"Crafty Kitchen" Pipe Cleaner Flowers

I am adding a new feature to Mommy's Kitchen. We will be dedicating a part of this site for Crafts!!!! It will still be all about cooking & recipes, but a few crafts thrown in from time to time, maybe about once a week. The kids have decided to call it, Crafty Kitchen. This all came about from me trying to find some low cost activities to keep the kids busy for the summer. If your kids are like mine they seem to get bored easily and always want something to do. Well, I did a little brain storming and came up with our very own Craft Supply Box.

Our first task was getting supplies for our box. This started out pretty cheap because we started with things around the house. I had the kids get together all their school supplies that they brought home at the end of the year. (rulers, markers, crayons, glue sticks, glue bottles, scissors, water color paints etc) we tried to utilize anything that they had left over from school that was still in pretty good shape. We also found a few oversized T-shrits to use when we do some painting projects. After we got all that together we made a list and headed to the store. It was really fun bringing the kids along and letting them help out and find some useful supplies.

A few of the things we purchased were pipe cleaners, buttons, colored pom poms, pop sicle sticks, tempura paints, acrylic paints, construction paper, shape sponges, paper plates, paint brushes, googly eyes, stickers, lunch sacks and tissue paper. On the tissue paper I did not have to buy much at all just a color or two. We utilized all that tissue paper from leftover gift bags, you know the ones you have put away in the closet they will come in so handy for crafts. I found a plastic tub that wasn't being used so we could store all of our supplies.

Now we just need to keep it stocked and that's it. The point of it all is keeping it low cost and fun. I told the kids that they could have access to the craft box at any time as long as they got permission first. That way I could keep a eye on them and make sure they were not wasting any supplies or using something that required adult supervision (especially the paints). I hope everyone finds Crafty Kitchen a useful additon to Mommy's Kitchen. We will be doing a lot of summer craft activities, so I would love to share them with all of you. A lot of items can be found right outside of your house. All you have to do is use your imagination. Hopefully you will find some ideas to keep your little ones busy this summer.

Here is a picture of our supplies we will add to it slowly.

find a plastic tub for storage.

Then off for a visit to our local library to find some craft books. We also found a lot of fun ideas online. Here are a few links. All Free Crafts.com, DLTK Crafts for Kids, Kaboose Crafts, My Craftbook, Creative Kids at Home. The kids dove right in on a project as soon as we got home from the library.


So for our first craft we made Pipe Cleaner Flowers. I think they turned out so cute. Mackenzie even put a few googly eyes on some of her flowers.


These are the supplies you will need:
Colored Pipe Cleaners, Buttons, Markers and Construction Paper.

have the kids draw and color their flowers and then cut out their flowers with scissors.


place a button of their choice in the middle of the flower.


push the pipe cleaner through the backside of the colored flower and through the front guiding the pipe cleaner to go through on of the button holes.


like this, the pull a little bit of the pipe cleaner through and pass it through another button whole so the pipe cleaner is now on the back side of the flower.



twist to secure behind the flower so it will not be seen. And bend the step back.



Pretty Flowers!!!! You can add glitter or googly eyes if you like. We added our flowers to a vase on the table.