Mother's Day Craft

I wanted to do a special Mother's Day craft with my two granddaughters. I saw this project on Pinterest and pinned it to my Grandchildren board. I took the basic idea and then changed it up a little bit.

Inspiration

I drew a basic flower shape onto some cardstock. I folded the paper so I was cutting two pieces at the same time because I wanted each flower to be double sided with the pipe cleaner stuck in between.

I also wanted to put pictures of the girls in the center of each flower. Most of the pictures I chose were taken when I was watching them while their mommies were at work. 

Tristyn, my 2 1/2 year old granddaughter was the first to make her project. Before she got to my house I had already made the flowers and had glued the photos onto them. She chose the pipe cleaner colors because I had a few different shades of green. They were long pipe cleaners and I wanted to use half for each stem. I got away with that for the first one but after that she wanted to use the full length. Once we had the pipe cleaners I glued them between the two layers of the flowers. 

I wanted her to decorate the pot too. I just used an ordinary clay pot from Home Depot. I gave her crayons and she colored the outside and the inside of the pot.

I let her pick the paint colors for the petals. Of course she chose all of the colors that I had. Together we dipped her index finger in the first color. Then we put it on the flower petal. After we did the first one she knew exactly what to do for the rest.  She used one color per flower. She still had colors left so she wanted to put her fingerprints on the outside of the flower pot. I turned it so they would go all the way around the pot. Then she decided to stick her whole hand in the paint and she spread that on the pot.

I put a piece of florist foam in the bottom of the flower pot after the paint dried. I poked holes in it with a scissors so the pipe cleaners would go in easier. Tristyn chose where each flower went. The ones with the really long stems were kind of tricky. I just bunched up the pipe cleaner inside the pot since they were way too long. Then I covered up the foam with some tan shredding so it looked like soil.

Here is her finished product.

I did Elsie's next. She is only 2 months old. So I had the pipe cleaners in place and had the pictures on the flowers. Basically all that was left was her fingerprints. I thought I'd try adding footprints or handprints on the pot in addition to the fingerprints on the petals. 

I chose white tempera paint for the fingerprints and footprints. I thought it would be the easiest color to wash out. If you've never done fingerprints with a 2 month old, it's a challenge. I had to really work to only have one finger to dip in the paint. I tried the footprints first for the flower pot. The first attempt, you could see the toes and most of the foot. The second one was pretty much a smeared blob. I tried to hold her hand so that I could get a handprint and it was obvious it wasn't going to be successful so I abandoned that idea. Here she is with her finished project. I think it is a special gift for her mommy's first Mother's Day.

 I didn't really think about putting this on my blog until after the fact. So there aren't as many pictures as I'd like. But they were so cute when they were done, I wanted to share them. Both of my daughters loved their gifts.

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there.
Carol