It’s that wonderful time of year when flowers begin to pop up all over the place and it’s lovely to enjoy them inside as well as out. We’ve been raiding the recycling and having fun creating beautiful blooms from all sorts!

Plastic Bottle Flowers – we’ve experimented with these before but have tried a wider range of techniques recently and even created a bouquet, so we’ve just updated the Plastic Bottle Flowers blog…

Popcorn Flowers – our kids are little enough that we can get away with popping our own corn and leaving it plain and it still counts as a treat! But we always make a bit too much so this time we painted some of the leftovers and stuck them onto some paper with a cardboard vase. It looked really effective…

Egg Box Flowers – there are a whole host of possibilities for these and we found this collection the most helpful starting point… but mostly we just had a play! I couldn’t quite face getting paints out again so we just used coloured pens but they worked well. The simplest version seemed to be: 

• Cutting out a section, including part of the taller bit from the middle of the box
• Splitting this piece into four by cutting down as far as the circle at the bottom, so each piece remains attached to the circle 
• Then shaping each section into whatever petal shape you would like 

We also had a go at a daffodil and a bell flower which were more effective but did require glue and a bit more patience…

Actual Flowers! – Not a long term decoration (especially not if, like us, you left it late in the day to pick your daisies and they were already curling up for the night!!) but super easy, reusable and a great way to both get the family out in nature and to do a bit of fine motor skill practice! All you need is a bit of cardboard, a pen and a skewer…

• Draw out your vase shape using up half to two thirds of your cardboard
• Place your cardboard on something soft and use the skewer to make some holes (you may need to enlarge them by moving the skewer around or using the point of some scissors)
• Decorate the vase however you like
• Go pick some flowers (but not anything rare… or from someone else’s garden!)
• Thread the flowers through the holes
• We then stuck an old envelope on the back to hold down the stems and keep the flowers in place… then enjoy!