandmother’s pillbox hat:

Since it’s Earth Day this week, this is the first in a series of recycled crafts. Woot!

Check out all Woo! Jr. Network Earth Day crafts, printables and coloring pages here.

What You Need to Make this Pillbox Hat Recycled Craft

Here’s my rather simple materials list  (not everything is pictured above)

• A black single serving microwave dinner tray (washed!)
• Green ribbon (I bought this green ribbon from the scrap heap at my local craft store for less than $1). I prefer wired ribbon for this project so that the bow (pictured below) holds its shape.
• A 14″ inch square of black tulle (you could get uber-recyclely geeky and use the netting from a produce bag instead, but I didn’t have any in black)
• A thin and stretchy elastic hair headband (for the full head, not a pony tail holder)
• A safety pin
• Tissue paper and pipe cleaners to make your tissue paper flowers
• Wire cutters
• Glue gun

How to Make this Pillbox Hat Recycled Craft

First you need to make your flowers (tissue paper flowers instructions here). I made mostly small flowers with some larger flowers as accent pieces. As pictured in the materials section, I made:

• 8 mini pink flowers from 1 inch squares of tissue paper
• 7 small yellow flowers from 1 1/2 inch squares of tissue paper
• 3 small accent flowers from darker colored multi-colored tissue paper (and the brown pipe cleaner centers on these made them look really striking!)
• 2 medium multi-colored flowers using yellow and white tissue paper, varying from 1 inch to three inches
• 1 large ‘centerpiece’ flower using 4 inch pieces of tissue paper. I spent a bit more time and creativity on this flower, using extra ribbon as additional leaves and cutting more intricate petals out of the tissue paper

Your microwave dinner tray may vary in size from mine, so you may need more or less flowers than this.

Also, make your accent bow with about 15 inches of ribbon and one of the small accent flowers. Simply tie the bow like you would tie your shoes, make it symmetrical and pretty, and then snip off the ends with a diagonal cut. Then I just used the pipe cleaner end of the flower to wrap it around the center of the bow and secure it into place.

Make the Hat Veil 2

Make the Hat Veil 3

Tissue Paper Flower Arrangement

To make the veil, grab the left corner of the square of tulle and bring it up to the top corner. Do the same with the right corner, and then you’ll have two ‘flaps’ (seen on the far left of the first photo) sticking out. Bring those two flaps in to the top corner so that all the visible corners of the tulle square are together (see picture two). Safety pin the corners together. Now, cut off the last corner in a rounded fashion like in the last photo.

At this point I highly recommend doing a ‘trial run’ and arranging your flowers on top of the hat to determine where you want them before you glue them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done some craft ‘on the fly’ and then wished I hadn’t glued everything in place.

Once you know where you want your flowers, you can rev up your glue gun and start gluing! Glue down a layer of ribbon to act as a base for the flowers. It looks prettier and helps to add interest while covering up the top of the plastic tray.

Add your flowers to the outside rim first, then add the second inner circle of flowers next. Try to strategically cover up the pipe cleaner stems as you glue down the second circle.

Leave the center open so that we can add the veil and the centerpiece flower.

In the center spot, glue the veil in place. Make sure that it covers the part that you want to be the front of the hat. Now glue your large centerpiece flower on top of the veil to cover up the rest of the open space and top of the veil.

At this point you can attach the accent bow to the back of the hat (seen peeking out above). And lastly, put a big glob of glue on the center of the inside tray and attach elastic headband. It’s done! My daughter went *crazy* over it! Especially because she isn’t allowed to touch my grandmother’s hat, much to her dismay. Now she has one of her own.

Now that’s both creative crafting and smart parenting, eh??

If you liked this craft, you might also like this tissue paper flower topiary, too!

Behold, the Tissue Paper Flower Topiary

I’m actually thinking of making myself a two-tiered one to put in my office. That seems so dorky when I say that out loud though…

What You Need to Make the Tissue Paper Flower Topiary

3 sheets of green tissue paper (ideally in three different shades of green)

3 sheets of pink tissue paper (again ideally in three different shades of pink, or whatever three colors you want)

I think the reason this turned out so well was because I was able to use different shades of green and pink tissue paper. Normal tissue paper packages don’t come so nicely shaded for paper flower crafts, but I swear by a huge package of tissue paper I am able to get at Hobby Lobby for $5 (inconveniently they don’t sell online, but CreateforLess has shades of green at $.89 a package).

A 3 inch styrofoam ball

A small cylinder or cube of floral foam to stick into the clay pot (You could also use play dough)
(I cut a triangle of styrofoam from some appliance packaging we had around the house)

A 3 inch (or so) mini clay plant pot

Plain straight pins

4 straight pins with pretty pearlescent ball on top for the main flowers

A 6″-7″ inch stick from your yard

How to Make the Tissue Paper Flower Topiary

First cut up the green tissue paper into approximately 2 inch squares. They are going to get crumpled up, so don’t worry about being precise or anything.

Start scrunching up the squares into loose little balls. I found it worked best if I rolled them between my hands as if it were clay I was trying to roll into a ball. Even on a tiny ball you will need a surprisingly large number of these, because you want them to be relatively close together.

Next just start pinning them to the styrofoam ball. Don’t put them too close together, because you will want to have room to put in the flowers. You can see in the second photo how close I put them together.

Now cut up your pink tissue paper into squares. For the largest flowers I used about 3 inch squares, the medium about two inch squares and the small about one inch squares. Again, this is approximate, because they are just going to get crumpled up again.

Add the largest flowers first, because they will be the most prominent and need to be placed somewhat evenly around the ball. I thought I was going to add a lot, but found that four was plenty. If you can find straight pins with the pretty pearl tops, use those to attach the largest flowers. If you have a lot of those, you can also use them for your smaller flowers too. I didn’t, so I just used regular straight pins everywhere else.

Then add the smaller flowers in between the green ‘leaves’ where you can still see the styrofoam.

Next, decide what part of the ball you want to be the top, and stuff the stick from your yard into the bottom. I didn’t take a picture of this part, because it’s pretty dang easy to do. Then shove the cylinder or dough into the flower post, and stuff the stick into the midde so that it is standing straight up.

Cover the foam base with green tissue like you did the top ball, but this time, don’t let the styrofoam peek through.

And ta – da, you are done!

Tissue Paper Flowers Book

But really, tissue paper flowers are so easy – they are the ultimate kids craft. You simply can’t mess them up. And the crumplier they are, the prettier they are!

Spring Tissue Paper Flowers

What you Need to Make Tissue Paper Flowers

• Tissue paper
• Green pipe cleaners (I just can’t get used to calling them ‘chenille stems’. Guess I’m old.)
• Scissors

I like to use shades of color that are somewhat similar and closer to nature, to make the flowers look more realistic. You can get tissue paper almost anywhere, but I found a ‘jumbo pack’ at my local Hobby Lobby for $5, and it gives you 20+ colors to use.

How to Make Tissue Paper Flowers

Tissue Paper Flowers Step 1

For these particular flowers, I used two shades of light blue and a light yellow. You can also add green ‘leaves’ if you want. I cut three pieces of each of the blue petals, and 4 or 5 of the yellow petals. I didn’t use a pattern to cut them out, and you can tell the petals are rather lopsided and ugly. It doesnt’ matter! It makes it look more natural when you’re done! For the yellow circles, I also made cuts towards the center of the circle (you can see them better in the next photo).

Tissue Paper Flowers Step 2

Stick the flowers onto the end of the pipe cleaner, largest first, smallest last. If you wanted to put the green leaves on yours, put them on before you put on the petal pieces. I put them on one at a time and made sure the petals didn’t line up with each other, that way the lopsidedness of the cutting magically evens itself out. Bend the top of the pipe cleaner to prevent them from coming off the end.

Tissue Paper Flowers Step 3

Next is my daughter’s favorite part – crumple it up! in fact, I like to crumple mine, uncrumple them, and recrumple them up again to make sure they are, erm, well crumpled.

Photo of Finished Tissue Paper Flowers

Uncrumple yours and enjoy!

You may also like our easy paper kites or this printable bunny mask from our sister site Animal Jr.

You may also be interested in this plaster handprint kit from Plaid Crafts. I used it with one of my children and to this day kick myself in the pants for not doing it with the other two when they were little!

Easter Bunny Painted Handprint Easter Bunny	Easter Lily Handprint Easter Lily Craft	Easter Basket Handprint Easter Basket Craft	Flower Bouquet Painted Easter Flower Bouquet
Easter Chick Footprint Easter Chick	Sun Handprint Paper Plate Sun	Spring Flowers Spring Flower Handprint Craft	Easter Bunnies Painted Handprint Bunnies
Easter Lamb Easter Lamb Craft	Butterfly Handprint Butterfly Craft	Spring Rainbow Handprint Spring Rainbow Craft	Easter Chicks Painted Easter Chicks Craft

Check out all of our handprint crafts and the rest of our Easter crafts and spring activities, too!