Spring is finally here! My daughter’s love “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” books so when I saw their new “First Spring” book I knew they would love to make a mess-free craft to pair with the beautiful flower on the front! Mess-free crafts are one of our favorites to make! I’ve included a free printable of the flower to coordinate with the book for your little one to complete as well!
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Materials needed:
- Acrylic paint (fuchsia, light pink, lavender, light green, yellow, light orange, white)
- Crayola paint (you could also use these instead of the acrylic paint – paint will be thinner)
- Scissors
- Gallon ziploc bag
- 2 sandwich ziploc bags
- Tape
- Cardstock paper
- Q-tips
- Free printable linked below
Directions:
Print flower outline and centers on cardstock paper, randomly place different color paint dots onto paper. Gently place into a ziploc bag by folding the paper slightly upward (hotdog style). Tape the edges of the bag to a table.
Have your little one use their fingers to push the paint around. When they’re done, make sure to quickly remove the paper from the ziploc bag. If you allow it to dry too much before removal the paint will start to dry and stick to the top of the bag versus the paper. I like to pull the ziploc bag up off of the paper prior to pulling the paper out.
Allow the paper to dry completely before cutting. You could also use a blow dryer to speed up the drying process. Hold the paper backwards up to a light or window to see where the flower outline is to cut. Check out this mess-free clover craft as an example.
Glue the centers onto the flower. Dip a Q-tip in white paint and randomly add white dots around the large center.
Additional painting method:
You can also cut out the flower outline first, tape the center of the flower to a piece of paper, apply your paint dots, place in a ziploc bag, paint, remove, and then immediately fold the white (background) paper backwards and gently pull the petals forward (off) of the paper. Unstick the center and allow to dry.
Assembled Flower Printable:
I’ve also included a printable where the flower is put together. Your child could color this page with crayons or markers to pair with the book as well!
I hope you and your little one enjoy this craft as much as we did! It was fun to see how all of our flowers turned out different!
