Making a Garden With Corn Husks

If you're like most people, you usually throw away your corn husks without a second thought. However, corn husks are actually an extremely versatile material that can be easily used to make beautiful art!

In this Instructables, I will show you how to make a lily pad, water lily, dragonfly, chrysanthemum, and bird out of corn husks.

·        Corn Husk

·        Food coloring

·        Strings/Threads

·        Beads & Thin metal wire

·        Paper cup or plate

·        Green tape

·        Hot glue gun

·        Plastic trays

Peel the corn husks off and lay flat on tray to let dry for 3~4 days. 

Dip corn husks into boiling water for a couple of minutes, then take out and drain.

Prepare some trays/plastic boxes with water and add food coloring of your choice into each box.

Submerge corn husks into each box with colored water and let it stay overnight.

Take out colored corn husks and let dry in trays.  

We used pink corn husks for the water lily.

Some corn husks will crumble or curve up, so we first need to flatten them by carefully spreading out each corn husk.

Split each corn strip into thinner strips of about 1” wide.

For water lilies, the inner petals are generally smaller, while the outer petals are gradually bigger. To reflect this variation, cut each thinner strip into pieces with lengths varying from 4” to 6” long. For each length, we have 4-6 pieces.

Next, for each corn husk strip, fold it in the middle, then unfold and squeeze along the folded line. Twist to fold again as shown. This way, the folding part will form the “tip” of the petal. We then squeeze the bottom to make the “bottom” of the petal where it connects to other petals. Tie tight with strings.

Repeat this process till you have enough petals. 

Cut a strip of yellow corn husk into a comb shape for the stamen.

Use hot glue to secure a bead to one end of a metal wire. Wrap the strip of yellow corn husk around the bead to form stamen. Then piece by piece, arrange petals made earlier around the stamen as shown. Tie tight with thread after every few petals.

Repeat till all the petals are used. Trim the bottom (where all petals are connected) off into the shape of a sepal. Secure with hot glue.

I don't have paper plates, so I used a paper cup. Cut the side into strips as shown—this will provide some natural-looking curves to the lily pad. Drill a hole in the middle of the cup. 

Cut green corn husks into large strips. One end of each corn husk strip should go through the hole in the middle of the cup, while the other end should be spread out and glued onto the paper structure.

Secure with hot glue and repeat as shown.

We plan to make two chrysanthemums - one blue and one purple.

Similar to the way we made the middle of the water lily, hot glue a bead to one end of the metal wire. Carefully spread each corn husk to flatten it.

Split each husk into strips of ~0.5”, as chrysanthemum petals are longer and thinner than water lily petals.

The inner petals are shorter, and the outer petals are typically longer. To reflect this variation, we cut each of the thinner strips into lengths varying from 3” to 8” long.

Similar to the way we made petals for the water lily, fold each corn husk strip in the middle, then unfold, squeeze along the folded line, and twist to fold again. This way, the folding part will form the “tip” of the petal. We then squeeze the bottom to make the base of the petal. 

Use a pencil or pen to curl the petal as shown, modeling the curvature of a real chrysanthemum flower.

Repeat this process till you have enough petals. 

Tip: We noticed that some corn husk strips had a natural curvature that already looked like chrysanthemum petals. For these pieces, we could just directly cut them into strips and use them.

Starting from the center piece (the bead hot glued to the wire), arrange petals around the center one by one in layers. Tie tight with thread after each layer.

After all petals are tied up, trim the bottom as shown, and hot glue to secure.

Wrap around the sepal and the pedicel (metal wire) with green husks and green tape.

Arrange the flower petals.

Make an additional purple chrysanthemum by repeating the steps.

Tie the ends of four strips of corn husks together with thread.

Start weaving. Specifically, move the rightmost strand (4) in between the left most (1) and second left most (2) strands, then fold it back between 2 and 3. Next move the left most (1) in between right most (3) and (4), then move back between (2) and (4). 

Repeat this process by always moving the left most and right most alternatively. Tightly weave the husks into position.

Cut small strips of husks of different colors to make eyes for the dragonfly. In our case, we rolled pink strips, then wrapped the blue strips around the pink roll to form the eyes. 

Pick the two narrower corn husk strips to secure the eyes, tie tight with thread. Cut off the rest of those two strips as shown.

The other two wider corn husks strips will be the wings of the dragonfly. Trim these two pieces to proper length and split each into two strips. Adjust the shape as desired.

Tie the middle of four strips of corn husks together with thread. The ends of the strips that are not woven will serve as the tail of the goldfish.

Weave the four pieces as illustrated with the paper strips, tighten, and repeat.

Make eyes like the way we made eyes for the dragonfly, secure with the shorter 2 of the 4 strips. 

Trim the other two ends of the strips as fins of the goldfish, and arrange the four unwoven strips into a tail.

Align 3~4 strips of corn husks of the same color with a width of around 0.75”.

Align another 3~4 strips of corn husks of the same color with a width of around 0.75” and lay them at a 90 degree angle across the first set.

Tighten the ends as shown. This will be the bird’s head and neck.

Align a third set of longer corn husk strips of the same color for the bird body and tail.

Weave the third set around the first and second set to shape of the body of the bird, then tie up the third strip as shown to define the head and tail.

Trim off the excess tail length.

Poke a hole at the front of the head, then stick a small section of a stiffer piece of corn husk into the hole as a beak.

Shape the wing with scissors.