Craft Idea: Chinese Lanterns

Here's a fun craft idea to celebrate Chinese New Year with (which will be on Monday, Jan. 23, and it will be the year of the dragon).

Fun, cheap, and pretty easy to do!  Here's the link to the instructions.  I used one inch red construction paper for the streamers and glue sticks in place of double sided tape.  It seemed to work fine, and the kids had fun making them!  We didn't have anything decorative for the top or bottom of the lanterns, but the lanterns turned out very pretty regardless.

Craft Idea: Recycled Card Ornaments

 
Brought to you by Martha Stewart crafts!  Here's the link to the instructions.  I've only done the globe ornament (pictured in the upper left), but all the ornaments seem like easy and fun projects you can do with old Christmas cards.  Or you could let the kids decorate a blank piece of cardstock and use that for the decorations.  Either way, lots of fun!

Craft Idea: Make Your Own Gift Bows

Here's the DIY gift bow project I promised in my last post.  Like the bag craft, it's easy, cheap, and you can use it for gifting purposes!

Here's the link to the tutorial.  The original craft uses recycled yellow pages, which gives it a pretty cool look, but I've made them with magazine pages before.  I'm sure you could also make it with any paper, as long as it is not too heavy.  Happy crafting!

Craft Idea: Make Your Own Gift Bag

Looking for something to entertain the kids?  This is easy and cheap, AND you can use it for gift wrapping purposes this season! 

Make your own gift bag!  Here's the tutorial that will show you step by step how to make this bag.  The best part about this is how easy it is to customize your bag.  The tutorial uses newspapers, but you can really use almost anything as long as it is large enough (butcher paper, wrapping paper, etc.).  Also, you can experiment with different sizes by changing the measurements quite easily.

In the next day or two, I'm going to post another tutorial that shows you how to make your own bows, which should complement this craft pretty well.

Craft Idea: Turkey Bookmarks

If you're looking for a last minute craft idea to keep the kids occupied while making dinner, try having them make a turkey page corner bookmark! It's relatively simple, cute, and serves as a bookmark for all their reading needs.

I adapted the monster page corner bookmark from this blog.  It's the same idea, except instead of teeth, I added feathers and a triangle for the beak.  Here's a template from the blog that will allow you to make the body of the turkey (ignore the teeth and body insert if you want).  For the beak, I actually used one triangle from the monster teeth, and I drew my own template for the feathers.  I'm not sure if this is scaled to the right size, but here's my template that I adapted from the original to make the bookmarks.  I used this as a craft for an after school program at the library for older kids, and they had a blast making them.  I hope you do too!