DIY Paper Flowers inspired by “Bloom”

“Bloom: an Ode to Spring” by Deborah Diesen and Mary Lundquist

This is the sweet story of a mother and a daughter duo who plant some bulbs in late autumn together.  After the bulbs are planted they have many different experiences as time passes and then come Spring the mother is thrilled to show her daughter what has become of the bulbs they planted together.  And, of course, the little girl is thrilled to be greeted by a field of beautiful blooms.

This book is full of sweetness and sentimentality.  It is the perfect “I love you” book to read to little ones before bed and would make a wonderful Mother’s Day gift.   It is also the perfect little celebration of the passing of time because it parallels the growth of the little girl with the blooming of the garden.   The illustrations are simply adorable and I love the bright colors and details that Mary Employs.  Such a great book to pay tribute to mothers and their children everywhere.

Click here to purchase “Bloom: an Ode to Spring” *affiliate link

DIY Paper Flower “Thank You”

I love how this book uses a flower field as a metaphor for the passing of time and the growth and nurturing of children.  There are so many wonderful people in children’s lives, mothers included, that help them to “bloom” and become the fabulous little people that they were meant to become.

These paper flowers are so easy to make and come with a printable (free for personal uses) center that expresses thanks for helping your child bloom.  They would make the perfect gift as they are to the grandmothers, mothers, teachers and all the influential people in your child’s life.  Also, another fantastic gift idea for them would be to place them in a small pot or container of flowers for the one you are grateful too.  One more idea would be to gift it with the book itself to be treasured.  Either way you cannot go wrong and these lovely flowers are with their thankful message are sure to brighten up someone’s day.

Supplies:

• “thanks for helping me bloom” printable centers printed off on yellow paper (I used printer paper)
• a sheet of paper of your choice for the petals and another sheet for the leaf
• a wooden skewer or thin wooden dowel
• glue stick
• scissors
• clear tape

Process:

1. Cut out the “thanks for helping me bloom” printable center of the flower and use it to test out some petal lengths and widths.
2. Once you find the length and width of the petal strip that you want to use, cut out some more identical strips for petals.  (I ended up using 16 petals on my sample flower.)
3. Glue the ends of the strips together, blank side in, to create petal loops.
4. Glue these loops to the back of your flower center.  I did all four sides first as shown and then filled in the gaps for even distribution.
5. This is what it should look like after one row in the front.
6. Then I started to do another row with new petals in between each petal I had already added. (Resulting in 16 petals.)
7. Tape the dowel to the back of the center of your flower with clear tape.  For the left I just eye-balled about how big I wanted it, then cut out a simple leaf shape.
8. Place some glue on the edge of your leaf and roll it around your wooden dowel to secure it.

To make these even more simple in order to do them with very young children or a large group of children, I would recommend pre-cutting all of the centers, petals and leaves.  That way children would just need to glue and assemble the flowers.

If you give this Beyond the Book activity a try I’d love to hear how it goes! Share it on Instagram using hashtag #beyondthebook (I’m on Instagram as @book.nerd.mommy) or even just comment here with your thoughts. It would make my day! Or to simply save for later pin the image below.