Recycled Craft: April Showers Bring May Flowers Clothespin Wreath
What’s the best part of April Showers? All that rain helps the May Flowers grow! Here’s a fun rain and flower-inspired craft to make: an April Showers May Flowers clothespin wreath. Have fun arranging and rearranging this clever wreath, which is made of mostly of recycled materials.
We recycled a cereal box and cardboard egg cartons into this cute wreath. You can find wooden clothespins at the dollar store or your local department store.
What You Need for This Recycled Wreath:
- Recycled Kix cereal box
- Recycled cardboard egg carton
- Wooden clothespins
- Buttons
- Pipe cleaners
- Colored paper
- Paint (green, pink, purple, yellow, and light blue) and paintbrush
- Hot glue and glue gun (parents only)
- White glue
- Hole punch
- Yarn or string
- Newspaper to cover work surface
How to Make It:
Before you begin, protect your work surface with newspaper.
1. Create wreath shape out of a cereal box and paint
Open up the cereal box at the seams. Trace a large round object (such as a plate, or an embroidery hoop as shown) onto the box. Trace a smaller round object on the inside of the large circle. Cut circles out.
Paint wreath green and allow to dry while you work on the next step.
2. Create flower clothespin clips out of a recycled egg carton
Paint clothespins green and allow to dry.
To make flowers, cut cups off of a recycled cardboard egg carton. To create flower petals, snip around cup several times, then trim round petal-shaped edges on each section.
Paint flowers and allow to dry. When dry, parents can hot glue flowers to the ends of clothespins. Glue a button to the center of the flower.
3. Create umbrella clothespin clips out of recycled a cereal box
Paint strips of the recycled cereal box in various colors; when dry, cut out umbrella shapes. Parents can glue pipe cleaner handles to the bottoms of the umbrellas and then glue the umbrellas to clothespins. When the glue is cool, kids can bend the handles into a U shape.
Note: Parents can cut pipe cleaners into shorter lengths with a pair of cheap scissors. Don’t use your good scissors!
4. Create the sign
Glue colored paper to a rectangle of recycled cereal box, then add the words “April Showers Bring May Flowers” to the sign; you can write the phrase with markers or use letter stickers.
Punch a hole in the top corners of the sign, and tie a string onto the sign for hanging. Punch a hole in the bottom center of the sign and the top of the wreath. Attach wreath to bottom of sign with a piece of string.
Have fun arranging the clothespin wreath!
Hang the wreath up at kid height, and arrange and re-arrange the wreath as much as you want!
Heather Mann is the mother of four boys, and is constantly on the lookout for fun games, activities, and recipes to keep her busy boys, well, busy. She designs and shares clever crafts with a frugal twist at her site Dollar Store Crafts and ideas for being the best mom ever (on a budget) at Dollar Store Mom.