Crafty Tuesday: Create a Photo Bouquet

This week I am featuring one of my all-time favorite gifts that my daughter and I have made.  This post will lack in step-by-step pictures because we made it two years ago, but since we didn’t finish our craft this week, I decided I had to show you all this craft.  We made these for Mother’s Day for the grandmas when my daughter was 18-months old, but they could serve for any gift really (birthdays, anniversaries, teacher gifts, etc)… or just for your own home.

 Supplies to create a Photo Boquet:

• Colored cardstock (recommend at least two different colors)
• Fake Flowers including the stems
• Clay flower pot (or your choice of vase)
• Laminator or self-adhesive laminating paper
• Tape/Glue
• Scissors
• Around 12 different photos that you would like displayed in the bouquet
• Styrofoam block
• Paint (optional- use if you choose to paint the vase or pot)
• Spanish Moss

FLOWERS

• Pick out a photo for each flower you plan to create.  For the ones I did above, I chose to make 18 flowers (one for every month of my daughter’s life up to that point).   Make sure the images on the photos you plan to use are around the same size as you’ll want the centers of your flowers to be roughly the same size.
• Cut each photo into a circle.  I used my Creative Memories Cutting System to cut mine so that they were all the exact same size.
• Taking into account the size of your circles, cut out the same amount of flowers as you have circles using your cardstock colors.  You can freehand cut your flowers, use some type of die-cut or traceable image, etc.  I have a Cricut machine and cut all my flowers using that machine, which made this project REALLY easy!  🙂
• Glue/Tape each one of your photo circles into the center of each colored cardstock flower.
• Using laminating self-adhesive paper or a laminating machine, cover each flower to keep it protected.
• Taking the fake flowers, remove the flowers (either by cutting them off at the very top of the stem or pulling them off if they are a second piece).  This will leave you will only the stems and leaves on the stems.  You can choose to have half the amount of stems as you do flowers or have one flower for each stem.  (If you choose to do half, then you will be adhereing two flowers back-to-back on one stem.  I like this idea because it means you don’t have a “sloppy backing to each flower, however, it also means you can’t see all the photos from one angle.)
• Optional Step:  Using a hole punch, punch a hole in the bottom of each flower.  Then thread your stem from the front of the flower into the hole and then to the back of the flower to adhere it.  This will just be an additional step to make sure they stay secured on.
• Using a strong adhesive glue (or tape if you prefer), adhere each laminated photo flower to each fake stem.  I used hot glue to do this and then as an extra measure, secured them with some tape to each backside.  If you doubled up your flowers to stems, I would recommend glueing both at the stems and then gluing the two flowers that are back-to-back together.

* For my flowers, I did one per stem and then put a label (covering up the yucky taped and top of stem) that titled the age of my daughter in each picture)  Below are some close-ups of the front of the flowers to give you an idea of how they look completed.

VASE/POT

When my daughter and I created this project, she was only 18-months old and clearly not old enough to assist me in any of the above steps to the project.  I wanted to make sure part of the gift was something she created so I chose to use a clay pot for the vase and have her paint it.  You could really do any number of things to use as a holder for your photo bouquet.  I recommend putting a clear coat over the painted pot if you choose to do the same as we did below.  (On a side note- how can my baby girl have gotten so much bigger so quickly?  I can’t believe she was only 18 months old in the picture below!  That’s how old my second child is now!)

 COMPLETING THE PROJECT

• Group all your flowers complete with stems together in the way you would prefer they be arranged and begin sticking the bottom ends into a styrofoam ball (this styrofoam needs to be small enough to fit inside your vase or clay pot).
• Place inside the clay pot (or vase) and do any adjustments you think neccessary to get the flowers displayed as you would prefer.
• Optional:  To avoid the flowers being able to fall out easily, you could glue the styrofoam to the bottom of the pot.
• Place spanish moss over the styrofoam and in the open gaps between the styrofoam the pot.

This is honestly a very fun project to do and very well-liked gift !  🙂  I would love to see some of your photo flowers and hear others ideas that are similar to this!  Feel free to email us or post a comment below to share your projects and ideas!

We love crafting!  Be sure to check out our Craft Posts for more ways to create fun, frugal crafts and projects at your house!

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