A Sustainable 4th of July with summer flowers and paper
Our teenage daughter took over our blog and Instagram for this 4th of July!
From our daughter:
This Fourth of July, we decided to go simple when decorating our tree. Taking inspiration from Fourth of July fireworks and paper fan flowers, we decided to make some fan flowers of our own. These fan flowers are simple, and don’t require a lot of intricate folds like in origami. The materials used for our flowers were:
Paper (preferably not construction paper) Scissors
Glue
String
Hole puncher Pen/Pencil (optional) Ruler (optional)
We found a great tutorial on how to make these fan flowers, here. The pencil and ruler are only if you want to make more exact folds and cuts, so they are optional. We made fan flowers just by folding the paper in half and cutting along the fold, and that worked out fine. If you don’t want to hang your flowers, you don’t need the string or hole puncher, either. Scatter them around a flower vase, or in a basket, clip them to a garland or just make them because they’re fun and pretty and keep idle hands busy, not to mention use only paper and eco-friendly glue!
For the paper, we really recommend either using recycled printer or origami paper for the flowers. Construction paper doesn’t hold the folds well and might fall apart easily when glues. You can use any colored origami or printer paper, if you have it. Colored butcher paper could work too!
Our favorite glue can be found here and at many other online vendors. Its made in the USA by the Ganes Brothers and it’s a fantastic, eco-friendly glue! It is an all-natural, dextrin-based glue that is great for arts and crafts and can easily replace all other plastic/acrylic based glues and glue sticks sold conventionally. It is great value for money, cheaper than conventional school glues, biodegradable and water soluble making for an easy clean-up. Note that it might take a bit longer than regular glue to dry, so let your fan flowers sit for a bit after using the glue on them. We wish we had known about it before, and we can’t recommend it enough!
Like some of our other celebrations, we used fresh flowers for an added touch! These are optional as well, but if you are lucky enough to have flowers that can be used, by all means, use them! Or as always, use nature in any form, leaves, vegetables, fruits, twigs, branches, there are so many colors and they never cease to bring joy and light! Paste them on walls, use pasta jars and spice bottles, use what you have in your home, backyard, pots or borrow plants and flowers from neighbors!
Here is our finished product! Happy Fourth of July 🇺🇸 !
