Paper Crafts for Children

This is another adorable craft made by Pippi Pipecleaners. This technique can be used to make all sorts of finger puppets just change the details to fit the animal you want to make.

You will need card in two shades and all the usual crafty bits like a pencil, scissors, glue stick, googly eyes and sticky tape

Draw two circles on the light green card so they overlap a little. I drew round a side-plate and a mug to get the size I wanted.

Draw on the legs, tail and a bit extra for the nose.

Cut out leaving the overlap uncut. Cut out the slits.

Turn over so you can’t see the pencil line.

Overlap the slits and glue in place with the gluestick. I used my trusty clothes pegs to hold whilst the glue dried and then added sticky tape to the underside to make sure they stayed secure and flat.

Fold out the legs and tails and gently bend the neck so the turtle sits flat.

Decorate your turtle with pieces of the dark green card cut to shape and attach two googly eyes.

Make two rings from strips of card to fit your fingers.

Attach the two rings to another strip of card. Remember to put the rings on your finger first to work out the distance needed between them.

Attach this to the neck of the turtle using the sticky tape.

And it really is a finger puppet …

Owls are such a great craft subject, and there are many beautiful crafts out there for them, but I think this must be one of the easiest crafty owls to make – perfect for little fingers.

This craft is fun to make, but would also be ideal for putting on a gift card!

You need a cup cake case, which you flatten and then fold the top down a little.

Then fold the sides in to make the wings, on a slight angle as pictured.

Finally add some details. The eyes could be googly ones like we have used or you could just draw them on. Use some scraps of card to make some feet and a beak.

Some of my favorite cards for children to craft for Mothers Day and of course Grandmothers Day too.

	Mothers Day Tea Bag Card From all the hits this craft gets, it must be one of the most popular on my site. Have a look and see why everyone likes it so much.
	Fold Out Card A bit of a fancy card, but ever so easy to make.
	Secret Message Card This very clever card is much easier to make than it looks – have a go!
	Seeded Paper for Gift Cards A perfect card and gift combo paper craft.
	Accordion Pop-up Card The front of this card says ‘Thanks …’ and when it opens a whole bunch of flowers pop up and the message is ‘… a bunch’. Much easier to make than it looks.
	Concertina Gift Card What I love about this one is that it combines a card with a gift – and the gift can be little promise notes or special messages. Did I mention that this is also easier than it looks??
	Pop-up Garland Card This card combines two very easy techniques, a simple pop-up card and a paper garland. The flowers from the garland are used on the inside of the card as pictures here, and also on the front of the card and an envelope.
	Easy Pop-up Card Just like the others in this list, this is a great card craft for children to learn. The pop-up section is a separate piece that is glued on.

I just found this craft from one of my very first paper crafts for children newsletters in 2010! I do slowly add the crafts from old newsletters to the site but I had missed this one.

It almost feels like 2010 since I last sent out one of my newsletters. Well it has not been quite that long, but it has been far longer than I would like – sorry to anyone who has been waiting for one. The good news is that I am again getting time to craft and am bursting with ideas. The crafts for the next newsletter are done, the photos are taken, now I just need to write it – so not much longer to go now.

The great thing about this craft is that you can keep it really simple or add little details and mimic real flowers. This technique is very similar to the Tissue Paper Flowers on the web site and is easy to follow. We did the tissue version for my daughters crafty birthday party and the children learnt how to make them in less than a minute! One safety note, pipe cleaners do have sharp points. You will need: - paper – decorated or colored - pipe cleaners (chenille sticks) - scissors

Cut flower shapes out of the paper, they do not have to be perfect as by the time they are layered up you will not see all the little details. The paper we used is made with the pulled apart paint technique from your introduction email. Roll one end of the pipe cleaner over. Starting with the smallest shapes first, thread the paper shapes onto the sharp end of the pipe cleaner and push them up around the rolled end. If your paper is thick you may need to pierce holes in the center – otherwise you can make a hole with the sharp end of the pipe cleaner. Once you have enough on, shape the ‘petals’ by bending them up until you are happy with it.

A lovely excuse to make this lovely paper craft.

A simple craft that I have used before for 3D leaves, because I love how effective it is.

Just make three copies of a heart shape, using a different color for each heart shape. We used a cookie cutter to trace our shape onto some paper.

Fold two of them in half.

Run a strip of glue along the spines of the folded pieces and layer them up on each other and on the flat piece. Once the glue it dry fold out the sides to create your shape.

This can be folded up as part of a card, or even have loving messages written on each ‘leaf’.

I wonder if you can tell I was thinking about Christmas crafts whilst baking when this idea popped into my head?

This would also be good as a class or other children’s group craft activity. Each child could decorate their own cup cake case for the group wreath. Or as a teacher led decoration for the group – each child’s photo could be glued into a cup cake case to make the wreath.

You will need some cup cake, or patty cake papers for the main part of this craft. This one uses mini ones, but you could also do it with a mixture of sizes. The basis of the wreath is a circle of card – just cut from a packing box and painted white.

There are lot of ways you could decorate the cup cake papers for the wreath, this one uses a few different methods.

To decorate the cup cake papers, dip the edges into the white craft glue and then into the glitter and set aside to dry. Then I rolled chenille sticks into spirals and glued them in the cases. I drew stars on paper with glitter glue and glued them in the bottom of the cases and also glued some glitter pom poms in them as well.

Glue the patty papers onto the wreath. I started with the inside circle first, then the outside circle and then filled in the center.