Salaric

For this bat I used, a pair of scissors, white PVA craft glue, one small-ish black pompom about 1cm in diameter, two small googly eyes and one leaf shaped black foam shape.

I cut the shape for the wings out of the leaf shaped bit of black foam sheeting – I would recomend drawing out the shapes first – what I did however is I thought – umberella – sounds strange I know but it got me the correct shape. I cut out each wing seperatly then made a slite either side of the black pompom with the scissors – I did discover that the saftey scissors are a bit useless as this and resorted to using the small pair of scissors on my swiss army pen knife.

I then squidged in some glue into the slites and pushed a wing into each – I squeezed the whole closed over the end of the wing and waited a bit before letting go.

I then left it to stand so the glue could dry. Whilst it was drying I gingerly added the eyes. I think this would have been better if I’d used a needle and some black cotton and attatched a thread to it so that it could hang up – still this was incredibly simple and i think an easy kids project – my Scout group loved the bat.

I found a big pack of 3D paint pens in Costco for about £7 so I have been having a lot of fun with them, seeing what effects you can get and exactly how they dry. In the pack there are 40-plus different pens, ranging from three types of glitter, metallic to neon! They are also washable so useful for children’s art projects.

The paint dries raised, hence them being called 3D paints.

I made this fireworks card as an early experiment.

First of all I got a piece of black card with little bits of silver glinting off it – again this was a Costco purchase and was an extra in a card activity pack I bought there. It is actually meant to be mounting card and so is therefore slightly larger than A4. To start with, I folded it in half along the long side of the sheet to make a nice ‘card’ shape.

I then picked a nice pastel brown colour for the wood at the base of the bonfire. You have to unscrew the nozzle of these pens and remove a little blue plastic plug; you then replace the nozzle. To draw with them you squeeze the tube and the paint comes out like runny icing. I drew the shapes of the logs – when I initially drew them they were a lot more defined – but the paint flowed together again, giving everything a slightly more chunky and organic look.

I waited for the brown to dry a bit before selecting a pastel orange for the flames of the bonfire; the brown had dried a lot darker than I had expected from the initial colour of the pen, but I thought it still looked ok.

I drew the shape of the fire with a few little offshoots and then began to fill the outline in – I only needed to draw a series of lines in the fire shape, getting smaller as the paint flowed and merged together to give a uniform appearance.

I then left it to dry.

To my horror I realised that the brown hadn’t dried a lot darker but that the paint was drying transparently and the paper, of course, was black. The same was happening to the orange, with the result that instead of a nice vibrant fire I had a big shiny patch that looked black!

However, I decided to continue as I reasoned that it was salvageable. I decided to add fireworks in the sky using the glitter pens, whilst I waited for the fire to completely dry.

I left the glitter to dry and discovered that it doesn’t dry raised, unfortunately. But I then used red, orange and yellow glitter for the fire utilising the already-transparent paint as a guide! This worked really well.

I would, however, say that the paint takes far too long to dry, rendering the pens useless for groups like Guides and Scouts, but probably fine for places where you can leave the projects to dry overnight etc…

I made Boris the blue and yellow spider back when I was a young leader at my Guide Troop. I was given lots of fuzzy pom-pom type balls in various colours and sizes, several sheets of coloured felt, some pre-cut felt shapes, scissors, and lots and lots of sticky glue – PVA or white craft glue. Then they left me to it with about ten girls.

I chose a pre-cut piece of yellow felt that I thought was a suitable shape for the legs, and then glued a 5 cm blue fluffy ball onto it as Boris’s body. I found a 5 mm beige ball which I stuck on for the nose, and then drew some eyes in pencil on some paper that I cut out and glued on. I also had to make eyes for all the guides!

I also cut out a curved piece of yellow felt for a mouth and stuck that on – this was lots of fun and very easy to do. Boris is over ten years old now, hence he looks a bit battered, especially as he came to university with me as a homework aid!

The only thing I would do differently is that I would also get lots of goggly eyes to stick on, as that would be so much easier than having to draw them and cut the tiny fiddly shapes out.

Boris is always a favourite at halloween parties too. 🙂 I feel that it would be a good craft activity to do with children for halloween, as the technique could be used to make cats, bats and pumpkins!

Our village was having a paper boat race as a joint event to raise funds for the village feast and the Scout group’s chosen charity Akanyo Voko, so I’ve been having the scouts making and experimenting with lots of different types of paper boats. We experimented with two types of origami boats, including the catamaran, and each will have its own write-up later on. But the style of boats that the kids liked best were ones where you draw circles at various points.

Here are a selection of what they produced with this:

The number of circles was entirely up to the child and they had lots of fun experimenting!

Equipment needed:

Paper

Scissors (we use safety scissors)

Compass or selection of cups etc… for drawing around

Pencils

I also put 4 copies of my dragon template onto one A4 sheet and printed these off onto coloured card for them to decorate the finished boats with.

The simplest type of boat you can make with this concept is one that has two circles of the same size joined by lines, so it sort of makes a 2D sausage shape. Then you cut around the shape, and to make it into a boat you draw a line to the centre of each circle from the ends. You then cut down this line and slide the bits of paper either side of the slit over each other, and fix them in place either with sellotape or as we found best – a paper clip – that way we could alter the shape slightly if we weren’t happy.

The length of the boat was up to the child, as was the size of the circles, you can also use one large and one small circle to get some interesting effects.

You can also do three circles in a triangle; the two circles at the ‘fat’ end of the triangle can be far apart or closely overlapping.

Four circles we found made a flatter, more stable craft, though you have to cut the circles at an angle of 45 degrees from where the corner would be if it was a square or rectangle. The size of the circles determined the depth of boat.

One of the boys was very innovative and overlapped the slight circles at the front of his boat so much that it ended up with a ‘cone’ for a nose! This actually did float very well when we tested them.

Another pattern was one that had overlapped circles all the way round, in a sort of rectangle. I wasn’t sure this one was going to work but it did! However they sort of curled over to give the boat a protective rim, and other versions of it that he made just had a nice scalloped edge effect if he just left the circles uncut.

One of them made a lovely little boat by drawing the circles overlapping in an eight-petalled flower – this made a round boat that was very sturdy in the water and we felt it was only right should be decorated as a dragon!

The kids decorated the boats in various ways, using colouring pencils and pens, the dragon templates, and gems and glitter.

I made this when I was about fourteen at Guides.

We were given stockings or the legs chopped off old laddered tights and we put a handful of grass seed into where the toes would go. Then we poured in sawdust on top of the seeds.

When we thought we had enough to make a decent head we pulled out a piece of the stocking, making sure it contained some sawdust, and pinched it so it became a little bud, we then twisted it so that the ‘neck’ of stocking material was closed, and tied it with cotton so it would keep its shape – this was the nose!

We then made sure there was enough sawdust in the head and that the nose would end up in the right sort of position. We tied a knot in the leg of the stocking, trying to make sure there was no excess space or the head would be all floppy!

We then sat them in mugs with the knot at the bottom and drew faces on them with felt tip pens!

The idea is that you stand them in water, which soaks up through the sawdust, and the grass grows into hair. I felt that the felt pen would run if I did this so never got around to growing the hair – but I will probably give that a go when my daughter’s a bit older.

This was a fun project and I am thinking it would be a nice one to try with my Scouts in the winter.

At the Scouts’ Centenary camp there were these little plywood animal shapes with little magnets in the back of them. This activity was really aimed at Cub- and Beaver-aged children, so primary school age but again it appealed to the older age groups too!

I found that I had to paint one to show one group how to paint them. :/

We used water-based washable poster paints so it was important to tell the children beforehand that they had to start with their base colour and let each layer dry, otherwise it would smudge and mix the colours.

The other thing I found is that the paintbrushes children are expected to paint with are really hard to use!

One of my Scouts made this card at the District Centenary Camp, where I found myself stationed in the craft tent. Said scout was feeling a bit off colour so was helping me do crafts. The card itself came from a pack with the window already cut into it. The Scout then cut out the shapes she wanted and glued them onto the back of the window and on the card behind the window to give a lovely 3D effect.

She was aiming at it being a jungle and glued on flowers and bits she found lurking around. She also drew on the brown monkey and the green snake and some of the vegitation. She stuck a foam snail in the corner and then used some foam letters she found to write ‘The Jungle’ on it.

As this particular Scout is only ten, I thought this card was absolutely fantastic! 🙂

It has also given me a few ideas to try with my own card making.

On Centenary Camp one of my Scouts decorated this lovely picture frame. Basically the frames came ready to decorate though they are made out what appears to be thick brown card and brown matt parcel tape with a course brown twine as the hanger.

The man who was running this stall turned up with lots of gems including flowers and butterflies with sticky backs which the kids could just stick straight on to their chosen frames! He also had foam shapes and little fluffy pom-poms. My Scout also used a fine liner pen to draw on the butterflies’ trail as the picture within the frame!

The frames themselves came in a variety of shapes such as circles, squares and hearts!

Again this was an easy but effective activity and the children flocked to it!

At our Scouts Centenary Camp I found myself in the craft tent were they had a fantastic badge maker!

It arrived with lots of shiny metal badges and clear discs to be pressed onto the top. It came with the press and a circle cutter so I was impressed (ie instead of having to try and cut printed circles out with saftey scissors you just put this short sort of cylinder down on the paper and whizz the handle around which I presume moves a blade along the inside, creating a perfect circle).

You give the circles of paper to the kids who decorate it, I used colouring pens and pencils. The design then gets sandwiched between the badge back and the clear plastic disc and then put in the machine. The guy then pushed the handle down and one nice shiny badge came out 🙂

One of my scouts made this shrink keyring. I’ve seen these in the Hindles catalogue but had never seen them in action before – I was quite impressed and the kids loved it!

Equipment:

*Oven

*Split ring keyrings

*Hole punch

*Goggly eyes

*Saftey Scissors

*Colouring Pencils

*Special shrinking plastic

For the younger children we just used pre-made designs which the children coloured in, such as butterflies, snails, bees and other creepy crawlies! For the older children we just had blank sheets which they could draw their own designs on.

It is important that only colouring pencils are used and not felt-tip pens as it is put in the oven for a while.

Once the design is coloured in you cut it out and hole punch it, then you put it in the oven for a minute – I don’t know at what temperature but hopefully that is on the packet!

The plastic shrinks down and thickens, retaining and concentrating the colours. You then attach the keyrings and if you want, glue on the goggly eyes 🙂

This was fun and even I had a go, though I forgot to hole punch mine so it couldn’t be made into a keyring sadly. 🙁