I love flowers! When spring arrives I can’t wait to start planting them. However, I live in Iowa and the rule of thumb here is that you don’t plant outdoors until after Mother’s Day. That is almost two months award !!! To add a little color to my flower pots I decided to create some flowers that would not die in the event that we get a late spring snow (knock on wood!).
I began by adding some brown paint to the mesh strainers. It really didn’t turn out how I expected so I used some scraps of burlap and added it to the top of the flower center. Much better!
Now it was time for the clothespins. I simply clipped them to the strainer. When they were where I liked them I used hot glue and glued them to the strainer so that they would stay in place. I ended up adding some smaller clothespins to the smaller strainer because I didn’t like the gaps that were left when I only used the regular sized clothespins. It filled it out nicely and gave it more visual interest. I also added some jute to the larger flower to cover up the space between the clothespins and the center of the flower. Lastly, I glued the wooden dowel to the back of the flower. I really like how the flowers don’t look exactly alike.
Next came the paint. I didn’t want to completely cover up the wood of the clothespins so I decided to use a dry brush technique and lightly paint the clothespins yellow. I added a little brown to the burlap and painted the wooden dowel green.
To add more textural interest I decided to cut the leaves out of a Dollar Tree cookie sheet. These things are awesome! Of course they needed some green paint to match the stem. I attached the leaves to the wooden dowel with hot glue. I also cut a circle for the center of the flowers and hot glued those to the back of the flower also.