Paper Crafts

This technique for making a 3-dimensional paper critter is nice and easy and could be used with all sorts of paper crafts for children.

After a day of crafting up all sorts of child suitable crafts without a child in sight, this is the one that my daughter wanted to know how to do straight away.

I love the lizard shape and it is perfect for this craft – well except that it would be a little fiddly to cut out for small children. I suggest a simpler shape for them or for grown up hands to do the scissor work. I also cut out a zig -zag from for my lovely lizards.

To decorate the lizards in what I thought a very lizardy pattern, I flicked paint onto them using an old toothbrush.

Can you see the lizards hiding in the paint splodges?

Once the paint was well and truly dry I created the creases to turn them into standing up lizards. The basic step to create a 3-dimensional critter is to draw a firm line with a pen, on the reverse of the shape, where the fold will be. Then gently crease along the fold, making it as steep or as small as you want.

I glued their little feet onto the paper, but you could also glue them onto rock to display them.

 

Scoop up some paint and some paper and create these ice-creams that look so good that the children may want to eat them.

I had a day of creating all sorts of paper crafts for children without a child around. Our previous paper craft adventure, the super-sized car, used a lot of crafting time so I was running low on completed crafty ideas to post.  It was interesting discussing the projects with the children later and finding out what they wanted to try. My daughter was intrigued by the cones on these ice-creams and wanted to know how to make them – so that is on the list for us to try together. She also thought some 3D lizards were very cool and I had to show her how to make them then and there!!

I used two different techniques to create these ice-cream pictures. For the cone I painted the cone shape and then flipped the brush and used the pointy end of the brush to scratch the details on.

Then I searched through our food and art cupboards looking for ‘bits’ to add to the paint to recreate some of our favorite ice-cream and create some new ones. I stirred in some dessicated coconut and rolled oats for some of them. I also used the dessicated coconut as a sprinkle. On others I added an sprinkles of an essential paper crafts ingredient – glitter! An essential for me is ‘chocolate chips’ so I created them from little bits of card. Another I swirled some red paint through the white paint – mmmm, that looks delicious. But I think the one that will taste the best is the one with the hot chocolate dusted over it – YUM!! No prizes for guessing what we had for desert.

This picture is of the painted ice-cream cones when the paint had dried. If you want your final piece to keep the gloss and texture of the wet paint, you need to use good quality acrylic paints or add a thickener like white glue or impasto gel.

 

Super sized paper crafts for children

The children saw a competition on ‘What Now‘, a NZ kids TV program, to make a car. With very soggy weather outside they wanted an indoor version that would use their very extensive imagination to travel the roads. So with lots of enthusiasm and a very large box from a new wood burner, they created a fantastical car. Following their instructions we cut it out and attached the ‘features’ – window, bonnet, and of course the obligatory honking puppet!
They designed a bull for one side on some paper, I enlarged and drew the design onto the car for them to paint. The bull is very speedy and even had a lightening bolt branded on his side.

Many pottles of paint later, they took the new machine for a test drive. It must have been a very perilous road as the bits I saw involved sword fighting and climbing an ice face.

The car received the miaow of approval from our box loving cat Glitter! And we did add wheels so it was more car like and less boat-ish!

 

One of the classic paper arts / crafts for children – cutting pictures out of magazines to make a collage around a theme.

My daughter was delighted at the opportunity to cut pictures out of one of my treasured magazines after I had been sent an overlap copy when renewing a subscription. She managed to find some lovely deserts but not a single vegetable that she thought looked yummy, fancy that! Oh well, she did find a nice bit of steak that she thought looked good. We then chose some paper to use as the place-mat and cut out a plate, knife and fork to make our paper table setting.

After a last minute change of place-mat pattern she arranged and glued it all together. I think this would look fabulous if a classroom of them was displayed on the wall. Another idea we will try is creating our own patterned paper to use for the place-mat.

 

I thought this was cool as it combines two pop-out shapes on the one card. It is also nice and easy to make.

When the card is standing the butterfly is bent over looking as though is fluttering down to check out the flower. I thought it was a clever idea – but it is not my idea! I found it in a book on Kirigami by Karol Krcmar. Kirigami is a form of Origami that involves cutting the paper as well as folding it. A great version of this paper craft for children as it enables a lot more flexibility.

To make the card, cut the shapes out as pictured. Do not cut where I have added the red lines, they will be the folding part of the card.

We also crafted another Kirigami piece, a Kirigami Wind Crown.

 

We had fun giving our abstract art parts of our brains a bit of a workout with this form of collage.

I had been sent a double up of a magazine I subscribe too, so now we can do magazine collage! I cannot bear to cut up my old cooking, garden and craft magazines, they are too lovely and I might just look back at them one day! Well I might!! But with two copies I am happy to turn one into lots of magazine collages. The first page was sacrificed for a cubomania experiment. Cubomania is a form of collage where a picture is cut up into squares and then reassembled. Ideally you would measure and carefully cut so that all your squares are the same size, but as this is paper crafts for children and my daughter was keen to get started – she folded the picture up to make lines for cutting. So I thought we would go with that have uneven oblongs instead – I wonder if that is called ‘randomshapeomania’?

This inspired my husband to test his craftiness and have a go himself – he had mixed results! See how he did trying this paper craft at Cubomania Collage