Home Grown Fun

Basil Seed Gift for Valentine’s Day

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Gardening Seed GiftsMake this unique gift for a friend or a sweetie and be their favorite this summer.
Not only is basil a staple in most gardens, it seems to just plain make people happy! Spring and warm weather are just around the corner. At our house, basil means irresistible heirloom tomato salads and delicious Bacon, Basil and Tomato (BBT) sandwiches.

Why not warm up your sweetie or a good friend with a unique gift that they’ll remember all summer long.

Here’s how to create your own plantable seed paper cutouts:

  1. Use biodegradable tissue paper or paper towel that has not been dyed. Cut out heart shapes. Ours are approximately 4″ x 5″.
  2. Reserve beet or pomegranate juice and with a paint brush make designs on the paper. Optional: use non-toxic pigment to stamp more detailed graphics on your cutouts.
  3. Using a flour and water mixture much like the consistency of pancake batter, dab several thin, small circles of the homemade glue onto one of the tissue paper cutouts. Circle should be about the size of a pencil eraser.
  4. Wet your figure slightly with the glue mixture and pick up some seeds. Apply to the seed paper where you’ve applied the glue. We have approximately 6-9 dots on our heart. Add a couple of seeds per dot and quickly apply a second heart cutout over the seeded paper. Gently press down with a cloth and remove. Let dry. Polymer clay crafts in the garden

To make it even more special, add in another material such as a polymer clay button to wrap it up in style. We used the lightweight clay and used stamps to emboss designs and text onto the thin heart. We them gave it a wash of green and raw umber acrylic paint. Wiping away the extra pigment emphasized the text and graphics.