Guest post by Rashmie of Mommy Labs

October is almost upon us and we can feel the mood reflected in the colours of the leaves, the nip in the air, the soothing afternoon sun, the festivities ahead and – the nature of our crafts!

Here in India, starting August, we have a plethora of festivals. And the celebration continues through September  with Ganesh Puja and Eid; through October when we have our most important Hindu festival called Dussehra and Diwali - the festival of lights; in November we have Bhai Dooj (Brother’s Day) and then in December, we join the world in celebrating Christmas.

As some of you may know, flowers are an important part of every celebration and tradition that we have. Flower garland, flower mandalas, flower buntings (we call them ‘toran’), flower ‘rangolis’ (decorations on the floor), flower ornaments – there’s no dearth of art and craft using flowers.

No wonder my daughter loved the idea of making a flower garland to present it to my brother for the Raksha Bandhan festival – a festival to cherish the brother-sister bond. The difference was, she made it with tissue paper and paint rather than with real flowers.

To make this, she collaborated with an older friend of hers. The fun of doing art and craft with a friend or in a group is something else. So, I try to team her up with one friend or the other. Besides, I also join in sometimes.

I gave them tissue papers and tempera paint. They painted each tissue paper in four colours.

Considering that you need many tissue papers to make the flowers, I suggested that they use printed tissues instead of painting them all; but my daughter adores the painting process and hence chose to paint all the tissues herself. So, well, as long as she enjoys and wants to do willingly, I let her do what she wants.

When dry, the tissue papers turned crisp and stiff. At this point, they drew flower-shaped outlines and cut them out. The best way to do this quickly is to stack the folded tissues, draw one outline on the top-most tissue and cut them all out together. They can make two lots for easy cutting.

Once cut, they pasted 3-4 flowers onto each other, waited for sometime for them to dry and then crushed them between palms.

The crushed flowers when opened, look fluffy and in full bloom!

Finally, they threaded the flowers with the help of a needle and ran about the house wearing it with joy and wonder.

What festive arts & crafts are you making these days?

A writer and a photographer from New Delhi, India, Rashmie blogs about artful and holistic parenting at Mommy Labs. She also writes about natural health, travel and living a life of passion and purpose. Connect with Rashmie on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest.

Tagged as: flowers, garland, necklace, tissue paper

Written by Marie LeBaron

Marie LeBaron is the founder and managing editor of Make and Takes. Always having a love of crafts, she enjoys getting messy with glue and glitter. There’s always some sort of project going on, her kitchen counter is often cluttered with crafts. When she’s not crafting and creating with her kids, she loves to run, read, and blog! Read other posts by Marie