Photo Flowers – A Super Easy, Super Cool Craft Project

Forget spending so much money of fresh flowers, throw out the tacky silk flowers (they don’t really look genuine, your friends were only trying to not hurt your feelings) and make room for flowers that will last forever, look great and are completely one of a kind. Oh, and your kids will have fun making them too!

(Photos of this craft project coming soon!)

• Photos (close-up photos of loved ones faces)

• Construction paper in various colours

• Drinking straws (the bendable and colourful ones work best)

• Glue stick (other glue will do, but this is the least sloppiest option)

• Scotch tape

• Vase (if you don’t have one on hand, be creative and use any container you like, such as a clean tin can or pop bottle. Decorate as desired, using things like construction paper, stickers, glitter or scrapbook embellishments)

• Scissors

• Circle Cutter or a small circular-shaped object (such as a small lid, shot glass or votive candle)

• Pen or pencil

• Perfume (optional)

Step 1: Go through your photos and select ones that contain close-up head shots of the people you want included in your photo bouquet. You’ll need one photo per flower.

Tips:

• If you want to use older photos from the days before digital photography, make sure to scan them so you can keep an original copy.

• If you can’t find any decent head shots, consider using photo editing software to crop your photos.

• If all else fails and you simply can’t find any great photos to use, get out your camera and take some! Two articles that can help you learn how to take great photos for this project are:

Photographic Composition Techniques

How to Take the Best Baby Pictures

Step 2: Using a circle cutter, cut the face from your photo.

Tip:

• If you are using an alternative to the circle cutter (a shot glass is perfect because it’s transparent, so you won’t lose sight of any parts of the photo), place the object over the photo, trace around it with a pen or pencil and then cut it out.

Step 3: Place your cut-out photos on construction paper (no gluing yet!). With a pencil, draw flower petals around the photos. Cut them out.

Tip:

• If all of your photos are the same size or if you want all the flowers to be the same size, you only need to draw the petals once. When cut out, you can use this as a template for addition flowers.

Step 4: Glue your photos onto the center of the construction paper flower petals.

Step 5: Take one drinking straw per flower and tape to the back of the flower petals.

Tips:

• Play around with the position of the straws and petals to get different looks. If you are using the bendable straws, you can create some flowers to stand straight up, while others can be slightly bent over.

• If you don’t want the straw and tape to show on the back of the flowers, using your template (see step 3), cut out additional flower petals and glue to the backside of the flower to hide the straw and tape.

Step 6 (optional): Though this element of the flower won’t last forever, young children might get more pleasure by following this step. Use your favourite flower scented perfume to spray the backs of the flowers (spraying the front can damage your photos).

Step 7: Arrange your photo flowers in the vase and you’re done!

Tips:

• If you think your flowers are lacking something, you can cut leaves out of green construction paper and glue or tape them to the straws.

• If you like, you can also decorate the flower petals to add that extra element of personalization.

A different version of this craft project can be found here. This tutorial will teach you how to create a photo bouquet that has a completely different look to this one and is, perhaps, a little more “mature” looking.