This post is sponsored by Plaid Enterprises.

Mother’s Day is just under two weeks away now, and with spring finally here we’ve got flowers on the brain! Today project is a great one for kids to do solo, or for you to work on with them! There are SO many different flowers you can make using pasta noodles and paint that you’re guaranteed to have fun making your very own pasta bloom bouquets with your kids.

We used our handy dandy set of Apple Barrel Acrylic Paint to give the pasta a pop of color – the shades in this set are so bright and fun, perfect for a springtime project like this one. And the great thing is that these postcards easily transform into wall art after Mother’s Day is over! Keep reading for the full how-to below!

• Apple Barrel Acrylic Paint Set
• Paintbrushes
• Pasta noodles (variety of shapes)
• Recycled cardboard scraps
• Hot glue gun
• Scissor
• Green yarn

Step 1
Begin by cutting your cardboard into a rectangle shape. There isn’t a right or wrong size for this, so make it as big or small as you like. Once cut out, apply a coat of paint onto both sides. You can keep it simple and go with a solid, or once the first coat is dry, apply some fun stripes or polka dots to add even more interest.

Step 2
While the cardboard is drying, it’s time for the fun part: designing and painting your pasta flowers. There are SO many different flowers you can make with pasta, so don’t let our examples limit you! Large and small shells are great because they look both like leaves and petals. Bow-tie pasta can be broken into halves and then rearranged as these fun starburst-type blooms. Make daisies using penne and orriechiette, or lilacs using small shell pasta. The sky is the limit here!

A few tips: we liked playing with the various shapes and laying out the design on the cardboard to see exactly how many of each pasta noodle needed to be painted. Once you’ve got that decided, snap a quick photo if you want to remember how you had arranged everything, and then on a scrap piece of paper paint the pasta. Your fingers will get a bit painty here as you hold the pasta while you paint. For any tubular-shaped pasta, we like to thread them onto a pipe cleaner and paint them that way, but the rest we simply paint over a scrap piece of paper. Let dry completely, making any touch-ups as necessary.

Step 3
Lay out the painted pasta back onto the now painted cardboard. Use a hot glue gun to secure the pasta in place.

Step 4
To make the flowers’ stems, use green yarn to link the flower and leaves together, gluing in place and cutting off any excess.

Once dry, use a marker to write a Mother’s Day note on the back.

Happy crafting!!