I recently attended my 15-year class reunion – it seems crazy that it’s been that long already! As the crafty person in my graduations class, I was asks to be in charge of the decorations, and I knew that I had to knock it out of the park. The most important part of my decorating was the centerpieces for all of the tables. When I realized that the dollar store shammy towels were the same colors as my school colors, I had an idea – big, funky flowers!

Project estimate:

• Shammy towels, $1
• Pencils, $1
• Hot glue, on hand
• Foam, on hand or $1
• Flower pots, on hand or $1 and up
• Gift basket filler, $1

Total: $3 and up

My school colors were blue and gold, which is conveniently the same colors as the 2-packs of “handy shammy” towels at Dollar Tree. If you can’t find shammy towels in the appropriate colors for your school, you could also use sheets of heavy felt.

Start by cutting each shammy towel into thirds. Each piece will make one flower, so a 2-pack of towels will make 6 flowers.

Cut one of the long edges into fringe, leaving about 1/2 inch uncut along the other edge.

Working along the uncut edge, begin rolling the strip, securing the roll with small dabs of hot glue as you go.

Roll the strip on a slight angle so that the bottom of the finished roll is slightly concave.

Fill the concave space with hot glue and press the eraser of a pencil into it. Hold in place until the glue begins to cool.

When the glue is cooled completely, shake the flower to fluff it up.

To assemble the flowers into centerpieces, place pieces of foam inside of flower pots or other containers. Press several flowers into the foam, then fill the rest of the pot with gift basket filler to cover the foam.