My immediate idea was to make the flower a 3D one, as opposed to a simple color-pencil/crayon/poster color painting. And with 3D looks, there were a few ways to achieve it.
- get clay or plasticine and mold a flower, but judging from Renzo's handicraft, it would most probably be 95% my effort, not to mention that it would stick to the paper
- get colored paper and do a paper origami flower (try googling "Winson Chan Origami" and you'll see what i mean... and NO, i'm not THAT Winson Chan), but again, it'll mostly be effort on my end as Renzo wouldn't be able to manage the complexity of origami
- soak toilet paper in a 2:1 PVC glue to water mixture and after they dry and hardens, paint over with poster color... my preferred choice and it is very mold-able before it dries and i have had much experience doing it in my childhood days but unfortunately, it is time consuming and tedious
- get colored beads/sand/confetti and just glue them on... which seems to be the best choice for this job
So I went to Daiso and purchased 3 items at $2 each and started work with Renzo straight away after my dinner and we were on a tight deadline... as opposed to the ladybug project from last year...
And for the benefit of those who want to try it out with their kids, I'll list out the materials and steps :)
- Colored pipe cleaners (the one i got from Daiso is 50 pieces in assorted colors, eventually i used 2 silvers, 2 yellow and 2 greens)
- Starch Glue (Daiso packs them in 3s... picked it over other type because of the strength and also that it is not too liquid as this project requires a large surface area of glue and those runny ones will soak right though the paper
- deco sand (those gardening deco kind... bought a can of blue ones to be used as blue petals)
- scissors to cut the pipe cleaners
- pen... for writing...duh...
- paper with outline of a flower on it
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Step 1
Slap a generous slab of glue in the middle of the flower and spiral yellow pipe cleaners onto it as the pistil of the flower (if i got the anatomy of the flower correct...haha) and cut silver pipe cleaners and outline the petals of the flower.
Tip: Be really generous with the glue, you wouldn't want the pipe cleaners to move about later when you pour the blue deco sand onto the paper
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Step 2
Spiral 2 green pipe cleaners and then squeeze them near the center so the become over-shaped and kinda like leaves of the flower and again with lotsa glue, stick them where the leaves should be
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Step 3
The trickiest bit of the project
Pour the deco sand onto a small container (I just grab a plastic lid which was within reach), so that you can gauge how much of the sand would be poured onto the paper.
Lay a thin layer of glue on where you want the blue petals to be and gently pour the sand onto the glue
After completely covering all the petals, let the glue set for a while... (I gave Renzo a bath... lol) then dust away the remaining sand that were not held on by the glue. Stick an ice-cream stick between the leaves to make a flower stem if you want to.
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Step 4
Write your own greeting message... =)
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And we are done!
Hopefully Renzo's teacher Stella will like Renzo's little gift and HapPy TeAchERs' DaY to all the teacher at Renzo's school... and every other teacher out there!... You people affect eternity, you can never tell when and where your influence stops, so carry on teaching!
