Paper Crafts for Children

Super quick and easy paper craft decoration to get the children to do when you suddenly remember the O’Briens are coming round to celebrate St Patrick’s Day at your place!

Start with a green piece of printer size paper and cut it in half lengthways – you will now have two strips of paper. Fold each one into a concertina – folding it into four usually works really well. Draw a shamrock shape on the front, making sure that the edges of the picture go on the edge of the paper.

Cut the shape out and when you open it you will have a row of shamrocks ready to decorate the wall. Repeat on the other piece of paper and tape them together – keep repeating to make it as long as you like.

If you do happen to do this as a leisurely planned activity, you can also have lots of fun decorating your garland with drawings, glitter, stickers and the like.

This is a great paper craft for children to do independently, and to help them I have a Paper Garland Tutorial.

Crepe paper is great, it is light and floaty, stretchy and textured and lends it self to all sorts of crafts … including the tentacles of a jellyfish.

A crafty friend came up with this simple and cheerful design. Not too messy either and would be great to hang for an ocean themed party.

Take a sheet of newspaper and scrunch into a ball several times to make the paper soft and pliable. Make a ball the size you want your jellyfish’s head to be.

Place two layers of crepe paper on a flat surface. The size of the piece of crepe will depend on how big your ball of newspaper is. Make sure to leave lots of overhang to make the tentacles.

Gather the crepe up and around the ball of newspaper and fasten with a chenille stick. Cut off the excess chenille stick and tuck the ends away.

Cut strips in the crepe paper to make the tentacles. It doesn’t matter that they are different lengths or widths but you don’t want them to be too narrow that they tear easily.

Cut the base for the eyes out of some card. Cut out the white for the eyes a little smaller than the base and then draw in the pupils with the black marker. Glue to the card.

Glue eyes to the head of the Jellyfish, and then because he is so cute and ever so easy make another!

We have made something similar a while ago … a super quick Paper Towel Ghost

Sometimes when you try a craft, you have to try all the different ways of doing it – so we are on a bit of a heart strip theme at the moment, which is perfect timing for Valentines Day.

This simple garland is perfect for Valentines Day but you could also use pastel colors to welcome a new baby or for Easter celebrations.

All you need are some strips of paper and a stapler. I have seen this done by using the strips to make just one heart at a time – but that involves sooooo much extra cutting and picking up strips of paper – so we tried to be clever and used each pair of strips to make three hearts. Seemed like more fun that way but you can make them just one at a time.

Cut strips lengthwise from sheets of printer paper. Heavy weight paper does not cope with the curves for these small hearts and tend to bend instead. They can be any width you like. Just make sure you make them a similar width to each other.

Lay two strips on top of each other and staple near the end.

Separate the strips and drag the unstapled ends down either side of the staple and pinch together with your fingers to get the size heart you prefer.

Fold the strips back up just below where you want to fasten the heart. This makes the start of the next heart. Staple together.

Drag the strips down again to make another heart and repeat the process until you reach the end of the strips. I managed to get three hearts out of each pair of strips but the number will vary depending on the size of your heart.

To add another pair of paper strips to the garland, place one strip of paper either side of the bottom of the last heart with the strips upright and staple together. I used one staple to both secure the bottom of the last heart and to add the new paper strips. Drag the strips down as you have done with the previous hearts and continue until your garland is the required length.

This gratitude garland craft is great for Mothers or Fathers day or for Thanksgiving. It is a simple but thoughtful craft which requires no glue so can be done anywhere.

You need paper cut into strips, the paper can be patterned on one side but it needs to be plain on the other so that you can write on it. You also need a pen and small stickers.

On each of the strips of paper write one of the things you are grateful for.

Make a loop with the first strip and use a small sticker to secure the ends together.

Loop the next strip through the first and secure with a sticker.

Continue until all the strips of paper are used.

Both of these are super sweet and one is especially simple.

Hearts and garlands are just made to go together – the shape is so easy to cut out from the concertina folded paper. It was so easy I had to do another Valentine themed garland for you to try – this one involves a bit of planning, and although I usually cut first and plan later – this is still easy enough to work out really well.

Fold a strip of paper up until the front or face of it is about the right size for a picture. Draw on your picture making sure that the edges of the picture go on the edge of the paper.

Cut out the shape making sure you leave the edge of the picture not cut – you remember, that bit that is touching the edge of the paper. When you unfold your paper you will have a lovely row of hearts, unless you did some other shape – in which case it is entirely likely that you will have some row of shapes that are not hearts at all.

I love the way that the birds are kissing each other – perfect for a Valentine card.

This is a great paper craft for children to do independently, and to help them I have a Paper Garland Tutorial. For other garland ideas have a look at the Flower Paper Garland or the Halloween Garland ideas.

We took two of our recent paper crafts for children projects and combined them to make these very cool hanging Halloween garlands.

We started with the Halloween fold out garland craft bats, skulls, ghosts and some witches hats that had not looked so good in the fold out craft.

We introduced them to our hanging decorative garland and then blended both ideas.

To create the hanging garland from the fold out one, you need to cut your fold out creations into pairs, fold them so they are closed, you may need to fold some the other way so any decorations you have added are facing out. Cut some string and glue the pairs together with the string running in between them. Then hang them for all to admire and to duck under as they move about the place!