Woven strawberry basket pendants: link

I'm still feeling really into Mother's Day, so I was excited to find this fun idea at Scrumdilly-do. I'm not nearly sure where I'm going to find strawberry baskets, but I love the idea of using them for weaving, and these turned into an absolutely charming necklace. I'll make sure to hang mine up with the colored macaroni shell and marker lid necklaces Josie's brought home from preschool!

more button, tissue paper, and crepe flowers for mother's day! : links

We've had so much fun making tissue paper flowers over the past few days that we've been looking for something to fill our bouquet out a bit!

Plum Pudding came up with a super-creative idea for some gorgeous button and cardboard flowers.






One More Moore has a nice tutorial for making a bouquet of simple button flowers a lot like these --->
Theirs add felt leaves to fill the bouquet out a bit. I can't wait to try these first two ideas...and hopefully deplete my button collection a little bit.

Two Straight Lines has a tutorial for a very simple crepe paper flower bouquet displayed in a paper-covered can. It's very cute and the 'vase' is a great canvas to decorate for an additional gift for your favorite mother. Martha Stewart also has a pattern for some GIANT crepe paper flowers for all the paper you'll have left over! It's odd...Martha Stewart also had a big article and templates for making old-fashioned crepe paper lilies, roses, and other flowers in her weddings magazine the summer I was married (2001), but I can't find any reference to it online. Crepe is very moldable and stretchy and you (probably not small children, but you!) can create some very realistic flowers with it.

Finally, I really like Klutz's Tissue Paper Flowers book for patterns to create specific types of flowers. They also have great suggestions for other types of paper to use (we like waxed paper lilies!) and it comes with a passel of tissue paper to get you started. I've had it for years and have yet to run through the whole thing.

Happy Mother's day, and happy crafting!

tissue paper flowers: link, mother's day gift idea

The Rowdy Pea has a tutorial for making tissue paper flowers up. We've made these a number of times on our own and as a playgroup activity and it is so fun! We cut different shapes of flowers out to make poppies, cornflowers, daisies, etc, or just layer them randomly to make a fun made-up blossom. I'd say it's suitable for kids starting around 3 if you were to cut out the flowers shapes and have them string them onto the chenille stem.