Sweet Wrapper Sun-catchers

We have eaten far too many Christmas chocolates already so it's time to turn the sweet wrappers into something fun. The cellophane comes in such strong colours and looks great held up to the light, so we wanted to create some simple sun catchers.

We used cookie cutters to draw our shapes onto paper, then with the paper folded down the centre line of the shape, we cut it out. After sticking the wrapper behind we hung them at the window:

By playing around with different shapes and colours we made some lovely light catchers ... they could be used as Christmas decorations too:

Posted on Saturday, 07 December 2013

Paper Plate Angel

I ran the craft activity at the local tots group earlier today. I took along several versions of a paper plate angel but as there were so many tiny tots I opted for the simplest one. The mummies helped to cut out the initial shape from a paper plate, then the little ones had fun sticking on the face, stars for decoration and wool for hair. Here's how we did it:

This morning we used silver plates for a more festive look and one mummy seperated each strand of wool to make the hair more funky!

A quick and effective tree decoration and a great keepsake.

Posted on Friday, 22 November 2013

French Poodles

With Christmas just around the corner there is a lot of talk about puppies in our house so we got the dog book out and decided to make some poodles. We thought we'd have a go at making poodles just using circles, so we found coins and kitchen objects to draw round, cut them out and stuck them onto paper:

To finish off we added a pompom nose and collar then, with a black pen, drew fine black lines to join everything up and add a lead.

Using the pompoms, we thought we'd also try a pompom poodle, or two ...

Posted on Saturday, 09 November 2013

Halloween Handprints

Make spooky halloween spider pictures from your hand-prints:

Paint your hand with black paint. Place it firmly onto a sheet of card and lift off gently. Clean the paint off of your hand, then paint your other hand black. Turn the card round, through 180 degrees, and stamp your second hand down onto the card so that your palms overlap and your fingers create the spider's legs. Give your hands a good wash then add some sticky or goggly eyes to complete your artwork.

Posted on Tuesday, 29 October 2013

Party Paper Hats

You can make a quick and easy party hat out of a paper plate:

Firstly cut out a shape in the centre of the plate, leaving the rim complete. 

Choose your colour and paint the plate, then leave it to dry ...

Decorate your hat with jewels, stickers or feathers, depending on the shape.

Once the glue is completely dry, wear your hat and party!

Posted on Saturday, 05 October 2013

Leaf Print Frame

This time of year is great for leaf crafts, so we thought we'd paint and print:

Collect different sized and shaped leaves from the garden. Choose a leaf and paint one side. Turn the leaf over and stamp the painted side down onto a piece of card. Repeat with each leaf, choosing different coloured paints, and stamp around the outside edge of the card.

Complete your frame by cutting out a rectangle in the middle of the card.

Place a picture in the frame and display.

Posted on Sunday, 15 September 2013

Crinkly Caterpillar

Folding paper has never been such fun ...

Cut out two strips of paper 1cm wide by approx 30cm long. Place them one on top of the other, at a right angle, to form a v-shape. Then, fold each piece of paper in turn, behind the other, and repeat until you come to the end of the strip. You should now have the body of your caterpillar.

Draw around a small coin or bottle top and cut out a face. Then, either cut out thin strips of paper, or use pipe cleaners, to make the antennae.

Stick the face and antennae to the first paper fold.

Add googly eyes or draw a face to complete.

There are many more animals that you can make using this technique, just cut larger strips of paper, fold and add faces, paws, tails, etc

Posted on Saturday, 31 August 2013

Chore Door Hanger

A fun way to remind children of household chores and things to do ...

All you need is a wooden door hanger, clothes pegs and some sticky letters and shapes. Paint or decoarate the door hanger to personalise it, then write chores or things to do onto the pegs, and clip them on.

To add colour, you could also paint the pegs and decorate them!

Kit price: door hanger for just 99 centimes or door hanger and stickers for 1.50 euros.

Posted on Saturday, 17 August 2013