Paper Crafts for Children

Making these is one of my earliest memories of paper construction from my childhood. I love the way they make such ‘fluffy’ trees.

Not much needed in the way of expensive materials are needed for this paper craft for children! We subscribe to a newspaper and use it to light our fire, line the bottom of the chicken coop and under mulch on the garden, but we still have plenty left for a forest of newspaper trees. Oh yes, we read some of it too!

	So this one ticks lots of paper crafts for children boxes, it is easy, fun, uses recyclable materials, and is nice and speedy! You also have the option of making a mess with it like we have with this one, or keeping tidy and clean by leaving the paints in the cupboard like we did with our first paper tree forest. The instructions to make the trees are available on the Paper Tree Tutorial, and as usual there is a free PDF you can download and print out.
	When we made this tree we used a few painting techniques to decorate it. We splattered the leaves of the tree with green paint. Flicking the paint onto the newspaper using an old toothbrush – the splattering technique shows up much better on our 3D lizards though.
	The trunk is a cardboard roll from lunch paper. It is painted with little spirals and lines to replicate bark. This way of creating a bark image also works with pencils and it works best when done a little roughly too – so it suits impatient crafters like me just perfectly!
	The flowers on the base were number one daughters idea. I was just going to do little yellow dots when she said I had to put little white dots around them to make daisies. Hmmm, wish I had not done quite so many little yellow dots!! But it did not take long and she was right, they do look just like daisies – so a tip from the youngest in the family on how to create lots of cute flowers.

What to do with some beautifully patterned paper created earlier? I wanted to cut the stripy patterns into strips of stripy paper to decorate some other paper crafts for children items.

The patterned paper was made using Scraped Paint. We always need bookmarks around here due to the problem we have with a bookmark eating monster in the bookshelves! Hopefully this one is so brightly colored it will not be to her taste! One side of the bookmark has just the patterned paper, the word ‘BOOK’ on the other side was created by painting the word first and then scratching the line into the center of each letter. Finally the letters were cut out and some more of the stripy paper added to each end.

But wait, there’s more! I had been wanting to make a bracelet out of a toilet paper roll for while, I am just sorry that it did not fit me! We cut a ring from the toilet paper roll and cut an opening in it. We glued some photocopy paper over top to strengthen it and to tidy up the edges. The client (number one daughter) wanted the base to stay white – so no painting needed! We then glued a strip of the stripy paper on the outside and all done.

But wait, I still had lots of paper left over, and I had more toilet paper rolls. I was thinking napkin rings when I made these, but I already have homemade napkins rings – some papier mache ones. So although they may currently be napkin rings, they may turn into Christmas tree decorations, or Easter egg stands, or doll crowns, or perhaps even wheels. The children were even lost for ideas! If you also want to make these bright and cheery not so useful round things – then cut some rings from a toilet paper roll, glue white paper bits to cover and strengthen it, paint it, and glue some decorative paper on the outside – then let me know what you use them for!

This is one of the very versatile paper crafts for children. You can make patterns, pictures, even write words by scraping into the paint. You just need some paper and paint, and some tools to do the scraping. Tools like a piece of card, the end of a brush or even fingers will do!

To make a more dramatic scraped paint image, first coat the paper with a base layer of acrylic paint. If you are using just one layer of paint and scraping through to the paper, then any sort of paint is fine.

	Once the first layer is dry paint a small area on top. I have painted and scraped each stripe before starting the next one.
	While the paint is still wet scrape into the paint with a tool, like the end of a paint brush or a peice of card.
	You can scrape patterns or words into the wet paint.

Cut bits from the finished piece for all sorts of paper crafts.

Download the printable version of the tutorial – PDF Worksheet – Scraped Paint

See some of the things we made with just half of this decorated paper at Scraped Paint Decorated Things.

Celebrate the sunshine with these easy and speedy paper crafts for children.

	Paper Cup Case Flowers Paper cup cases are not just great for making cup cakes,they make gorgeous flowers too!
	Red Paper Hand Shape Lilies Find out how to make these very elegant flowers at the Tutorial – Paper Hand Lily
	Paper Plate Sunflower What summer crafts list for children would be complete without a sunflower?!
	Rolled Paper Flowers I think these would make gorgeous decorations, and they are simple to make!
	Shapes Flower Picture A simple technique for creating cool looking flowers for pictures or cards.
	Cup Cake Cases Bunch of Flowers Another way to make craft some flowers from paper cup cake cases.
	Toilet Roll Butterfly Bring a bit of wildlife inside with this fluttery butterfly.
	Crepe Paper Dragonflies Another summer critter to quickly craft out of crepe paper.
	Stand Up Lizard These lazy lizards will bask in your admiration once you have crafted them out of paper.
	Textured Paint Ice-creams Yum – these look good enough to eat!
	Mirror Picture Butterfly Summer is the time for butterflies, and the time for butterfly paper crafts for children.

Crepe paper comes in fabulous colors, and so do these dragonflies.

Crepe paper is such a great material for paper crafts for children. It is bright, cheap and the way it is folded can be really useful! We needed something bright today as it has rained all day.

Process 1. Cut a strip off the end of a roll of crepe paper as pictured here. 2. Squeeze the middle of the crepe paper in a little and wrap the end of a chenille stick around the middle of the crepe paper. 3. Cut the sides of the crepe paper in the center to divide the ‘wings’. 4. You can leave the folds in the crepe paper joined, or you can cut them to release the layers. I have left the pink dragonfly with joined wings and cut the folds in the other two. 5. Fold and twist the chenille stick to make the dragonfly body and antennae.

If you want to put your dragonflies to work decorating anything that sits still for a brief moment, then glue some mini pegs to the back and then see what you can find to peg them to!

	We found a curtain, …
	… a shirt, …
	… and some hair!

This form of collage captured the attention of my husband who wanted to have a go too! After a few false starts, we have another cubomania collage.

I think the mathematical structure of this type of collage was the appeal. So after watching the creation of our first Cubomania Collage, he found a suitable picture and started on his plan. He wanted to create an actual picture by rearranging the shapes. The first step was to rule the back of the chosen magazine picture all up into nice little squares. We had discussed that having small squares would enable a more detailed picture.

But after sitting and looking at all the squares we realized that he would not be able to tell which was front and which was back, and it would be awfully fiddly! So he cut his squares twice as large as originally planned and that meant each square had red lines crossing it on the reverse – so he knew his front from his back.

I headed out to do some jobs and when I came back the first draft was all laid out. Not wanting to squash his enthusiasm for the project, I tried to find out what it was that he had created – for those like me that could not tell – it is a spoon! Hmmm, welll. .., we decided that we could not really see that.

I suggested that perhaps a more recognizable shaped like an eye, or a heart or something like that may work better, but by this stage all cubomania enthusiasm was well and truly over. So we went for a layering up of colors instead. The final piece has been named ‘Antarctic Landscape’.

So our thoughts on cubomania as a paper craft for children are to not try too hard! Just cut, rearrange into random pleasing pattern, and then decide what it is that you have created. We will leave the detailed images to the dedicated artists out there!