By Kid’s Craft Contributor, Gillian from the blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.

Although the weather outside is cold and gray, inside I seem to have nothing but spring on my mind these days. And with our front door bare of its Christmas wreath, it seemed like a good time to welcome spring, even if it’s a little early, with a bright and cheerful wreath.

I started out wanting to make a paper flower wreath but with the inevitable rains and snows (eek!) of late winter and early spring, that didn’t seem like a great idea. What I needed was plastic. But where oh where could I find thin white plastic?

About this time I was pouring my kids a glass of milk. From a white plastic jug.

Light dawned.

The fridge and recycling bin were literally full, overflowing almost, with thin white plastic tubs, jugs and cartons. Which meant that not only could I make the wreath I had in mind, it would also be practically free!

Here’s what you need:

A Variety of milk jugs, yogurt containers and other white plastic items from the recycling bin. You’ll need more than you think so gather quite a few (hint: organic milk often comes in white milk jugs while non organic is more clear, a mix is fine but you do want more of the solid white variety)

Circular objects of different sizes to trace (cups, bows and lids work well, you want about 5 or more different sizes)

Permanent Marker

Hot glue gun and sticks

A dozen pretty buttons and/or sticky backed rhinestones in a variety of sizes

1 flat wreath form

10 inches of ribbon

Kitchen shears or other sharp scissors

Rinse all the containers in soapy water and allow to dry. Using kitchen shears, cut the tops and bottoms off the jugs and the bottoms off of any tubs, then cut a slit down the length of the remaining tube or square. You should now have roughly rectangular pieces of flat plastic. It they are curling too much, run them under hot water and lay them flat under something heavy for a little while to help them relax.

Trace circles all over the plastic, squeezing as many in as possible. Make sure the different types of plastic have different sizes of circles on them. Labels can either be soaked off or taken into account when cutting the flowers. I left mine on to add extra patterns to the flowers since from the back they just see white.

Time to start cutting flowers! Start by cutting out the circles and then cutting almost to the center at the top, bottom and two sides so you have four even sections.

From there you can continue cutting until you have the number of petals you want. You can also remove wedges at the four points (or more) to make more widely spaced petals, cut a wavy edge or free hand small round petals.

Once you have all your circles cut into flower shapes, start layering them into flowers. Experiment a little with different combinations until you are satisfied and then glue the flowers together, finishing them off with a button or rhinestone. Be sure to leave a few flower pieces unlayered to help form a base layer on the wreath form.

Set your finished flowers around the form to decide on the layout of the wreath. Mark the spot where the top will be and where any gaps are between the flowers. Set the flowers aside and attach the leftover flower pieces to the spots where there were gaps and the ribbon (measure how long you will need in for your front door) at the top. Now you can glue the flowers onto the form to finish the wreath.

Since the wreath isn’t really even specifically spring like, it’s a great all purpose wreath for the whole year. But I find myself happily thinking of spring every time I see the bright white flowers festooning my front door. What about you? What crafty ways are you getting ready for spring?