I love the summer when my garden fills with flowers and amazing scent. Its amazing to see so much fullness and greenness where there was bare earth a few months ago!!
But can one garden really have enough flowers??

So we discovered this fantastic recyled garden craft which not only makes beautiful flowers but recycles some unwanted plastic too.
To make these fantastic flowers you will need
• Clear plastic cups, (like the kind you get smoothies in)
• Sharpie pens in various colours
• Kebab sticks on garden canes
• Glue gun
• Scissors

Here’s How To Make Your Recycled Garden Craft Flowers
You can also check out these other garden crafts. They’re awesome!!
Or these garden crafts are fab too!!
- Preheat your oven to 350 ºF. (Or 180°C)
- Colour your cups with Sharpie markers.
Try to completely cover the cup to get a stronger colour in the finished flower.
Remember to colour the base of the cup too.
We found colouring the inside of the cup made it slightly less messy as the pen can smudge on your hands until it dries, but either way works.
You could also they colouring the inside and outside to get a different effect.

- Once coloured, cut the hard rim off the top of the cup.
- Cut slits down the sides of the cup using scissors. The plastic can be brittle so be careful it doesn’t send plastic flying around.

We found it useful to make 2 or 3 different sized cups so we can put them inside each other for the final flower. (Like the layers in a rose)
- Place plastic cups, facing upwards on a foil covered baking sheet and bake for 2-5 minutes.
- Be sure to watch your cups in the oven, both because it’s cool to see them melt and curl up, but also to make sure you don’t leave them in too long.

Also, make sure you have lots of ventilation. Melting plastic can create fumes that aren’t good to breath in.
- Let your cups cool then using a hot glue gun, glue your kebab stick or garden cane to the back centre of the flower.

We made loads of different flowers with the kids today. It was so easy and so much fun. There’s lots of other uses for these flowers too.
We could make plant labels out of them, just use a sharpie to write the names of our veggie crops on them, we could give them as a gift, tied with a bow or even turn them into hair accessories by adding the right clips.
The ideas are endless with this project so give it a try and have fun with it.
I’d love to see your ideas below so hit comment and brainstorm away!!
