We will need the following elements:
- Cardboard (white and colored);
- Glue;
- Wooden skewers (long) or cocktail tubes;
- Photos;
- Plasticine, salt dough or floral sponge;
- A container for a flower bed (bucket, box, basket, etc., etc.);
- Decorations (decorative straw, decoupage paper, pebbles, etc.);
- Ribbons.
Now we begin to create step by step.
1. The essence of our entire flower bed is that each family member will be a separate flower. To do this, we prepare photographs of the family of different diameters (cut out in the form of a circle). They will be the centers of our flowers.
2. Prepare the petals. You can use templates from the Internet, or you can do it yourself. They can be of completely different shapes, sizes and types. The main thing is that our centers eventually fit into them well (glued in).
You can cut out the petals from colored cardboard, from thick paper, or from white cardboard, which you then decorate with crayons, gouache or glitter.
3. The next stage is attaching the flower to the stem. As a stem, you can use long wooden skewers or cocktail straws (in my case, they suited me better, because they are green).
To attach the petals to a wooden stick, you can use glue or thread. It's even easier with a straw. On one side, cut it 1-2 cm in half using a stationery knife.
Then we insert the main petals between the cut parts and attach them with a stapler along the tube.
Glue the rest of the petals on top, closing the bracket, then the middle - the photograph.
After gluing all the flowers, they should be placed under a press so that they stick together well.
4. Choose a container that will be the basis of our flower bed. You can use a small iron bucket (decorative), a basket (floristic) and so on. In my case, I used a round white candy box. You can decorate it with flower-shaped stickers, which are sold in any craft store.
Ribbons, rhinestones, stones, etc. are also used. The choice depends on the imagination of the author and the reason for the gift. In order for our flowers to grow in something, we need to choose the type of “soil”. For this purpose, you can use plasticine (although it is quite expensive), a floral sponge, and I took the cheapest option - salted modeling dough. There are plenty of recipes for its preparation on the Internet, so I won’t talk about it. The main thing is to choose a recipe that involves a “steep” dough of large mass. It is this consistency that will allow the flowers to stay in it and not fall. I prepared this green dough in advance, which had been “rested” overnight in the refrigerator.
To prevent the box from falling to the bottom, I placed pebbles and a green dough mixture on them.
5. Almost the final step is planting flowers. If they have simple skewers as legs, then they will stand straight and motionless. In my case, the tubes as a stem give the flowers a more “live” appearance, since they slightly tilt the flower head in different directions. The final touch is ribbons instead of leaves. You can use green ones, but I decided to add some color and tied on colored ribbons.
OK it's all over Now. Voila, the “Genealogical Flowerbed” is ready! You can make a gift not only for a family member, but also for your favorite teacher, counselor or just a dear friend.
