Plantable Flower Greeting Cards
You guys know how much I love my flowers! I love saving my seeds and planning now for next year’s gardens, but this is something I’ve never even considered – making my own plantable flower greeting cards. Recently I had another mom share this great, recycle idea for a fun way to share my love for flowers with my friends and famiy. I may have to try this out myself! Thanks Veronica!
If you like to find cool, trendy, yet green ideas for gifts like me then you’ve probably seen these nifty little things – eco-friendly plantable cards. They’re really cool and whoever you’re giving it to, you can bet that they probably haven’t gotten one from someone else. That’s for sure! These cards sprout up with flowers once they’ve been planted. But if you want to give away a lot of them, they can get a bit expensive. So let’s think a little outside the box and make our own.
Plantable gift cards are fun to use during the holiday season, because you can use food coloring to tint the paper that you make. What makes it even better is that it’s recycled. Simply buy a few packets of mixed flower seeds, which come pretty cheap at any local garden store.
A few other things you’ll need are some kind of screen pieces (about 6 inches by 10 inches), a baking pan, ruler and duct tape. You’ll use the duct tape to wrap screen edges so you don’t accidentally cut yourself on it. This screen is what you’ll use to drain your paper.
Soak your paper and throw it in a blender. Don’t put too much at once, though – up to two cups is fine. Pour in a couple cups of water and run the blender on low until you get a soupy mixture. If you’d like to color your paper with food coloring, go ahead and add that in at this point.
Get a pan (9×13 works good) and pour your mixture in. Add in a little more water to make your mixture watery (usually about a cup of water is enough). Now toss in a handful of mixed flower seeds and stir ‘em around to get ‘em nice and mixed into your paper pulp.
Now grab your screen and slide it into the mixture then lift it straight up. You’ll end up with a layer of pulp on top of your screen that’s nice-n-thick. Hold it there for a few minutes and let it drain. Then use a ruler to get the edges somewhat straight and set it on an old towel. Don’t move it until it dries. Once you’re sure it’s dry, carefully peel it off the screen and fold it into your card.
Use stamps, crayons, or whatever your heart desires to dress it up and make it pretty.
When you give that special someone your gift, make sure that they understand how to plant it (it should be planted in a flower pot and given plenty of water).
If you want to go even further, you could mix in some fall leaves or their favorite flower petals in the paper pulp. It’ll dry beautifully into original, recycled paper…
Hopefully you learned something fun and new with this!