Wax Paper Flower Garden

When you were a kid did you ever do the project in the summer time where you pressed flower petals between two pieces of waxed paper? I can remember loving getting help using the iron to press two sheets of wax paper together with pretty petals in between. I was reminded of that craft this winter through a school project. As we don't have any flowers to gather and press, we made our own flowers with tissue paper scraps.

Our desire for something colorful came with a return to the very wintery weather we've had this week. As it snowed again the other day, we realized we needed to see some color as we looked through our windows.

Materials: 

Waxed Paper 

Colorful Tissue Paper

Glue Stick

Clothes Iron

Permanent Marker

We used left over tissue paper from Christmas and recent birthdays. 

You can use just about any size waxed paper, ours were about 12 inches by 18 inches. We used the permanent marker to sketch the outline of a design/image onto the wax paper. (I recommend using a larger, broad tipped marker as this writes a little better on waxed paper.) 

The boys then elected the colors of tissue paper they wanted and began ripping off the size chunks they needed to fill in to the inner parts of the flower. Working one section at a time they used the glue stick to put a little bit of glue onto the waxed paper. 

They then pressed their tissue paper scraps onto the glued parts of the flowers. They tried to roughly fill the inner parts of the flower, but they didn't match the pieces exactly. This meant the the wax paper would have something to stick to later during the pressing. It also lets a little light through when you hang them in  a window. 

When a flower was filled it was time to press. I laid a piece of waxed paper roughly the same size as the original piece on top of the piece with the flower. I then put newspaper on the top of both pieces of waxed paper and also underneath both pieces. 

Using a regular iron, I carefully pressed the wax paper sheets together through the newspaper. (Please note, if you don't use the newspaper you might destroy your iron.) The pressing should truly only take about a minute as the melting together of the two papers happens very quickly. 

After pressing, I always make sure I trim up the edges of the two sheets of waxed paper so they are even. 

We each made out own flower and worked on one more together. Each of the four flowers had their  own look, but when we put them all together in the window, they looked like the perfect set! 

What are you doing to make it feel like spring wherever you are?

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