The fair needs YOU to make upcycled flowers!

[Robert L Mathews]

Hi folks! The fair committee has been working on designs for this year's booth, and part of the design needs flowers. But last year, the live flowers didn't do so well inside. We thought of buying plastic ones, but that's not very environmental.

So this year, we're going to use upcycled flowers, made from aluminum cans, plastic bags, paper -- anything.

So we're calling on members to make a flower (or more than one!) and bring it to the May in-person meeting. Then we'll use them in the fair booth. The best one wins a free ACBA cap or T-shirt.

How can I make an upcycled flower, you ask? The answer is there are tons of online resources showing how to do it. I tried a couple of them this morning, and here's my results. I figure if I -- a not-crafty person -- can make something reasonable, there must be plenty of people reading this who can do better.

I first tried making a sunflower from aluminum cans, although I quickly diverged from the instructions because I wanted to see if I could do it without paint:

Could be worse, but maybe I'll redo the leaves; they're not very realistic. It needs some depth and crinkles.

Then I tried making one from a plastic bag. I'm not happy with this one, because it looks a little trashy, and we don't want trashy. But it only took a few minutes so I'll show you anyway: 

I'll try again with better colors now that I know what I'm doing; some online ones look pretty good.

Finally, I have this one in progress from two beer cans:

I like this one.

Anyway, I had lots of fun making these. I can't wait to see what you guys make! (If you can't bring yours to the meeting, I can arrange to have them picked up before the fair starts in early June, but then you can't win a free cap or shirt...)

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Robert L Mathews

[Rob Mathews, 2024 ACBA President]

Well, here's what my third "upcycled flower" looked like when I was done with it:

I'll keep working on it. 😀 But I hope others will participate so we don't have to be wasteful and buy artificial flowers for the fair booth!

[alexia Willi]

Those are fun and creative, maybe people will want to buy them.  In case you want to add a few natural flowers as well. 

Potted flowers can last longer at sunny booths, like marigolds are pretty and hardy,.also little lavenders in pots. 

Alexia

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[Robert L Mathews]

Ah, thanks -- I should've made it more clear that the plan is to use these as part of the booth decorations, rather than to sell them!

Having a good-looking fair booth is something the club has gotten quite good at over the years, thanks to the efforts of people who have worked on it many years in a row (like Norma Brooks and Judy Kovacovich). The fair gives out cash prizes for booths that are educational, creative and well-decorated, and we've won those awards before sometimes.

Last year we had live flowers in the booth, which looked great at the start but were hard to take care of (the booth is inside in a cool, dark-ish room). So this is an alternative to that, without resorting to simply buying plastic fake flowers. People who contribute a flower or two will be able to see their creations in the booth!

> On Apr 29, 2024, at 3:11 PM, alexia Willi <lexy...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Those are fun and creative, maybe people will want to buy them. In case you want to add a few natural flowers as well.
> Potted flowers can last longer at sunny booths, like marigolds are pretty and hardy,.also little lavenders in pots.
>

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Robert L Mathews

[MLuskin]

Robert, you are very inspiring! Crepe paper flowers are lovely and easy to make; maybe other papers would work. 

Merry Luskin

On Apr 29, 2024, at 12:30 PM, Rob Mathews, 2024 ACBA President <r...@tigertech.com> wrote:

Well, here's what my third "upcycled flower" looked like when I was done with it:

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