Archive for the ‘Papercraft’ Category

Easter Baskets

Easter seems to have crept up on me this year. Suddenly I have too many projects and too little time to post them. So here are 2 projects crammed into one.
The first is a basket made out of a plastic soft drink bottle. An adult will need to assist in this project as it requires some fairly heavy duty cutting and a burning candle flame. I used the flame to heat the petals of the flower basket in order to keep them in place. This isn’t as difficult or dangerous as it sounds! You simply bend back the petal and slowly bring the folded part closer to the flame until it slightly buckles and stays in place. I then covered the basket with tissue paper and PVA, but you could also spray paint it for a faster finish.
Click here for full instructions (Pdf)


The next project is a quick and easy Easter Bunny face that doubles as a treat bag to store your eggs.

To make this bag, you will need 3 x paper plates, ribbon or string, a stapler and items to decorate the face. Click here for full instructions

More of my Easter crafts:

Easter Suncatcher

Easter Foam Eggs

Paper Plate Basket

funfrugalmommy A++

Tooth Fairy Door


Finally – we have a wobbly tooth! A good friend once gave me some wise advice about the first Tooth Fairy visit. When her daughter lost her first tooth, the enthusiastic Fairy left, not only coins, but a dazzling display of glitter trails, streamers and hand-cut paper flowers. Several teeth later it dawned on my friend that old TF may have peaked too soon and failed to take into account that children lose about 20 teeth in total. As my friend had twin girls she was naturally concerned that TF would struggle to continually meet the very high standard she had left on her first visit. (Personally I suspect TF may have had too much fairy chardonnay that night, but I digress.)

With this in mind, we decided to make it easier for the Tooth Fairy and create a little spot dedicated to tooth retrieval. I saw these cute mini doors here. I haven’t found anything locally so I thought I’d have a go at making our own.


For this project you will need a piece of regular box card – the type with corrugated fluting on the inside. The fluting is important as the door is hinged via a skewer threaded down the centre of the cardboard.

I liked the idea of an outside world inside the box, so we painted the interior with landscape colours. Then we made a little tree from ‘Make & Bake Clay’. In the tree is a tiny nest to place the tooth in. To strengthen the tree I first twisted a wire frame, then we wound the brown clay around it. I rolled out some green clay and cut leaf shapes with a craft knife.

Click here for full instructions (Pdf)

Butterflies & Baubles

Things are looking decidedly pink at the centre. The month of October 2011 is ‘Pinktober’ for breast cancer awareness. Following Pinktober we will be raising funds for The Centre for Cerebral Palsy. As their poster features pink butterflies, we decided to combine the two themes. For the hanging centrepiece I made a giant pink butterfly from cardboard, cellophane and sequins. I also decorated some plain Christmas baubles to suspend underneath the butterfly. I used garden polypipe to make the frame to hang the objects from. The frame is held together with duct tape and wrapped in light pink crepe paper streamer.


Faber Castell Glass Markers work on glass, plastic and other non-porous surfaces. Simply draw on the surface and, as the ink dries, the colour brightens. Great for small children as they are non-toxic and very easy to use. They also snap together with novelty connector lids – a fact I find less interesting, but one that my children think is ‘awesome’. Local readers: I found these at Kmart, but you could also try arts/craft/stationery stores.
More of my pink crafts:

Peg Butterflies

Party Spoons

Wacky Wigs

Paper Plate Handbags

Paper plates are a staple in any craft kit. The plain cardboard generic brands work best as they are thin and have no plastic coating on them. Hopeless for putting food on but brilliant for drawing, gluing, cutting, stapling and painting. Decorating is purely optional. If you are making this for a boy and wish to ‘man it up’ a little, tie it around their waist for a bum bag. (US readers, I think you call them ‘Fanny Bags’, but we don’t here in Australia – I’ll spare you the explanation. Google it if you’re curious)


Paper Plate Handbags are easy to make, all you need is 2 plates, a stapler and some ribbon or string. Decorating is entirely up to you. The plates pictured below have a coat of acrylic applied first. For a quick and easy project, leave the plates plain then children can decorate the finished bags with stickers, markers, crayons etc.
Click here for full instructions (Simple Bag)

Click here for full instructions (Pdf)

*Much cheaper than the real thing, AND you can barely tell the difference! Although, like the genuine article, try not to get it wet….

More of my paper plate crafts:

Easter Suncatcher

Paper Plate Basket

3D Opera House


Cardboard Chandelier

Here’s how to turn 2 cereal boxes, 1 cardboard roll, 1 soft drink bottle and a few paperclips into:
The instructions for making this chandelier are fairly detailed, but here’s an overview:

    • The centre of the chandelier is a kitchen towel cardboard roll.
    • The chandelier arms and embellishments are made from cereal box cardboard, painted with black acrylic.
    • The teardrop ‘jewels’ dangling from the base are cut from a clear soft drink bottle.
    • The chains are linked paperclips.
    • I didn’t use any glue or staples in this project. The whole thing is held together with interlocking cuts into the cardboard. The paperclips link together and hang from the chandelier via holes punched into each piece.
    • Printable cutting templates are available on the instruction sheets.
    • Younger children will find these shapes too difficult to cut, so I have also provided a simpler version of the chandelier template (See the pink chandelier pictured below)

Click here for full instructions (Pdf)






Above: Cardboard Chandelier #2 - Simple(r!) Version


*NB. I am sure this goes without saying, but I will anyway. I do not recommend you try combining this project with real light globes. It is cardboard – it will catch fire – your house will burn down….

More of my cardboard crafts:

Chinese Lantern

 

Easter Suncatcher

Caterpillar

 

 

Candace Creations

IhookedupwithHoHlamespice

Strawberry Pot

This pot is made by layering sheets of tissue paper and paper mache glue. The type of glue used here is called ‘Mix-a-Paste’, sometimes known as ‘Methyl Cellulose’. It comes in a powdered form from craft stores (eg Jacksons), but I think it is very similar to wallpaper paste. If neither of those options are available, try ordinary paper glue such as Clag or watered down PVA. Methyl Cellulose is a very ecomomical adhesive. A very small amount of powder makes alot of glue when mixed with water. Although it isn’t a strong adhesive, it is perfect for paper projects such as this one.

You will need: red & green tissue, glue, brush, scissors, green pipecleaner and 2 bowls. The bowls I have used are about 11cm in diameter and 7cm in height – but anything close to that size will be fine. Allow 2 days to make this one as the pots need to dry overnight before you can remove them from the bowls.

 

Click here for instructions (Pdf)

Football Party Favours

What is this? It’s a paper mache football for holding party favours….obviously! To make these you will need some bowls to use as moulds. I used paper bowls as I needed to make many footballs in one go (see my assembly line below), but a normal, round bottomed, bowl from your kitchen will work fine. The footballs are comprised of 4 small sheets of brown tissue, glue and wool – plus the treats inside. Click here for full instructions (Pdf)

Sunflower Bowl

Following on from my last ‘Strawberry Pot‘ post, this is a bowl made using the same technique of layering tissue paper and paper mache glue.

The Sunflower Bowl is very simple to make as you only need to layer 8-12 sheets of tissue rather than many small pieces of torn paper as you would in normal paper mache. Pictured below is a lid I made using the same technique but with brown tissue. Click here for full instructions (PDf)

Partytime; Decorating the Cups.

Why is every toy we buy secured with thousands of little twisty-plastic-wire thingos? Who decided that all toys must now be fastened in a manner appropriate for a suspension bridge or deep sea oil rig? As if removing them isn’t hard enough, it is always accompanied by an hysterically excited child, incredulous that you could take this long to extricate a piece of plastic from it’s packaging.  Meanwhile, the clock is ticking and you’re running out of valuable time to prepare all the party food for the battalion of savages -sorry – children who will shortly arrive to raze your house to the ground…

My despair turned to delight when I finally found a use for these annoying wire fasteners: as stems for crepe flowers to wind around objects. In this case the object is plastic cups for a children’s party. You can use either crepe or tissue paper for this project.

Cut thin strips

Dot of PVA

Kink the wire & attach

Roll the crepe around

More PVA for the end

Secure the base

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click the link below for more detailed instructions on how to make these flower ties. The next post will be “Colour Mixing Mocktails” in which we will make fun drinks to fill the cups with.

Click here for ‘Crepe Flower’ instructions

Paper Plate Easter Baskets

An Easter Egg hunt is not complete without an Easter basket to store the eggs in. Try making this simple basket using plain paper plates.

You will need plain white paper plates, paint, scissors and a stapler. The eggs pictured above are my painted foam eggs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click here for “Paper Plate Basket” instructions