It's no secret that Australia's floral emblem is the Acacia pycnantha or golden wattle. It's a gorgeous plant with long thin green leaves and a blush of yellow pom-pom like flowers. To help celebrate Australia Day (tomorrow), the girls and I made some wattle. It doesn't look anything like the real thing, but when you're young I think that the idea of something is more powerful than the technical details, and their imaginations fill in the gaps better than any text book could.
To make the 'floral wands', we found some silk flowers in my craft stash, and stripped off the sets of three-leaves. The ends have small holes in them where the flower / plastic stem used to go, so we were able to push the leaves straight onto the ends of bamboo skewers. We stuck yellow pom poms onto the leaves in a variety of sizes.
To photograph them, I stood the handy work in a wicker ball. Arranged in this way, with a few more 'stalks' of wattle, I could imagine a cheerful party table centrepiece that the kids could pull wands from, add to, or simply admire. Taken back out, they also make pretty magical wands or dance accessories, which if coloured to suit could be great for ballet or flower fairy parties. If you do something similar, be sure that the pointy end of the skewer is cut off or safely concealed under a pom pom so there's no accidental eye-poking while the wands are being enthusiastically brandished about.
If you don't know already, do some research to find out what the floral emblem of your country or state is and then figure out how you could make it. Could you use the craft idea as a school or party project, or a rainy day indoor activity? Try it and if you blog it, leave a link to the post in the comments section so you can help inspire others!
