Hairclips and Magnets: Summer Flower Crafting

Summer crafting with a group of girls once a week produces some interesting projects. We used a scrap booking kit of flowers and buttons this week. Stacking them together to create beautiful arrangements. This project was created with girls ranging in age from four years old to ten years old. A hot glue gun was used in the process with a lot of parental supervision.

Materials needed:

- Scrap booking box with flowers and buttons in a variety of sizes
- Bobby pins
- Self stick circular magnets
- Hot glue gun

Instructions:

To begin the project, the various flowers were sorted into equal amounts so that each girl got the same grouping of flowers to work with. The extras as well as the buttons were placed in the center of the table for all to choose from.

The girls spent some time stacking flowers and buttons in a variety of creations. They chose which arrangement was going to be a magnet and which was going to be a bobby pin. Each girl was able to make a variety of creations.

One at a time, we glued the creations together and then glued them to either the bobby pin or magnet.

Using hot glue made them dry quickly and they were able to wear the bobby pin creations immediately.

To keep the magnets together, we stuck them to a metal box that was filled with mints, making it easier to carry multiple magnets home together. Plus receiving the box of mints was exciting for the girls.

These obviously could have been made as two separate projects. One being the bobby pins and the other being the magnets. The box of mints was not necessary for the crafting to be successful but it would make a nice gift for a parent, a teacher or a grandparent. If you had an empty box of mints, you could place the magnets inside the box for gift giving.

Optional materials that could be used would be to replace the flowers with silk flowers. The buttons could be replaced with scrap booking brads in a variety of colors. The bobby pins and magnets could be hair clips or flat topped push pins. The options available for materials as well as final products are many.

A group of six girls ranging in age from four to ten made as many as six creations each and we were done in about an hour. While the activity is very creative it was not difficult. Samples were not shown a head of time; however, how to stack them was demonstrated giving them the most room for flexibility and creativity possible.