Paper Crafts for Children

Colorful and easy – it also suits a wide range of ages!

	Roughly chop up some bits of colored paper. Glue some onto a piece of black paper.
	Arrange another layer on top of them, overlapping them but letting bits of the first layer show.
	Repeat with another layer.
	Stop when you are happy with the shapes and colors, or if it is bedtime – whichever comes first.

What do you do when you have just made an apple print tree and you still have surplus apples cut up and paint to use? You make apple printed paper ready to use in that craft that will come along one day that needs some colorful hand made paper!

You really only need half an apple for this, so it is not a great craft for using up a surplus crop, but a great craft for having some fun and making some great decorated paper.

Cut an apple in half and and push a fork into the round part of the apple so that the fork can be used as a handle.

Dry the cut side and press it onto the paint, or use a brush to paint it onto the cut surface of the apple. Then press it onto some blank paper. It works best if you ‘re-load’ the paint onto the apple each time you make a print.

We almost always do this sort of printing as a layer of three primary colors, starting with the darkest so that the colors can be seen through each other.

If you are following the same color scheme that we did, then load the apple with blue paint and press it on the paper. Repeating a few times, spreading them across the paper.

Wipe the apple clean, and then when the blue apple prints are dry, load the apple with red paint and print on the paper, overlapping the blue apples a little.

Repeat with the yellow paint – cool!

In this part of the world we are heading into Autumn (Fall) and our many many apple trees are laden! I go and pick buckets full of apples and it does not even look like I have been near the trees! So I have been making fruit leather, stewed apple, apple puddings and now apple art.

I hope you remember this craft when it is apple season in your part of the world, or if you cannot wait – you can probably buy apples all year round anyway – they might even be a New Zealand apple.

This craft would be great as a family or class craft. Start with everyone using hand prints to create the leaves of the tree. If there are lots of children involved, a little crowd control of having only a few children with painted hands at a time, will help minimize the mess. To make the hand print you can either press the hand onto some thinly spread paint, or paint soaked into a sponge, or you can use a brush to paint the hand.

While the hand print leaves are drying, cut an apple in half and press a fork into the round part to use as a handle.

Dry the cut side and press it onto the paint, or use a brush to paint it onto the cut surface of the apple. Then press it onto the hand print tree. It works best if you ‘re-load’ the paint onto the apple each time you make a print.

But the print-making does not need to end here! Using a different shade of green paint, make a leaf at the top of each apple with a finger print. For a classroom tree you could instead cut the leaves out of paper and write a childs name on each one and then glue them onto the apples. You could glue them just at the base of the leaf and curl the leaf out a little bit to make them stand out a bit more.

I did think that we could have done the tree trunk with foot prints – but by this stage the paint was starting to spread far and wide so I took the easy way out and just painted it.

We just loved the pattern the apple prints made so we did other apple print crafts as well. Have a look at our beautiful apple print paper.

I really like this technique – it gives a cool result even if you have no artistic or creative skills!

To make the pattern, draw up a grid on the paper. Then write the word on top, and rub out the grid lines that are inside the word shapes. You can also do it the other way round and write the word first, then do the grid lines. Color in the shapes using two different colors, alternating them as shown.

We did something similar for a Mosaic Fathers Day Card idea

It is not just an educational activity, it is fun too! Finding, cutting, assembling and gluing – lots of paper crafty fun for young children who are learning how to spell their name.

Gather together some advertising brochures, and some magazines that you do not mind sacrificing to craft – and hunt out some letters. Try and find a selection of letters and then pick out the best ones to make the name. Glue them onto some bright colored paper and use another color for a border.