Thursday, January 24, 2008

It's chilly today, so we made some Spring flowers
Supplies:
pipe cleaners (chenille stems) - 7 each of pink, yellow, green, blue, and violet; 3 white, 1 orange.
1 4 inch Styrofoam circle - I used one dismantled from another project
white glue

Starting at the bottom of the foam circle, apply pipe cleaners. Bend each end slightly, add glue and insert into the foam. They will not reach quite all the way around. I started with pink, then yellow, blue and purple to mimic the rainbow. You can glue the whole length if you want to.When the side is covered, take shorter pieces of stems, bending the ends, and insert them with a blob of glue ( into the bottom and into the top surfaces) around the circle from top to bottom. This will help to hold the horizontal stems in place. I made my first upright opposite the gap in coverage. Insert 2 more equal distances between front and the back gap. Fill the back gap the same way, I used one pink in the middle of the gap and continued out in the rainbow. (My daughter made hers with the filled gap in front, she said it reminded her of a bow.)
Twist the 3 white stems together to make a strong 'trunk', fold one each of the colors in half to make the petals of the umbrella arch; and twist together at the ends to create the arch. Add a blob of glue and insert into the foam near the back.
Extra pipe cleaners can be made into the garden flowers and the pink butterfly.
Make sure the weight is balanced, as the back umbrella rainbow arch is quite heavy and could cause it to tip over. The purple flower on the front along with careful placement of the garden flowers was enough to keep it quite balanced.

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