Tutorial: Valentine Egg Carton Flowers

I've been wracking my brain for cute ideas for valentines. Last year we made Lollypop Flowers. This year I decided not to make candy gifts - but how to package a little valentine something in a cute a crafty way? My brain seems to be stuck on flower crafts - this year we made our flowers from egg cartons.

You will need:
- paper egg carton
- green paint
- colored card or construction paper
- glue dots
- green pipe cleaners
- labels for your valentine messages (we made ours with a heart paper punch and added little bit of bling)
- scissors

1) Paint the cups on your egg carton green. We found it was easier to paint the carton before cutting it up.

2) Once the paint is dry cut the egg carton up so you are only left with the cups.

Make a hole in the bottom of each cup (I just pushed the closed scissor blades through the cup.)

3) Cut your heart petals.

Score the base of each petal by drawing a curve around a egg cup. 

Fold the scored line carefully and the petal should curve/fit nicely into the egg cup.

Make sure any pen line is on the underside of the flower or use a pen the same color as the card you are using.

4) Put a glue dot on the back of each petal and stick into your egg cup. (NOTE: The girls LOVE to glue - but glue dots help to keep the spread of glue under control. They also instantly stick - so no sliding or holding things together until the glue dries)

5) Wrap your little gift in a little bit of tulle or netting. Pull the netting through the hole in the egg cup - securing your little gift in the middle of the flower.

6) Bend your pipe cleaner into a leaf shape and thread your label on.

Wind the pipe cleaner tightly around the tulle + trim.

They do look cute - and you could adjust this idea and put lollypops in the middle of these flowers too. Or change the color of the petals - here is a yellow flower filled with potential Easter candy!

 

Next year I hope to give myself more time to come up with something outside of flowers!

There are hundreds of kid friendly crafts you can do with egg cartons. Just Google 'egg carton crafts' or 'egg carton flowers' and you will come up with a whole host of wonderful ideas.

Lollypop Cupcakes

Busy weekend for us here. Birthdays (mine and Bunny #1's) and our wedding anniversary (7). To help Bunny #1 celebrate her 3rd birthday I made some cupcakes for her class. I saw this idea from Martha Stewart Cupcakes. I couldn't find the neutral colored sprinkles and I wasn't sure what taffy tape was ... so I just used cream cheese frosting and made the leaves from icing sugar and water.They were so easy to make and apparently quite popular at school with kiddies and teachers alike!
Hope you all had a good weekend too.

Tutorial: Valentine Lollypop Flowers

I have been dying to make these Heart and Lollypop Flowers every since I purchased Martha Stewarts Homemade Holiday Crafts. Well Valentine's Day is nearly here and I thought they would be very cute for Bunny #1 to give to her class mates. Of course - I can never tackle a project without making some 'improvements' of my own. Here is my version of this project. I didn't know whether this post should be a 'pillaged but much improved idea from Martha Stewart' post or an honest tutorial. I'll let you be the judge! But here is what you will need:
- lollypop
- 5 paper hearts (mine measure a little over 2")
- 16 tissue paper hearts
- 2 leaf shapes
- paper punch or scissors
- hole punch

After cutting out/punching out your paper and tissue paper hearts put a hole punch in the base of each shape. Scrunch up the tissue paper hearts to give the tissue paper more body and carefully thread each heart onto the lolly pop stick - rotating the position of the hearts as you go until you have threaded all 16 tissue paper hearts. Fold your paper hearts in half and then fold the sides down again - to make little arrow/airplane hearts.Thread these onto your lollypop stick - rotating their position as you go.Cut out your leaf shapes and score a line down the middle of each leaf. This line does not need to be straight. Put a hole punch in the end of each leaf and thread onto the lollypop stick. A field of valentine lollypop flowers.I learnt my lesson with little fingers tugging apart the Candy Cane Mice and this time I have wrapped each lollypop flower in some cellophane, with some pink ribbon and a little heart gift tag.