Paper Flower Bouquet

This week is Teacher Appreciation week at school. We have been given suggestions of little goodies and presents to bring each day for the teacher. Monday was flowers. I felt we could be a little more creative (and economical) than bringing a real bouquet (real bouquets are wonderful but I never made it to the store on Sunday to pick one up). I found this idea in Family Fun magazine. Very easy and I had all the supplies. Actually, I had to get pipe cleaners but we went out to dinner in the general vicinity of Michael’s anyway so I count that as practically having everything.

You too can make a paper bouquet. Here’s how:

You’ll need tissue paper (cut into 5×5 squares), pipe cleaners and wax crayons or oil pastels. I used oil pastels because I already had them and I like the way they apply much better than crayons. Very wide, smooth and thick coverage.

Layer two pieces of tissue paper together. Color the edge of two opposite sides.

Keep the two layers together and fold accordion style with the edges you colored along the sides, not top and bottom.

Here’s Addison’s little hands doing some folding. I sure as heck wasn’t going to do this all by myself.

Once you have THREE accordions nice and folded, stack them together and wrap one end of the pipe cleaner around the middle.

Now it’s time to fan out the flower. Pull and twist the tissue apart to create a carnation. The tissue tears very easily so little hands may get frustrated. It’ll be okay.

Once you have your desired amount of flowers twist the pipe cleaner stems together to create a bouquet. Tie with a ribbon.

What mom, grandmom or teacher wouldn’t love that?!