Aurora and Gray love to make things for my husband and I. Whether it’s a drawing or a toy wrapped up in a blanket that they’re giving as gifts, I love the sentiment and want to encourage it! So, this morning we sat down to make a little project together that they could give to someone on Valentine’s day. Crafting with a two and three year old is quite an undertaking, but I really like doing process art like this because there’s no way for them to “mess it up.” They got to color, and I helped them turn their designs in to coffee filter flowers!
Here’s how we made our works of art:
- Gather your supplies, you will need coffee filters, washable markers, pipe cleaners, eye droppers and scissors.
- Fold your filter in to fourths.
- Instruct your preschooler on scissor safety, then let them practice!
- Cut a petal-like edge on your folded filter, scallops, zig sags and fringe are nice!
- Color the coffee filter with the washable markers
- Experiment with different designs!
- Use the dropper to drip water on to the filter, this will cause the ink to bleed and a beautiful watercolor design to unfold!
- Iron the coffee filters between two dry paper towels on low. This will dry out the filter and set the design
- Poke a pipe cleaner through the middle of the filter and make a ball on the end. Then, fluff the flower in to a nice shape and your gift is ready to give!
I love the beautiful designs the kids came up with! We experimented with drawing lines, drawing circles, and just drawing crazily all over!
Aurora has already made it very clear that one of these are for daddy, and one is for her friend James… I wonder if I’ll get one too. 馃檪
For now, I think I’ll keep them in a pretty vase on my counter until Valentine’s Day rolls around. Real flowers never last very long, but the memory of our time making these coffee filter flowers will last forever!
