Give A Bouquet Of Paper Towel Roses

If you’re looking for an easy, last-minute craft for the kids to make, you’ll love these paper towel roses. They’re so beautiful and life-like, you’d never know at a glance they were made from paper towels.

After all, nothing says love like a red rose, right? 

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Well, I’ve found a way for your kids to make roses that will last forever this year. And because they don’t cost a penny to make, your kids can make a whole bouquet to give to someone special.

Originally, I thought we would make our roses out of tissue paper or crepe paper, and then it occurred to me that if we used paper towels, we could dye our roses, turning our craft into an art activity as well.

Dyeing paper towels with liquid watercolours is one of the hooligans’ favourite creative activities. The process is great for developing fine motor skills, a wonderful absorption experiment and watching the vibrant colours blend together is always delightful.

Let me show you how easy it is to make these roses.

You Will Need:

• paper towel
• liquid watercolours
• medicine droppers
• glue stick
• green straws or pipe cleaners
• clear tape
• ice cube tray for your watercolours
• baking sheet
• cookie cooling rack (for drying your paper towels)

Before you get started, protect your work surface with a plastic table cloth or give your child a cookie sheet to work on. This will prevent any possible staining.

To begin making your roses, pour your liquid watercolours into the sections of an ice cube tray. We used three different colours: pink, red and purple. If you’d like, you can dilute your watercolours with a few drops of water to make them a little less intense.

Have the kids drip the watercolours all over a piece of paper towel until it’s completely saturated in colour.

Transfer your coloured paper towel to a cookie rack and allow it to dry thoroughly. To speed up the drying process, you can give it a blast with a hairdryer.

When the paper towel is dry, cut it in half to get two long strips. Both strips will be used to make one rose.

Run a glue stick along one long edge of each strip of paper towel, then fold it over and stick it down. Don’t aim for perfection here — if your fold is a bit wavy and bumpy, that’s OK. This folded edge will be the top of your rose.

Next, to give your roses texture and volume, crumple your strips and smooth them back out.

Angle a green straw (or pipe cleaner) across the end of one of your strips, and roll the straw to trap the end of the paper towel under it. 

Lift it up and start twisting the straw, while pinching the bottom of the rose to hold it in place.

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Continue to twist the straw, winding the paper towel around it. Because the straw was placed at an angle, you’ll have to pinch and adjust the paper towel as you roll, to keep the top edges of your rose somewhat even. When you reach the end of the strip, add the second strip, and continue twisting and wrapping until your rose is all rolled up.

To finish, wrap a piece of clear tape around the base of the rose to secure it to the straw.

Finally, gently fluff the petals of your rose until you have it looking just the way you want it.

Continue making roses until you have enough for a bouquet to give to a loved one, or to display in a vase.

Gorgeous, aren’t they?

Check out this video on how to make them! This is how it turned out when we made a bouquet for Valentine's Day!

This story was originally published in February 2018, and it was updated with video February 2019.