Cupcake Liner Flower Craft: Fine Motor Art for Kids

In order to hurry spring along we created our own indoor cupcake liner flower garden using fine motor art techniques!

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I presented my preschool daughter E with plenty of materials to create her cupcake liner flowers. To let you in on a little secret: These aren't actually cupcake liners! If you want to make these you can go buy cupcake liners but we are all about recycling when we craft so we used candy papers from a Valentine's Day box of chocolates and big liners from inside Milano Slices Salted Pretzel Cookies (and too bad I had to eat all of those so we could craft because, YUM)!

Once the materials were in front of her I suggested several art techniques that would require fine motor work including:

- Stamping with Do a Dot Markers

- Coloring with Mr. Sketch Scent Markers (scented = sensory!) then spraying with water

- Using an eye dropper with liquid watercolors

- Using a clothespin to dip the paper in the liquid watercolors

Luckily she was inspired and tried all the techniques! What a beautiful jumble of art was left on the table! The only technique that didn't work with our papers was the eye dropper with the liquid watercolors because our liners were a tad bit waxy. I bet it would make beautiful coffee filter flowers though for an extra large garden! Dipping the edges of the paper in to the watercolors did allow the color to seep into the paper.

Once the flowers were dry I set out an array of different stickers. Removing stickers from a sheet or peeling off the paper backing and then pressing them to a project is a wonderful fine motor work out!

We can't forget the hand muscles used in gluing! E always makes the most intense gluing faces as she squeezes! For the stems we used Craft Project Ideas' colorful wood craft sticks because they were already green!

We got out our Nutella Play Dough for dirt in our garden (Yes, it's lasted two months and it's still fresh!) and green play dough for grass. E arranged and tended to her fine motor garden to welcome the first day of Spring!