Flowers can fill your day with fun activities. Whether you’re looking for a nature-inspired activity for a playdate, a floral-themed bridal or baby shower or birthday party, or a whole week of flower-filled fun with your kids, these crafts, games, and foods will make joy blossom.
Flower Inspired Crafts
You can do floral projects even when none are in season! With the help of paper, pipe cleaners, or thread you can make blossom-inspired crafts that are as pretty as the real thing.
PAPER FLOWER WREATH: Make every day May Day with paper flowers that you color in yourself (with paints, crayons, markers, whatever), glued to the rim of a paper plate—or add them to a ribbon or strip of paper to create a paper crown. Click here for our flower templates and a how-to.
PAPER FLOWER DECOR: Paper blossoms also make great craft decor to spruce up picnic lunches, teddy bear teas, or DIY stationery. Download, print, and cut our paper flowers here or design your own.
CHERRY BLOSSOM BRANCHES: It’s surprisingly easy—and fun—to make realistic paper flowers: Tissues, paper towels, some real branches can be transformed into cherry blossoms with the help of a little paint (or food coloring!) and glue. Click here for the how to.
FLORAL TABLE DECOR: Once your kids have whipped up a bunch of cherry branches, you can use them as your centerpiece all summer long.
LAUREL WREATH CROWNS: Honor the birthday boy or girl or the winner of your in-house olympic games with these laurel wreath crowns made of paper and ribbon. Click here for the template and how-to.
PIPE CLEANER DAISY: Whether you make a bouquet full as gifts, twine them into a chain, glue them to a barrette or “plant” them in a bottle in your bedroom or kitchen, pipe cleaner flowers make cute blooms that will never wilt.
EMBROIDERED FLOWERS: Adding floral accents to your clothes can be sew easy, from single-stitch daisy petals to more advanced rosettes. Draw the design first in pencil or washable fabric marker, then use your imagination! Just make sure to securely double knot your thread once you’re done so your stitches don’t come undone in the wash. You might try
—Lily of the Valley: Bring the needle through the fabric and wrap the thread around it once for a small bud or twice for these pictured (that’s a French knot stitch). Then put the needle back through the same hole, leaving your knot showing. Link with green stitches to create the stem.
—Rose: Stitch 5 rays of equal size from a center point, then weave the thread over and under the stitches (not going through the fabric) until the rose is full (take care not to pull the thread too tight). Sew single stitches to make green leaves.
—Dandelion: Make rays of short and long single stitches coming out from one center point, then sew a green stem and leaves.
EMBROIDERED CARDS: Say it with flowers that last forever (just like your love!). Stitch blossoms onto card stock for one-of-a-kind thank you notes or stationery.
Flower Thumbprints: Everyone can have a green thumb! Have kids press their thumbs onto a stamp pad (or finger paint) and press it down to form petals for floral art or stationery—each one is different and beautiful!
Fresh Flower Crafts
If you’ve got access to a yard, garden, or field, send kids out to gather flowers for the following fun ideas.
PRESSED FLOWER ART: Flower presses are cool, but all you really need to turn wildflowers into art is some wax paper and a dictionary or encyclopedia. Tape wildflowers to a piece of white paper, cover with wax paper and place it under a stack of heavy books. Check in a few hours later and you’ve got a beautiful piece of pressed flower art which can be turned into:
—A card
—A bookmark
—An illustrated glossary of different types of flowers—kids can label each blossom
— A suncatcher (frame the flowers between sheets of glass or two sheets of wax paper)
— A botanical shadowbox (frame your flowers in a 3-d frame—or what I like to call a scrapbox—to showcase your specimens on the wall)
SECRET MESSAGE BOUQUETS: The Victorians assigned a meaning to each blossom so they could speak in The Language of Flowers. (Ivy means friendship, basil equals good wishes, for example.) Look up the code in the Famer’s Almanac and have kids gather bouquets then share what they mean.
PAINT WITH FLOWERS: Use flowers, grasses, and reeds (bunched together or singly) as “paintbrushes” for a fun new technique.
Flower Crowns: From daisy chains to wildflower wheels, kids can make crowns by looping the stem of one flower around another.
FLOWER GARLANDS: Create decor for teddy bear teas, fairy parties or any other occasion by stringing together fresh or dried flowers, then hanging them from the ceiling, draping across chairs, or strewing across the table.
PETAL MOSAICS: Turn individual petals into pieces for a mosaic-like artwork; draw a simple outline (of a heart, circle, sailboat, rainbow whatever!) and have kids glue petals onto it to fill in the drawing. Or, make the design between two panes of glass or sheets of wax paper to create a suncatcher you can hang in the window.
POUNDED FLOWER ART: Arrange blossoms face-down on a piece of white paper, place wax paper on top, and pound with a hammer or mallet. When you remove the wax paper and the flowers, they’ll have left colorful impressions on the white paper, creating art you can frame, turn into cards, or display any way you like.
FLOWER FAIRY MASKS: Have kids glue petals, leaves, and grass onto simple Zorro-style paper eye masks to turn each other into flower fairies and wood sprites.
Floral Games
Flowers—and nature in general—can be the basis of all sorts of fun contests, challenges, and activities from scavenger hunts to games.
NATURE SCAVENGER HUNT: Send kids out to forage and claim their prizes. Use our Nature Scavenger Hunt template above or make your own to test their nature knowledge. Kids can hunt for: Flowers in certain colors, with certain numbers of petals, bugs, nests, grasses, leaves—you decide!
YARD “SOUP”: Have little ones collect flowers, leaves, grasses, acorns, pebbles—whatever they find—place them in bowls, then “cook” the “soup” by stirring with a stick. Just be sure kids are old enough to realize this is imaginary food—not something they’re meant to put in their mouths!
FLOWER “CELEBRITY”: Make a list of all the characters in books and movies who have flower names. Write the names on post-its or cards, tape one to each person’s head or back, and go around asking each other questions until you can figure out who’s who. Characters to consider:
—Daisy Buchannan (from The Great Gatsby), Daisy Duck
—Rose Red (from the fairy tale), Rose from Titanic, Rose Nylund (from The Golden Girls)
—Chrysanthemum (from the kids’ book)
—Buttercup (from The Princess Bride)
—Jasmine (from Aladdin)
—Petunia Pig
—Narcissa Malfoy (from Harry Potter)
—Violet Beauregard (from Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory)
Edible Flowers
Nature is all around—and with edible flowers it can even be in your food. You can mix edible flowers right into your ingredients (here’s an alphabetical list of blossoms you can eat from the Gardening Channel; you can order online from specialty sites and even some groceries)—just make sure that when you cook with the real thing, you’re getting food-grade flowers. Here are some tasty treats that prove when you mix food and flowers, you get fun!
FLOWER BARK: Chocolate bark is a fun, easy favorite—and when you mix flowers into a recipe—like we did with the bark recipe from my friend Tiffani Theissen’s book Pull Up a Chair, you get the most beautiful bark there is. For the recipe, link here.
FLORAL COOKIES: When sugar cookies are topped with edible flowers, they double as decor!
SPRING-Y SALAD: Add some color to your greens by sprinkling on a few pansy, nasturtium, honeysuckle or hibiscus blossoms.
CAKE DECOR: Cover a simple cake or cupcakes in frosting, then stick on edible flowers for a blooming beauty of a desert.
FLORAL TEA: For a summer tea party in the backyard, set out a tea bar that includes dried flowers you can add into tea as a garnish, or pour hot water over to create a tisane. Try jasmine, lavender, rose, and chamomile—all of which are caffeine-free, too! You can even take out your fancy teacups to make it extra special. (For more ideas, click here.)
—True Blue Lemonade: Turn lemonade (or tea) bright blue by mixing in dried butterfly pea flowers.
—Spring-y Sips: Add chamomile, rose petals, lavender, or any edible flower into a cocktail or a mocktail as a garnish, or freeze the blooms in ice cubes, then float them in the drinks.
“MUD” CUPS: Fill a cup with chocolate mousse or pudding, top with chocolate cookie crumb “dirt” and plant some edible flowers for a garden that tastes as good as it looks. Hamptons Aristocrat made these desserts with blooms from Missi Flowers for one of our events.
MORE MUD CUPS: Instead of placing stemmed flowers into the “mud” you can scatter edible blooms on top the way you would sprinkles or nuts—that’s what Hamptons Aristocrat did here.
Faux Flower Food
You can put flower power on the menu even when there’s not a live blossom in sight. Whether it’s a frosting blossom atop a cupcake or a fruit-slice flower in your morning yogurt, these faux floral touches are good enough to eat.
EDIBLE FLOWER POTS: Make brownies in flower pots, ramekins, or muffin cups, download our flower cupcake topper templates, cut, print, and “plant” them in the delicious “dirt.” These are avocado brownies made from Tiffani Theissen’s cookbook Pull Up a Chair; for the recipe, downloadable flower templates, and how-to, click here.
FRUIT FLOWER YOGURT BOWLS:Turn breakfast into a bouquet by topping yogurt with blooms made of citrus wedge petals, artfully arranged berries, or pear or apple chunks shaped into petals with a cookie cutter and garnished with mint leaves. For a how-to, click here.
FROSTING FLOWERS: Use a piping bag (or a ziploc with the corner cut off) to pipe petals onto a cupcake and make happiness bloom.
CANDY BOUQUETS: Poke a single lollipop through a paper cupcake wrapper to turn it into a blossom, or tie several lollipops together to make a bouquet.
- Book 2. Paper Flower Kit 3. Pressed Flower Kit 4. Watercolor Pencil 5. Pom Pom Flower 6. Watercolor Set 7. Flower Press 8. Garden Kit 9. Paper Flower Book 10. Paper Flower Book 11. Field Journal 12. Seed Pencil