DIY: Gift Card Garden

This week my daughter's school hosted an art festival that included a silent auction consisting of gift baskets in various themes. Each grade level was given a theme ( movie night, coffee, family game night, etc) and had to make a basket filled with goodies relating to the theme. Our grade's theme was "Gift Cards Galore" and I was asked to put the collected cards in a basket for the auction. Being that out items were cards i knew I couldn't present them in a traditional gift basket. I had seen several ideas online during Mother's Day and Teacher Appreciation Week for gift card bouquets so I decided to run with the idea. Instead of using a flower pot, I made my arrangement to look more like a planter box.

I was lucky enough to have left over die-cut flowers from another project and my daughter's teacher also had some spare die-cut flowers. If you don't have access to a die-cut machine, you can use a paper puncher or even cut the flowers freehand.

Materials:

baby wipe tub with the lid removed

wooden clothespins

wooden popsicle sticks

die cut flowers made from construction paper and / or scrapbook paper

hot glue

floral foam block

Instructions:


1. To make the stem, hot glue 1 popsicle stick to 1 clothespin, with the mouth of the clothespin facing upward. To vary the height of the flowers, you can glue two sticks together for some flowers.

2. Glue the clothespin part of the stem to the flower


repeat steps 1 &2 til you have as many card holders as you need


3. Place a floral foam block inside a baby wipe box with the lid removed

4. Stick the stems into the foam, arranging them in various heights


5. You can cover the foam in several ways. I cut a piece of green construction paper in half lengthwise then fringe cut it to create grass. You could also cover the top of the foam with green shred, small stones or even crushed crackers to look like dirt.

I also attached flowers to the popsicle sticks (without the clothespin) to cover any gaps or holes.

I think this would be a really cute way to present gift cards or even notes and greeting cards.