Salaric

At our Scout’s Centenary camp I found myself in the craft tent. The ladies next to me had made up some Centenary Cards for the kids to make; these were simple and effective!

They had the cards and envelopes already and then they had cut silver squares that would fit neatly on the card, making a diamond. They had also printed lots of little Scouting Centenary motifs which they got the children to colour in and stick on in the centre of the silver diamond. There were also metallic numbers to make up 100 and other sundres for decorative purposes.

They also had edging and other coloured rectangles of card and foil which created some really nice designs!

Here’s a picture of their equipment!

I would say you need a proper paper guillotine for this sort of project as you need to cut a lot of nice neat rectangles and squares!

Equipment used:

*Picture sheets

*Clothes pegs

*Double sided sticky tape

*Safety scissors

*Coloured pens etc… for decorating

As some people may know it is Scouting’s centenary this year and we have just had our District’s Centenary Camp celebration – I ended up in the craft tent!

These welly pets were very popular, even with the older children, some of whom were the higher end of the teenage spectrum!

The one in the photo is a beaver welly pet but we had wolf cubs as well. The Scouts and Explorer Scouts kept asking where their version was but we hadn’t anticipated interest from the older age ranges so we had none. What we did do was to get them to design their own ones instead.

What you do is put two pictures (in this case the beaver) next to each other on the computer, make sure that the images are mirror images of each other – most graphics and drawing programmes have an easily accessable function for this, along with rotate and flip!

You then print them.

At the camp, the lady running this stall initially had been given folders of lots of sheets with beavers or wolves on – we gave them to the children who coloured them in with felt-tip pens, wax crayons and colouring pencils. Then because there were a lot of kids, the adults cut the shapes out. However, when I did this in an actual beaver meeting, it was possible to supervise the children with safety scissors.

We also put strips of double sided sticky tape on the clothes pegs, on both sides of the peg, and then we attatched the cut-out beavers to it.

The kids absolutely adored this project – the specified use for these beaver pegs is to keep your wellington boots together but some of the children opted to only stick one picture onto the peg so they could use it as a clip!

I made several of these cards for friends’ weddings, some with blue writing, some with purple and some with pink.

I started by folding a piece of white glittery card in four; this card came in a large bulk pack of different colours and textures from Costco, and is slightly bigger than A4. I then selected the paper punches I wanted to use – the correct letters for ‘Enjoy’ and the little bride and groom – which are two seperate punches, the dove and horseshoes, as I thought these were sufficiently representative of matromony.

I then stamped the shapes out of wrapping paper that I have kept from the presants my husband and I received at our own wedding – the silver in fact actually came from an envolope from a card we got!

I then arranged the shapes to my satisfaction and, using pritt stick, glued them in place.

I’m quite pleased with this design.

As part of the Scouts’ Centenary celebration, the Beavers made a centenary tree together. First of all we got some large pieces of green sugar paper (A3 sort of size) and blu-tacked them to the wall to be the trunk of the tree.

We then got the children to draw around their hands on some ordinary white paper. They then cut the hand shapes out carefully using those little safety scissors with some assistance. They then wrote the names of family members down the fingers of the hands and decorated them with glitter, felt-tip pens and stickers.  We then stuck the hands onto the tree trunk as leaves.

The kids loved this one, though I think that because our colony is very small there were not really enough leaves!

I made this card to send to my relatives in Wales for sort of St. David’s Day – spring etc… as I missed sending lots of people Christmas cards this year.

I chose light blue card as the backdrop, custard yellow paper for the outer petals and orange for the central ‘bell’ of the daffodil flower. Then I picked out a bold green for the stem and leaf.

I cut the stem and ‘bell’ out freehand but after three attempts gave up and cut a square of yellow paper for the outer petals. I then folded this in half and half again so that I had a small square of yellow paper. Then I held the corner that would be the middle of the paper when opened up, and cut a leaf/lensoid shape, snipping off the paper to a curved point. When opened out you have the four petal arrangement.

I then arranged these on the pale blue card (which I had folded in half and then in half again). Once satisfied with the look, I glued the pieces on using Pritt Stick.

I think this would also work as a mother’s day card or an Easter card! I was not too happy with the result though, and feel that perhaps I should have been more patient and drawn the shapes out first before cutting.

Shrove Tuesday or pancake day gave me an excuse to make this cool pancake tossing card to send to a friend.

I chose royal purple card for the backdrop, brown card for the frying pan, glittery black card for the frying pan handle, orange card for the hot interior of the pan and yellow paper for the actual pancake.

I folded the purple card in half and then in half again to create the ‘card’ backdrop.

I cut the shapes out – though the frying pan handle had to be cut using the already cut frying pan as a template. The orange inner of the saucepan also had to be trimmed to fit. You probably should measure and mark with a pencil but I prefer to just start cutting!

I then arranged the shapes on the card. Once satisfied that it looked right, I started sticking them on. I had to weight down the corner of the card with the scissors to do so, otherwise the shapes were just pinging straight back off the card. The frying pan had to have the orange and black glued on it first before it was glued to the card. I stuck the pancake on last for alignment purposes.

Our one year old presented us with this, or rather the nursery staff did when we picked her up. 🙂

It’s a simple idea; they’ve cut out two sugar paper (mounting paper – thick, not sure if it counts as card or not) by folding the pieces of paper in half to get nice symmetrical hearts, one larger than the other.

Using poster paints, Jean then decorated the outer pink heart with her little fingerprints in a concentric pattern in blue, yellow and red paint.

They then stuck the smaller yellow heart in the middle with the valentine’s message neatly written on it.

Being her parents we thought it was the best thing ever and it’s gone straight up on the wall. 🙂

I ended up having to work out a craft project for our Cubs for Chinese New Year. However, I could not find anything on how to make the lanterns I had initially envisioned them making – so I cast my mind back in time.

I have a vague memory of doing a play called something like ‘Ching Ching and the Dragon’ in junior school. We made dragons for the puppet show in the play. I vaguely remembered a technique for folding paper so started experimenting.

My first attempt I decided was good enough.

I cut some strips of coloured card about 1.5cm in width; the pieces of card I had, however, were A3 size and too big for the paper guillotine, so I had to chop a bit from the bottom first.

I chose what I consider to be dragon colours, so they were red, green, yellow and blue. For my prototype, I chose blue and yellow, and placing the ends of the card strips one over the other at a 90 degree angle, I then folded one piece over the other. You fold the coloured card alternately going around the ‘square’ so blue, yellow, blue, yellow and so on.

Because the card strips I had weren’t quite long enough, I had to overlap the ends of the card strips with a second strip of the same colours, so in some places there is a double thickness of cardboard.

The head and tail were a bit tricky; I sort of imagined very square features so that I could work out a sort of box that could be stuck on. I also added lots of curves as I think they look a bit like flames and very dragony.

I drew the rough outlines and then scored along the bits that would need folding (this makes folding easier and gets a nice neat line). I folded the head and tail into shape and then stuck them onto the body using sellotape (I made a loop of sellotape with the sticky side out, but double-sided tape would be better.) I then cut out some fins for the tail and stuck them on with the sellotape.

This done, I took two plastic drinking straws and cut the bendy ends off. I then stuck these to the body of the dragon inside the ‘pleats’ with sellotape. This all worked a lot better then I had expected!

I then drew out the designs for the head and tail, including fins, in fine-liner pen, including dotted lines for where the children would need to fold the cardboard. I then scanned them and tidied up the digital image a bit (ie correcting the mistake of a solid line that was supposed to a dashed line for folding), using a programme called the Gimp. I put two copies of it on to an A4 sheet and printed them onto brightly coloured paper (we had run out of card).

I also did a ‘proper’ set of easily understood instructions for the kids – the kids did really well with this. Here is one of their dragons: 🙂

This project got nicked by an art teatcher for her secondary school kids so I was quiet chuffed. 🙂 I still have my digital copy of the head and tail.

Here are the instructions:

Needed:

3 strips of one coloured card

3 strips of a different coloured card

1 dragon sheet with shape out lines on

Scissors

Sellotape

Pens and things for decorating

2 drinking straws

Method

Take two strips of card, preferably different colours, place the ends of the strips together so that they overlap and make a right angle. Fold the bottom colour over the top of the top colour – alternate.

So it should be blue, red, blue, red. You should end up with a squared shape of folded card. When you are near the end of the first two strips, lay the next two over the top and continue folding as before – make sure there is lots of overlap. Once you get to the end of these strips, do the same with the next two.

You now have the dragon’s body. You may have to cut excess card off the finishing end. Double-sided sellotape or single-sided sellotape looped back on itself should be used to secure the very ends of the body to prevent unravelling.

Cut out the dragon’s head and draw eyes and nostrils on it. Fold along the dashed lines and sellotape the tabs on the jaw to the sides of the head. Using double-sided tape, attach to one end of the body.

Cut out the tail and back fin. Again, fold along the dashed lines. Stick the fins on the tail and, using the sellotape, stick the tail on the other end of the body.

Take two drinking straws and cut off the tops just before the bendy bit. Attach these to the underside of the body, one under the head and one under the tail.

Spell check and links coming soon!

I made this card for a friend who was going away to sunny climes, leaving the rest of us to freeze – sort of a bon-voyage card.

Equipment needed:

Paper Card Pritt stick or equivalent Fine-line pen

Mainly what I do with these cards is think about what sort of things I want on the card, and then collect together the different colours I want and the paper punches I want. In this case, I chose pale blue card for the actual card. Then I selected dark blue paper for the sea. This paper has a sugar paper type texture to it – ie it’s not glossy printing paper, more like mounting paper you get in schools.

Yellow paper for the sand.

Red for the boat and the crab.

Orange for the starfish and the sun.

Green for the leaves of the palm.

Brown card for the palm tree’s trunk.

Pink paper for the shell, and white for the boat’s sail and clouds (the white paper was actually an old envelope).

I punched out a selection of shapes becuase originally I wasn’t sure exactly what sort of design I was going for. In the end I used:

Six cloud shapes – these were punched out of white paper

One orange sun

One orange starfish

One pink shell

I also punched one red crab out.

When punching out of the paper I find it’s better to fold the paper twice, as the shapes punch more easily that way. If you just have one thickness of paper I find that the shapes tear out instead of looking clean cut.

I had to punch out three palm trees – one out of yellow paper, one out of green paper and one out of brown card. I then used the thicker brown card as a base. I cut the bottom off the yellow tree and stuck it onto the brown tree. This is the sand. I then cut the green leafy bit off the green tree and stuck that onto the brown tree. I was actaully quite impressed with the result.

For the boat, I used the same technique as I did with the tree. I punched out a red boat and a white boat – then I cut the white boat’s sail off and stuck it onto the red boat.

I then folded the pale blue card into four, making sure I lined up the edges as much as possible.

This produces a card that stands up. I use card that I got in a big multipack in Costco’s. It is slightly bigger than A4 when unfolded but folded in four makes a good card size!

I then cut out a piece of dark blue paper to stick on as the sea, and stuck it onto the pale blue card, leaving a nice bit of pale blue showing as the sky.

Then I cut a strip of yellow paper for the sand and stuck that on.

I then arranged the shapes on the card to see where I wanted things.

Once satisfied, I started gluing the shapes on. As a finishing touch, I drew some features on the pink shell to make it look more like a shell and less like a pink blob!

I think great variety and style can be achieved by overlapping shapes, as in the case of the sun and two clouds on this card. Just as an aside, I actually sell these paper punches.