Paper Crafts

A crafty friend told me about the fun she had with this as a child and shared with me how to do it …

“This trick gave me endless entertainment when I was a child. Nearly every child at my school had their ‘cut off’ finger in a match box and even though we were all knew how the trick worked, there was still something pleasingly revolting about looking in the match box. ”

What you will need
1 empty match box
Scissors
Cotton wool
Red food coloring

Slide the box out of the cover and cut away the sections as shown.

Lay a piece of cotton wool (you could use a folded tissue instead) in the bottom of the box.

Dribble some red food coloring onto the cotton wool about half way down the length of the box. Slide the box back into the cover.

To play the trick, put you index finger into the hole in the bottom and practice holding the box with your thumb and middle finger so it looks natural. Tell your friends that you cut your finger off and ask them if they want to see it. Slide the box open and there your finger will lay looking lifeless on a blood soaked bed of cotton wool!

These pretty flowers are great for decorating lots of different things. They are of course great attached to a drinking straw and made into a gorgeous bouquet but you can also pop them onto greeting cards, wrapped gifts or attach to a twig.

Gather up some pretty paper like the one we made using crepe paper as a dye, a button, a pipe cleaner cut in half and a glue stick.

Fold the sheet of paper into a concertina.

Fold the length of concertina’d paper and cut the ends off on an angle. Push a length of pipe-cleaner through two holes in the button.

Wrap the pipe cleaner around the center of the folded paper. Twist to secure.

Using the glue stick, join the sides together to make a circle. If you find that the concertina is flattening out too much, cut the length of paper shorter.

Use the excess pipe-cleaner to secure the flower on to what you want.

Let your imagination run wild with this technique. You can make random patterns or mosaic pictures using this technique and it is lots of fun.

What you will need;
Crepe paper in different colors
Sheets of printer paper
Spray bottle of water
Tray

Lay a sheet of paper on the tray. Place the pieces of crepe paper in the pattern you wish.

Spray liberally with water. The more water you spray on the crepe paper the more intense the color transferred. Do not be afraid of getting the paper quite wet.

Lay another sheet of printer paper over the wet crepe paper and put another layer of crepe paper. Continue with as many layers as you wish making sure you spray water over each layer. It is a bit like making a lasagna and it means you will have paper dyed on both sides.

Press down to make sure the water penetrates and leave for 10 minutes. Remove layers and hang each sheet to dry.

Have I got time to sneak one more craft in before Christmas? I think so – let’s try this one!

This is a lovely wee tree that uses crepe paper twist chains to decorate it.

What you will need
1 US letter or A4 sheet of card
Crepe paper in the colour of your choice
Glue stick
Scissors
Pencil

Trace around a dinner plate and fold to make a half circle. Cut out with the scissors and fold over to create a cone shape. Glue to secure.

Cut a strip from the end of the folded crepe paper.

Unroll and using your thumb and forefinger, twist twice to secure. Repeat along the length of crepe paper using your thumb as a guide to get a uniform size.

Cover the cone shape with glue from the glue stick and then attach the crepe paper chain starting at the top of the tree and spiralling down. Repeat with the other colours of crepe paper.

This tree looks good as it is but you could add some glitter shapes, pompoms or whatever you fancy.

Is it too early for this sort of craft? No, I didn’t think so either:-).

Recycle your egg cartons to make these very cool bell decorations. They are simple to make, and with the pipe cleaner hangers, they are also very simple for small hands to hang on the tree.

As well as the egg cartons you need some tin foil and pipe cleaners.

Cut the cups out the egg cartons and tear or cut out some pieces of tin foil. Poke the pipe cleaner hooks through the base of the egg cups to make the hook. Wrap the egg cartons with the tin foil and it is ready to hang.

This is a very very handy mask technique to keep in your list (you all have lots of lists too don’t you?!). We have used it with my daughters class when they all needed to be hippos. I found a great image, and her teacher popped them on a head band to sit on their heads. They were all hippos and could also all see and sing easily – which is very important for a hippo!

	Create a face, or half face, with some paper shapes.
	Make a head band for the mask that is the right size to sit on a head a bit like a crown. Sit is on your head for a simple mask that is easy to wear.