Egg carton flowers for Mother's Day

My little spring posy is based on the roses I made a couple of weeks ago. Egg cartons are great for flowers, and I was thinking this simple arrangement might come in handy with Mother's Day around the corner?

So, if you fancy making these flowers, you will need:
Egg cartons
Pipe cleaners (preferably yellow and green)
Coloured tissue paper
Paint
Glue
Lump of old modelling clay
Yogurt pot

Cut out a few egg cups from the carton for the daffodils, and keep the edges nice and wavy - makes it look more like petals.

Cut some middle cones out too for the crocus/bluebell shaped flower (seems to be a sort of cross between the two!) - use the corners for the petal tips and join by drawing a triangle on each side, like the picture above…

Paint them purple and the daffs a sunny yellow.

Pierce a hole through the bottom of the bells and the middle of the daffs (Best done by an adult - use nail scissors or similar - keep them closed, press down and twist carefully from side to side) Push a piece of pipe cleaner through (roughly 10cm/4in.) Bend it over to hold in place - try to keep the pipe cleaner nice and flat inside the daffs (so it's easier to stick the tissue paper centres here later).

With the bells, we used a longer piece of yellow pipe cleaner and pulled more of it through for the flower stamen, and then folded the pointy end over.

To finish off the daffs, fold a piece of orange or yellow tissue paper (about 10x10cm/4x4in.) until it's a 2cm/3/4in. wide strip - you don't want it sitting too high above the edge of the egg cup - then roll up tightly.

Let them unfurl a bit before gluing the end edge down. Brush plenty of glue inside the egg cups (and over the pipe cleaner middle) and stick the tissue paper centres in place.

For the daisies, cut a 1cm/1/2in. thin strip of white paper and snip into 6cm/21/2in. pieces. Fold them in half and round off the ends.

Open up and use the middle fold to arrange three evenly on top of each other, so it looks daisy-like.

Glue together and when dry, carefully make a hole (with nail scissors as before, but put a piece of modelling clay behind the flower centre, so you have something to push against). Make it big enough for a pipe cleaner.

Wind the pipe clearner around a few times for a fuller centre.

We cut some long leaves out of tissue paper and stuck them on too - the easiest way to do this is to wrap them around the stalks.

Arrange your blooms in a piece of old plasticine (modelling clay) - one of those mashed up, multi-coloured lumps…(make sure you warm it up a bit first, so the stalks go in)

Cut a strip of wrapping paper to decorate your pot - make sure it goes round with plenty to spare (about 1 and a half times), then cut into about 3 or 4 pieces - so much easier to glue on neatly like this! Overlap each piece.
You could tie a ribbon around instead.

Pop in your flowers.

Disco downer and easy-make mini Halloween figures

The school Halloween disco..
My 8th school Halloween disco.
Not a favourite date in the diary by any stretch, but of course the kids love every mad moment of it. I've been especially bah-humbug about the whole thing this time, because they're at new schools, and I'd let myself believe we wouldn't have to go. No such luck. They've been on the phone to their old friends haven't they, and then the pleading and begging started. To be fair, I got some good bribery mileage out of it - homeworks have been done, rooms have been tidied, so can't complain really.

And I like Halloween, minus the crazy, sugar-fuelled, ear-splitting dancefest.
We usually do a family night of party games sometime during Half Term - all the old favourites, like dunking for apples, getting sweets out of a pile of flour with your teeth, and best of all, trying to bite doughnuts off dangly strings, which is hilarious. If you haven't had a go at this for a while I urge you to string up some buns..

Making the room look spooky is always fun. Love all that stuff. The Bat Mobile from last year is still swinging from the light in the toy room, though missing a ghost and a few bat wings. There have been plenty of other loo roll creations since then, and I've also gathered up an impressive hoard of egg boxes, so that's what we've used to make mini Halloweeen figures.

If you'd like to have a go, you'll need an egg box with the cone bits down the middle like this.

Cut one out for a bat and paint it.

Fold a piece of paper in half and draw a bat wing, using the fold so it opens up. Glue onto the back.
We used bits of white paper for the eyes and teeth.

Spread a decent layer of glue where you want the face to be (a glue stick is good for this). The eyes are little triangles coloured in with a green highlighter pen. The fangs are triangles too, joined together with a tiny rectangle. If this all sounds too fiddly I'd suggest going for a non-black bat, and using felt-tips, or a tipex pen if you have one.

For the ears, colour in a thin strip of spare card from something like a cereal box. Cut two longish pieces from it and snip them into points at one end. Make slots on top of the bat's head and push them in.

Take another egg box cone for the ghost, and glue down a few layers of white tissue, making sure to keep the tissue flat on one side, so you can draw a face.

Chop off all the bits hanging over the edge and snip what's left to make it look raggedy and ghoulish.

I'll post the witch and the pumpkin instructions v shortly. Hang on to that egg box!

Plenty more spooky pics over at The Gallery.