Paper Crafts for Children

The great thing about this craft for little fingers, is that if some of the tissue paper goes on a bit messily and you have sticking out and dangling bits, then all the spookier! Make lots of this little guy and string them up as a decoration, or even give one away with ‘treats’ at Halloween.

This one was made on a chenille stick body – but you could also make a body out of cardboard to wrap. Just use a roll of tissue paper and start wrapping. Add a dab of glue or some sticky tape every now and then to keep the bandages in place. Finish with a couple of googly eyes.

Such a simple and cute paper craft, children will have fun making and then playing with this crabby critter.

You can probably tell by looking at the crab exactly how to make it – but I took the photos so just in case it helps here are all the steps anyway.

You need two paper plates – paint them red and punch 10 matching holes around the edge.

Cut 5 red pipe cleaners in half. 8 of the halves will become the legs. Take two of the lengths of pipe cleaners and cut a bit off the end bend it in half and wrap the other end around the fold to make the pincer. Make eyes on stalks with some cardboard. Googly eyes also look good.

Join the plates together using the pipecleaners through the holes. Arrange the feet so it stands, and the pincers ready to nip. Glue the eye stalks on between the pincers.

My paper crafting helpers have always loved making place names for folk who are coming and deciding where they will sit. This fun idea for place settings helps reduce the clutter on the table and makes the glasses look really cool.

	Draw and cut out a shape that will suit your theme, or cut out one of ours from our glass name tags PDF.
	Fold it in half and cut a slit on an angle.
	Write the name on the shape, or just decorate it. Use the slit to sit it on the glass.

This owl stands up nicely on its own by opening the bottom of the bag, or you can slip your hand inside and use it for a puppet.

You will need a paper bag with a rectangle bottom, 2 paper muffin cups, some black card, some orange card, and some sheets of card in other colors.

	Place the paper bag flat, with the bottom flap at the top and facing you. This will become the head of the owl. Glue the cups onto the flap of the paper bag. Cut two black circles out of card to fit the bottom of the paper muffin cups. Cut a pie slice out of each. Stick these into the bottom of each muffin cup and glue onto the paper bag flap for the eyes. Cut a long triangle for the beak out of the orange card and glue into place. Cut an oval from the second piece of card and draw ‘v’ shapes to represent feathers. Glue this to the belly of the owl.
	Fold the piece of card you want to use for the wings in half and draw and cut out a wing shape.
	Open the wing shapes out and cut along the fold line to make two wings.
	Glue the wings to the top inside fold of the bag. Cut out two triangles from the excess card used to make the wings and glue to the top of the bag for the ears of the owl.

There is a bit of a saying in our house, well to be accurate, I keep saying … ‘You can make anything out of papier mache’

I needed to utilise the awesome powers of papier mache to create a couple of costumes for an event. Lots of fun and many many many hours of paper glueing, shaping and painting later – our costumes were ready! And then we set about very quickly ruining them by running, sliding and crawling through 10 km of mud!

Making the Menhir …

Making all the rest of the costume items …

The final costume …

How I planned to carry the Menhir …

… but in the end Asterix carried it mostly, until we abandoned it by one of the muddy obstacles.

How we looked after about 6-7 km of the mud …

All you need is a piece of photocopy size paper, and a few folds later you have a puppet – a very wide mouth puppet! I have popped all the steps into a worksheet that you can download and print, as well as summarised here.

	Fold a peice of photocopy size paper into three so that it is long and skinny.
	Fold it again into four sections so that it forms a concertina.
	Add details to the top layer. Your fingers go in the space created between the layers of paper. Your thumb goes in the space in the bottom layer and then you can open and close the mouth really wide.!
	Once again my daughters attempt is much better than mine!