This is a super easy craft and relatively mess-free! I am always on the lookout for easy crafts to give to the care-giving ladies at my Y Neighbours group. The group is for moms to socialize with other moms while the care-giving ladies take care of the preschool children for two hours. The ladies who look after the older children are retired (for quite a long time) and do not like anything with liquid glue, paint or crafts that require lots of cleanup. That limits the crafts ideas I can come up with; I like mess!
My friend came over yesterday with a craft to do with our kids. She even brought the supplies!
You need:
- Coffee filters (we used white and unbleached to compare)
- Washable coloured markers
- Green craft sticks (or plain craft sticks coloured green- the kids love colouring the plain ones!)
- Coloured stems
- Paper towel/newspaper
- Water spray
What to do:
Fold the coffee filter in half and half again.
Colour a pattern using the washable markers. Hold the markers on the paper making sure the ink travels through all 4 layers of paper. Finding the happy medium between pushing on the markers and just letting the ink travel and soak through was difficult. Maybe singing a line of a song while holding the makers in place would help? We got the kids to check the ink was soaking through after each mark was made.
Here is the fun part: with a paper towel or newspaper underneath, spray the filter until it is fully wet.
Unfold the filter carefully, blot with paper towel and leave to dry. It takes about an hour. We were going to take them outside to dry but the wind on the prairies would blow them away. If you have no wind they would dry outside very quickly.
You can probably spot the mom’s efforts and the kids. We tended to organize and ensure the pattern followed the circle of the filter. The kids just had fun exploring the colour. The less structured filters did make better flowers.
When the filters have dried push a stem through the middle and make a fold 1cm from the end to stop the stem from pulling out.
Scrunch the paper into a flower and wrap part of the stem around to hold it in place.
Add a craft stick and wrap the remaining stem around the craft stick. The kids did need help with this to get the stem tight enough to hold the stick in place.
Liam who turned 2 in June was very pleased with his flower. As you can see the kids’ flowers were prettier than our structured versions.
What a beautiful bouquet!