For the mom who loves to garden…

Create a gardening gift bucket! If your mother is always outside tending to her plants and playing in the dirty, this is the perfect gift. This gift is rather inexpensive and can be tailored to fit your mother’s personal planting preferences.

Pick up a basic, plain utility bucket from any home improvement, dollar, or super store. Buckets that typically cost $1-$3 can be found in the more cleaning aisle or automotive departments. Use your bucket as a ‘gift bag’ and start putting a few things inside. Our recommendations: a small garden shovel, a hand-held garden rake, a few seed packets, a pair of garden gloves, small decorative yard stakes, garden plant markers, and a few different small plants. Place plants (like pansies, marigolds, spikes, snapdragons, or anything of the like) in the bucket and arrange them nicely. Add some tissue paper between the items to really make it look like a nice. Don’t forget a card! Your mother will have a great time planting her new flowers while using her new gardening accessories. Total cost for a really nice gift bucket is approximately $20.

The bucket shown on the right has a hand-sewn lining. To make this pocketed lining, check out 100billionstars for instructions.

Does you mom need something pretty to accessorize with? Try making one of these fancy lace flower brooches. They are rather easy to make and can jazz up any outfit.

Lace Flower Brooch:

Items needed:

• 1 yard lace trim
• Needle
• Thread
• Hot-glue and hot-glue gun
• Felt
• Pin

Cut 1 yard of lace trim. Using a needle and thread, baste stitch large, wide stitches ¼ inch from one side of the lace. Knot the thread at one end of the lace.

Then, gently pull the unknotted end of thread while pushing the lace just a few inches at a time. Push lace in the opposite direction until the lace begins to bunch at the knotted end.

Arrange the bunching into a coil shape as you work. You may use hot glue to secure the lace ruffle as you go. A flower shape should form. Tie the tread in the center after securing with a few small stitches. Trim excess thread.

Cut a 1 ½-inch circle of felt. Hot-glue the felt to the back of the coiled flower. Glue a pin to the felt.

Voila! A lace flower brooch just for your mom.

Want to purchase a lace flower brooch? Check out Etsy.

For the mom who likes fun hair-do-dads and accessories…

These flower hair pins are constructed out of fabric-punched flowers. They can add some cheerfulness to any Mother’s Day.

Flower Hair Pins:

Items needed:

• Thin fabric scraps
• White School Glue
• Paintbrush
• Flower paper punch
• Needle
• Thread
• Small beads (optional)
• Contact cement
• Bobby pins

Lay a piece of fabric in a shallow dish. With a paintbrush, apply a thick amount of clear-drying white school glue to the fabric. The goal is to make the fabric stiff. Let the glue dry. This takes about an hour. Repeat with other fabric pieces.

Using a craft paper punch, punch out flower-shapes from the hardened fabric. Punch the flowers out as close as possible so you can get as many as possible from the same pieces of fabric.

Arrange 3 flower punched-out flowers on top of one another. Using a needle and coordinating thread, stich the flowers together.  Only a few stitches will be needed. Sew a few small beads into the center of the flowers, if you’d like, too.

You may hand-stitch the flowers to the bobby pins or use contact cement. If you choose contact cement, just place a drop of cement on the ‘U’ of the bobby pin, press sewn flowers to the pin, and let dry.

Once dry, place flowers in hair and enjoy!