So I saw this great idea with q-tips to make foam flowers. I don't care much for fake flowers of any type, but thought it was a cool idea. I got my brainstorming group together (husband and brother-in-law) and we thought it would be cool to do a letter A for my mother-in-laws upcoming birthday. GENIUS right?
We first cut the q-tips in half. Due to human error, some are longer then other, which ended up being cool. It gives depth to the project. If I were going to do a flower with a foam ball, I would do the long ones one color and short ones another color. I didn't take a picture of me cutting the q-tips because I had scissors in my hand, kind of hard to take a picture AND cut. Anyways.
We also cut the A from a foam sheet. We got a four pack for $12.99 at Hobby Lobby, and we've now decided to do a letter for each house member. We free handed our A but you could print one off and trace it or what ever you wanted to do. I found that cutting the foam worked best with some type of razor blade. My husband used a box cutter type knife and I tried a kitchen knife. NO to the kitchen knife, it just shreds the foam up. But the knife my husband picked worked perfectly.
I would suggest painted the foam after you cut it. We used a cheap acrylic and it worked perfectly. We also recommend using those cheap foam brushes, because a regular brush doesn't cover enough surface area at once. The longer a 'blob' of paint sits on the foam the more it soaks in. I put small drops and dabbed them around with a foam brush as quickly as possible. DONT USE SPRAY PAINT...the lady at Hobby Lobby informed me that it will literally just sit and melt the foam.
So once the q-tips are cut I sat and dipped them. This will dye your fingers, for a few days most likely. I put water into this little bowl and then added food coloring to get the shade of purple I wanted. The color will lighten up once it starts to dry, so make sure that your coloring isn't too light when wet. Same with being too dark, our purple ended up maroon once it was dry.
Best picture I could get of a single tip.
We dyed the tips then put them in a separate piece of foam but you can just stick them in the letter if you'd like. We couldn't get them to stay once we stuck them in, so I went back and dipped the end in super glue to make sure it stayed. Be careful of what type of glue you use, because some melts the foam.
This project takes A LOT of time. I worked on it when the kids were busy or after they went to bed. I'm still not done because we want to add q-tips to cover the A completely. Just in what you see I went through five small bottles of super glue, and over 500 q-tips. luckily you can get those at the Dollar Tree.
If you want to incorporate your children into this, I have a solution for that too. give them an extra piece of foam and have them put colored tips in it. It's great for eye hand coordination. In fact, I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner. If you want to let them paint it, go for it. Just remember the paint won't come off everything, so I would suggest being outside with no clothes on. Good Luck!!!
This might be a better picture. My mother-in-law is a math teacher so we have kept count of home many q-tips we use. It would be a good guessing game and who ever guesses closest gets extra points or whatever. If I were going to do this over again (which I thought about but ahhh so much time) I would of left the middle of the A with no q-tips. My husband said it would look cool but I don't know. Can you even tell it's an A?
Once again, this A isn't complete but it will take a while to get it done. Once I'm done I'll add a completed picture.
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