Paper Flowers

This "green" mommie really enjoys using recycled materials. For example, I keep almost all of our household's gift packaging, including bags, tissue paper, ribbons,... all for re-use.  With August comes another year of school, so I thought I'd share a fun recycling project I made last school year for my son's preschool teachers.  Would you have guessed that the beauties above were made from Victoria's Secret tissue paper?!

To make your own,
gather the following supplies:

recycled tissue paper

crepe paper or felt

pipe cleaners

hot glue gun

template* 

*this is an existing template from MarthaStewart.com*

  

1. Cut out the petal shapes (top box of template) from your tissue paper.  I folded my tissue in an accordion fashion to cut down on the number of cuts.  
2. Cut out the single, smaller heart-shaped template from the crepe paper or felt.  I cut 2 for each stem, and used green crepe paper.  I had it on-hand and found it easy to work with since it stretches around curves easily.  
3. Bend one end of a pipe cleaner making a soft small center tip on which to build you flower.
4. Squeeze a small ring of hot glue slightly below the center tip and begin building the petals, single petals first, adding glue, and then the heart petals as you go.
5. Affix the base leaves.
6. Fluff petals and shape stems as desired.  Voila!

I bundled these in pairs with rick rack, and added a personalized note.  My son was excited to hand these over to his teachers.  It's never to early to learn that recycling can be beautiful!