I’ve been holding onto this craft for a few days, and I’ve decided I can hold onto it no longer. It’s my new favorite craft on this site, and I think it would be a perfect thing to do with kids for a Mother’s Day craft (though I think the plant marker garden craft come in a close second on that).

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!

10 Plant Life Cycle Lesson Plan Activity Ideas

1 – Print out the color or b/w sequencing squares below twice to make a matching game.

2 – Plant seeds in newspaper seedling pots.

3 – Have children collect seeds from everyday foods to bring into the classroom for identification.

4 – Grow a Chia Pet. For added fun use seeds like alfalfa or onion so that the resulting sprouts are edible!

5 – Sprout an avocado seed.

6 – Craft Jr has several pages dedicated to nature crafts, including beach crafts, stick crafts and leaf crafts.

7 – Plant a tree in the school yard, local park, or other organization.

8 – Our school does their planting activities early in the year, and then lets the children take their full grown plants home as a Mother’s Day gift in May.

9 – Take a field trip to a local greenhouse, or ask your local greenhouse if they would be willing to send in a person to do a presentation for the school. Stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s already have classroom/scouting activities in place, too.

10 – Download and print this plant cell diagram over on Classroom Jr.!

Plant Life Worksheets

How Do Plants Grow Color Sequence

How Do Plants Grow Sequence Coloring Page

How Do Plants Grow Color Sequence Worksheet

How Do Plants Grow Word Search

Plant Life Quizzes on Classroom Jr.

How Do Plants Grow Printable Mini Book – For Young Children

Use this mini book for younger children who are able to color the pictures, cut apart the pages, and assemble them into a book. Staple the pages together, or punch holes and tie string as a book binding.

How Do Plants Grow Mini Book pg 1-2

How Do Plants Grow Mini Book pg 3-4

How Do Plants Grow Mini Book pg 5-6

How Do Plants Grow Mini Book pg 7-8

Blank How Do Plants Grow Printable Mini Book – For Older Kids

Use this mini book for older children who have the skills to construct their own sentences. They can describe what is in the pictures and use the vocabulary words from the word search above.

How Do Plants Grow Blank Book pg 1-2

How Do Plants Grow Blank Book pg 3-4

How Do Plants Grow Blank Book pg 5-6

How Do Plants Grow Blank Book pg 7-8

Check out all of our spring activities, Earth Day activities and other garden crafts while you are here!

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!

Admittedly I’m more interested in garden crafts than I am with gardening… but I might plant something this year just so I can use these plant markers! I have to say I think this is one of my favorite projects I’ve ever come up with!

I sat today and tried to think of every vegetable that I might possibly plant in my garden, and drew them up for this craft pattern download. I believe I only scratched the surface of what vegetables are actually out there though:

Tomatoes, carrots, pumpkins, broccoli, potatoes, corn, lettuce, peas, onions, orange peppers, green peppers, cucumbers, beets (or radishes, I suppose), watermelon, beans, red peppers, yellow peppers and squash.

Download the printable plant marker artwork

So suffice it to say that if you see some fruits or vegetables that I’ve missed, please leave them in a comment and I’ll create a plant markers garden craft “version 2.0″ in the next few days.

What you Need to Make these Plant Markers Garden Craft

Plant Markers Materials

• Download and print the fruit and vegetable illustrations on a color printer
  (You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader)
• Sticks from your yard, cut to about 6″ – 8″ inches tall
• Raffia
• Rubber cement or glass glue
• Small clear glass aquarium pebbles, the approximately 3/4 inch size. As tempting as it is, avoid the larger glass pebbles that are over an inch in diameter. They seem like they will work, but the way they are made, they always have wrinkles in the glass on the flat part, which makes it very hard to see the pictures beneath the glass

How to Make these Plant Markers Garden Craft

Glue the paper between the glass pebbles

Carefully cut out the circles of the plant markers you plan on using. I used a 3/4″ hole punch at first, but it was a little too big and I had to trim them down.

When I made these recently I used rubber cement, but in the past I have used this awesome glass glue called Eclectic Adhesive E6000 that I think actually worked better. It’s thicker and left less bubbles between the paper and the glass, and is totally weather proof. Glue the paper veggie circles between two glass pebbles and let dry.

Attach the glued pebbles to the top of the sticks

If you’re using that E6000 glue, you can use it for this next step, too. Otherwise grab a hot glue gun, and attach the two glued together pebbles to the top of the stick. If you’re really picky about what works best, I would use the E6000 for the first step and the glue gun for this step and the next one.

Wrap the raffia around the base

After the glue is dry/cooled off, wrap a 6″ – 8″ inch piece of raffia over the glued area to cover it up. Wrap it in a few layers so that the top layers hold the starting end in place. Then grab that glue gun again and put a dab of it on the back side of the raffia to secure the finishing end in place. This may sound tricky or hard, but it isn’t. It’s super-easy. Trim the ends of the raffia that are still sticking out.

Waterproof the crevice between the pebbles

Now you’re almost done, but you still have paper in between two pebbles that could possibly get wet when it rains. So you need to put a thin layer of glue in the crevice between the two pebbles to seal out the water. You can do this with the rubber cement brush (or more easily with a smaller pain brush), or use your fingers to spread the E6000 glue. It’s ok if it turns out just a little sloppy, because it’s really hard to see anyway.

Now comes the hard part – you can’t use them until you plant your garden!