Paper Crafts for Children

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.

These look seriously impressive – but are seriously easy to make! You need various shades of tissue paper, a chenille stick, some scissors and a twig.

	Place the sheets of tissue on top of each other. You can use any size tissue but for these flowers the sheets were cut into a square.
	Fold the tissue in a concertina and secure with the chenille stick in the middle. It is important that the chenille stick is in the centre as you will end up with a lopsided flower if the sides are too uneven.
	Cut the ends in a point or curve depending on the finish you want.
	Fan the concertina out. Very gently pull up the first layer on one side so it sits up at a right angle. Continue to lift up each layer being careful not to tear the tissue. Repeat on the other side.
	Use the tail of the chenille stick to attach the flower to a twig.

For Valentines day today here in New Zealand I had one waiting on each of my colleagues desks for when they got in – they somehow guessed who the paper folding cutting and glueing person was that made them!!

This is so much fun, and easy!! I demonstrated this simple technique and I was then amazed by how many different flowers the children came up with! I have also made a more detailed worksheet of the steps in case that is easier for you to work with.

	Start with a square piece of paper and fold it into a triangle three times.
	With the longest side on the right, and the corner that was the middle of the square of paper pointing down, fold the point on the left over so the sides line up like pictured.
	Cut off the triangle at the top above the edge of the folded paper.
	Draw a half petal shape starting at the top corner of the triangle and ending on the long edge.
	Cut along the outline you have drawn. But make sure you do not cut through all of the long edge of the triangle. Ease the flower open.
	Layer up with some more folded cut out flowers.

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.

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.