WHAT DO YOU DO?

• Take one piece of A4 paper for your flower and fold it in half.  Place your hand on the paper, with the base of your thumb against the folded edge of the paper, spread your fingers slightly and draw around your hand. We have drawn a template for you as a guide (you can use this instead of drawing round your own hand if you want to).  (See Picture 1)
• Open out the paper. Crease the hand shapes between the base of your thumb and the centre fold on each side (look at the template to see what we mean) and colour the thumb triangular shape sections inside the fold lines on both sides of your paper. Cut the thumbs into strips – these will become the stamens of the flower (see the template for where to make your cuts). It looks nice if you colour in your fingers – these will become the petals of your flower. Look at real flowers for ideas for your colouring. (See Picture 2)
• Take one chenille stem and curl it around at the top. Place your coloured hand shape face down on the table and put the chenille stem in the middle. Bring the two edges of the coloured thumb section together around the chenille stem in a small cone shape and secure with a small piece of sellotape. Turn your flower over and curl down the little strips of paper to make them look like stamens. Now bring the two outside edges of your hand shapes together to form a cone with the stamens in the middle. Secure this in place with another piece of sellotape. Curl the finger shapes out slightly to make your flower petals look more lifelike. (See Picture 3)
• Use the leaf shape on our template to cut out your leaves from the green A4 paper. Fold each leaf shape roughly in half down the length of the leaf. Sellotape the base of the leaf onto the chenille stem at the base of the flower. Curl the tip of the leaf outwards. Now you have a lovely flower.  (See Picture 4)

Real flowers can be so expensive at this time of year so why not make several flowers – wrap them in tissue and tie a pretty bow around it (like our photo below) for a pretty hand made bouquet. You could use a flower to decorate your Mother’s Day present or why not give Mum a treat on Mother’s Day and take her breakfast in bed and put one of your flowers on the tray.

THIS MONTH...
Ideal for Mothers Day (or at any time!) so why not make her this lovely bunch of colourful flowers.

YOU WILL NEED
A4 paper (white or pretty colours for the flowers and green for the leaves), chenille stems, coloured pencils or felt pens or paints, sellotape and scissors.