Flowers, flowers and more flowers!

Yesterday the kids and I spent the day at the Tulip Festival. It was breathtakingly beautiful. It's one of those places you wish you could take everyone you know because a picture can never do such beauty justice. It was a wonderful day, even at the moment Grayson completely lost it over Emma asking if he needed help picking the one and only yellow tulip that he wanted to bring home. Yep, he threw himself down in the middle of the yellow and orange tulip rows and screamed and kicked and screamed some more, but I gotta say a two-year old melt down is much more tolerable when spent in the middle of this. 

He recuperated pretty well and decided on a purple tulip to take home. Good choice, Grayson! They were my favorite. With his new favorite tulip in hand and a ride on the cow train we were back to blissful peace out at the Tulip Festival. 

With flowers on the mind I thought I would share some wonderful flower crafts we have been enjoying this spring.

 Starting with Egg Carton Tulips seems appropriate! Isn't it amazing what you can do with an egg carton. They must be one of our most used recycled art good. I can never bare to toss them into the recycling bin.

 With a pipe cleaner stem and a button center these sweet flowers came together pretty nicely.

We used watercolor to add some color, but tempura paints would probably give you a better "pop" of color on your tulips. 

 Speaking of egg carton awesomeness, check out our Egg Carton Spring Wreath!

We started out with a cardboard ring and added egg carton flowers all around it. I just love the way it came out.

 Last summer when I brought home these beautiful white hydrangeas from the store Emma asked if the flower fairies had missed this batch when out adding color to flowers everywhere. I told her they must have and this sparked a new craft in our house and a very important job for her.

Eager to help the fairies out Emma painted each petal of our white hydrangeas with watercolors. Painted Hydrangeas is a new favorite in our house.

 Paper Towel Flowers are pretty fun to make by painting with watercolors right on a paper towel. The colors spread and blend to make a really beautiful creation.

With a clothespin these colorful towels become a sweet little flower perfect for adding on top of a gift.

 More hydrangeas! These Coffee Filter Hydrangeas are so beautiful and easy to make.

OK, a pattern is happening here. I guess when flower crafting we tend to pull the watercolors out. Interesting. A pipe cleaner stem was added to these to make a sweet little bouquet.

 We started our Newspaper Flowers out by painting sheets of newspaper with colored glue. When the sheets dried they were easy to cut into petals and put together to create these fun flowers.

I love that you can still read them! Very cool looking flower.

 This was an Emma idea inspired by her love of creating with q-tips. What I loved about it is that it became a really great fine motor skills activity for Grayson and they could enjoy this one together.

For these Q-tip Flowers I helped by cutting the q-tips in half and they stuck them into different sized styro balls. With a little paint (yes, watercolors!) and a pipe cleaner they became flowers. Very unique flowers, if I do say so.

 Magical Dandelions sprouted up in our yard recently and what a pleasant surprise they were! You can't go wrong with wishes and glitter!