Tissue Box Craft: Gift Garden

Ansley and I are entering a great contest…The 2nd Annual Tissue Box Challenge hosted by J Daniel 4’s mom.  The idea is to recycle a used tissue box into a child craft.  Ansley had the greatest time making a Gift Garden out of her box.  Your child can enjoy making one too!

Find an empty tissue box shaped like ours.  Now gather some art supplies such as:

Pretty and/or Bright Paper to cover the box, make the flowers out of, and to make your gift note to go inside the box. 

Popsicle sticks, white paint, big craft buttons (found my pack at Walmart for under $1), crepe tissue paper, colored straws.  We also used craft glue and double sided sticky tape.  (Optional: glue gun for adhering the popsicle sticks.)

Using the tissue box opening as the front of the gift box, cover at least the sides and back of the tissue box with pretty craft/scrapbooking paper or wrapping paper.  Remember that the top doesn’t have to be perfect because it will be covered with the garden.

Cut out flowers (we used flower stencils), tape the straws to the back of the flowers and glue big buttons to the centers of the flowers.  Next, decide where you want your flowers to go, and the parent can punch round holes in the top of the box for the straws to go through.  You will probably want to cut the straws so they don’t show from the front.

 Ansley had fun painting the large and small popsicle sticks for the fence around the garden.  We cut the big sticks in half.  You will need 9 of the bigger 1/2 sticks and 6 of the small sticks.  We glued them to the box last after the flowers and grass were in place.  Also, paint the front of the box which is where the opening now is.

Once the flowers are in place, begin taking about 2″ pieces of crepe paper ( we tore them off a streamer roll).  Fold and crumple the pieces to resemble grass and begin glueing on to the top of the box around the flower stems.  You can also adhere the grass to the stems if you want some extra reinforcement to keep the flowers in place.

When the grass is complete, add the fence around the borders.  All that’s left is to make a note for the person you are giving the gift garden to, secure it with a rubber band or pretty ribbon and insert it inside the box.  You could also place other small items in the box ie gift card, candy.

Ansley and I had such a great time making this craft.  We hope you will too!