Perfect Christmas Preparations – Flower Gifts

Assuming you’ve got some dried flowers left over from your Advent candles, here are some ideas on creating highly individual and valued gardening presents from them. Some ideas are really aimed at adults, but others are things that the kids can help with, keeping them busy in the run-up to Christmas and giving them the chance to make, as well as buy, gifts – a simple but effective way to remind them that Christmas is about caring and sharing, not just buying!

Bright flowers like Gerberas or Zinnias keep their bold shapes and colours when pressed flat and six or eight large bright flowers can be laminated - one in the centre of each plastic sheet – to make tablemats for picnics or barbecues. Most high street copy shops have a laminator and this also gives your children a chance to put together cost-effective but personalised gifts for Christmas. Older children can decorate pressed flowers with glitter or cut out snowflake shapes to include with the flowers to give the final mats a Christmas feel. Kids may also like to make bookmarks from pressed flowers. All you need for this task are strips of bright card, pens, and glue. They can either just use the flowers, or they can create a design with pens, paint and glitter and add the flowers as the final touch. You can apply some clear sticky-backed plastic to preserve their designs. Christmas cards, or Thank-you cards, can be made the same way.

Small dried flowers or individual pressed rose petals can be stuck to plain household candles for a simple but elegant gift. These are ideal tied in a bundle with raffia and presented with a cake of scented soap and a small gift towel in the same shade as the flowers – an understated but very thoughtful present that can be given to almost anyone – especially unexpected guests or people you don’t know well. Making flower candles is a task for adults, because it involves hot wax, but children can help you create the design and sort the dried material for you to use.

Floral gifts photograph by oskay, used under a creative commons attribution licence

 

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