A Christmassy Decoration Tutorial

So recently I've been helping Lydia, Caleb and Jacob decorate their bedrooms for Christmas. (It's a family tradition that we each decorate our respective rooms.)  I made some of these cute little Christmassy flowers for my room last year, and this year Lydia said she really wanted to make some for her room. So I helped her, Caleb and Jacob make some each and they turned out quite nicely.

Materials needed:

- Cardboard tubes (we used empty toilet paper rolls)

- Red and/or green paint

- Paintbrush

- Glue

- Scissors

What to do
1. Gather together all the little siblings you are going to do the craft with. (Or don't, if you're just making it for yourself.)
2. Paint the cardboard tubes red or green, depending on what you like. Or you could do some of each like we did.
3. Wait for the paint to dry completely. At this point you could also paint the insides of the tubes if you wanted to. We didn't, so we have a kind of green-and-gold or red-and-gold look going on with the unpainted inside and the painted outside of the flowers.
4. When the paint is dry, squeeze the cardboard tubes so they are flattish. Then cut the tubes into sections, cutting either five or six sections depending on whether you want to end up with a six petalled or five petalled flower.

Six sections

Five sections









5. Arrange the sections into a flower shape and glue. Be careful not to allow the glue to drip onto the paper underneath the flower or you will end up with the flower stuck to the paper. (Yes, I speak from experience - look at that atrocious gluing job I made of the flower captioned 'six sections'!)
6. Wait for the glue to dry. (I took the photos right after we glued them so that's why they look a bit messy. I don't have any of the finished product, sorry!)
7. Pick up the flower off the paper. Be very gentle because sometimes they fall to bits at this point if you haven't glued them properly. If it needs more glue, then glue it more.
8. Your flower is now completely finished! Stick it somewhere where it will be seen. We stuck ours on mirrors and they look super awesome.


And the reason you get this lovely tutorial, folks, is because after Lydia had her flowers completely finished, she exclaimed to me "Oh, Bonnie! You should put how to make these on your blog!" - so there you go. :)


EDIT: After I had written this post, I came across something a friend shared on Facebook: this. 

Exactly the same idea, but way cooler because it's done with GLITTER paint and painted inside and out. I just may have to make a few more.... ;)