corn cups

How many of you love Anthropologie's window displays as much as me?  Well last spring I was obsessed with their recycled plastic bottle flowers as seen below.

Cool right?  Well I was determined to do this craft at the teen center I manage.  {Here's the back story-  we were fortunate enough last spring to receive grant funding from a local utility for education on energy conservation.  With the funding we developed a living room style classroom focused mainly on energy conservation but also other sustainability methods; we named the program "Energy Saving Adventures"}.

So… the teen center throws away about this many corn cups on a weekly basis.  Better than throwing away the plastic ones right?

Well I knew we could do better and at one point it just hit me.  The main draw in our "Energy Saving Adventures" logo was a tree.  Why not create a tree at the entry to the classroom as a visual draw to what we are doing inside.  

So I took this cup...

…and made these flowers.  

The students at the center helped of course.  We cut down the sides of the cup, bent the strips back and took them outside to spray paint.  The cups are attaced to the wall with a very small nail.