As summer draws to a close, I’m working through a bucket list of warm weather projects before we move on to fall and autumnal activities! This fun idea from Barefoot Books Kids’ Garden kit lets you bring flowers indoors as a keepsake that will last all winter!

The first step of course was to gather our flowers. If you don’t have your own garden, find any pretty blossoms on a stroll through your neighborhood or a local park. Flowers that lie flat will work best, but we picked a variety just to test the results.

Travis was very intrigued by the set up when we returned home. On the floor, place an old dish towel for traction, followed by a cutting board and then watercolor paper.  Place your flowers, petals down, on the watercolor paper after removing as much of the stems and leaves as possible. Finally, cover your petals with painter’s tape, being sure to cover the flower completely, but trying not to let pieces of tape overlap.

And now for the fun part! Although adults will need to do most of the hammering, Travis got to take a few swings at the flowers under careful supervision.

He then played along with his toy hammer while I finished the real work. You may want to peel back your painters tape a few times to make sure the color of the flower has transferred over to the paper, before removing the tape completely.

Peeling off the tape was great fun, too, of course.

Once the hammering was complete, Travis lost interest fairly quickly, but I loved the old-fashioned Victorian feel to the result. In a whimsical nod to the method by which we had obtained our prints, I “framed” them in additional painter’s tape in Travis’s room – a beautiful reminder of the fleeting beauty of summer’s blooms!