Paper Towel Cardboard Roll Flowers...A Big Name for a Simple Project.

Today I am going to show you a fun craft you can make using

some things you may find in the trash can

(but try to get them before they actually get in there).

You will need 

1. 1 cardboard middle from paper towel roll (or 2 cardboard rolls from toilet paper) for each flower (I made a two-sided flower, so I needed twice these supplies.)

2. a piece of cardboard (a cereal box was my source)

3. a ruler

4. a colored marker (a light one is best as it won't bleed through the paint)

5. paint colors of choice

6. some plaster of Paris to mix in the paint

7. and a cup or rinse water with paintbrushes

1. First, taking your ruler, your light colored marker, and your cardboard roll from your paper towels and  mark off 1 inch of an inch at one end.  Mark another line 1/2 inch from your first line.  Then mark about 1 1/2 inch on the last section and cut the extra off. 

2. Using the left-over piece from the cardboard roll of paper towel, mark off 3/4 inch first (this will be the inside sepals of your flower.  Then mark 3/4 inch for the next line (to create the middle section), and then 2 1/2 inches from that line.  Cut on this line.

3. Taking your longer piece cut small slices to the line.

This will be the sepals in the flower, so cut them as you want them to look.

4. Next cut the other end to the line.  This will be your back row of petals.  There will be 3 rows of petals in all.

Cut them rounded or however you'd like them to look.

I ended up rounding the edges of these a little later on.

5. Cut the smaller paper towel edges to the lines, realizing that the smaller end will be the first row of petals,
and the other side will be the second row of petals.

They should look something like this.

6.  Finally, take the shorter paper towel cardboard roll and carefully slip in onto the longer cardboard roll.  You may have to squish the inner one slightly and then adapt it once you get it in place.

7. Spread the petals out.

(You can turn the inner row inward to look more like sepals.)

(I then repeated this process so that I would have two of these flowers because I was using this as a centerpiece in a mobile.)

8. To finish the flower off, I placed it on a piece of cardboard from a cereal box, and cut some rounded petals for a back piece that made it look like a fuller flower while giving it stability. 

 This is what I had (I was experimenting with different flower petal shapes and sizes; that is why they look different, but I knew it wouldn't be noticeable on a mobile).

 (The flower on the left was made using 2 toilet paper rolls: that is why the sepals look slightly scrunched; the one on the right I used a toilet paper roll for the inside and a paper towel roll for the outside, but this made the two pieces very loose and had to be glued together.  You may use whichever you think would work better for you).

I then glued the flowers to either side of the cereal box flower shape, and painted the whole thing, mixing some plaster of Paris into the paint to give it a thicker consistency. (Painting without the Plaster of Paris is an option if you don't want that look).  For a glossy finished look, a spray of sealer when it is dried does the job.

(Here it is before it was hung in the mobile.)



I'll share the details of how the mobile was made...

...and the fun painted butterflies my daughter created using images from the Graphic Fairy
in >THIS POST<.


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