Tutorial for Felt Butterfly & Flowers Wall Hanging - Printable Templates

We made Butterfly & Flower Wall Hangings this week at Mencap...

If you would like to make them with your family or with your group - they really do appeal to girls of all ages...!    Here is the Tutorial with Printable Templates.

What you will need...

Felt - A4 sheet for the background

Self-adhesive felt to decorate the butterfly - or use glue...

Felt scraps for Butterfly, Flowers and Hearts

Buttons

Embroidery thread

Thin dowel (we used green garden canes cut to size) 

Ribbon or cord to hang

How to make...

Turn over a narrow hem, just wide enough to slip your dowel into, and stitch - either by hand or on your machine, as I did.

Cut out your butterfly and flowers / hearts (mine are die cut, but you can use this flower and heart template)

Butterfly Template

Flower Template

Heart Template

Stitch your butterfly onto your background with a running stitch.

Cut the butterfly body out and stitch or stick it on top.

Decorate the butterfly with pieces of contrasting felt - use self-adhesive felt or use glue to attach.

Attach your flowers / hearts - we used buttons to secure them to the background.

Slip the dowel into the hemmed top and tie on your ribbon or cord.

Hope you all enjoyed making your Butterfly Wall Hangings!

Funky Washer Necklaces - Tutorial!

These simple Washer Necklaces are very easy to put together and our class at Mencap really loved creating their own combinations of colours and designs...

What you need...

Metal washers - an assortment of sizes - look at your hardware shop for these...

Nail varnish - we bought a cheap variety - plain colours and one with sparkles in it.

Yarn or cord or leather strips - we used a cotton/rayon yarn but use any suitable - each strip about 108mm long (43inches)

Pony beads - large hole bead

Blue or White Tack (to mount beads on, when painting)

How to make...

Mount your washer on a lump of Blue or White Tack (to raise it up from your table) and paint the top side and edges with your nail varnish.

When dry, take your yarn (you can use a single piece or two or three lengths of yarn - see photos) and fold in half. 

Thread the rounded end through the washer and loop the ends through so your washer hangs from the centre of your yarn.

Thread on beads and maybe add another washer - see our examples for ideas...

Tie the ends of the yarn together and you are done...

Easy to make and lovely to wear...!

Enjoy the fun of creating these funky Washer Necklaces...!

Two eBooks - 41 Easy Quizzes & Simple Craft and Activities...

I have put together two eBooks to help you with your groups...
41 Easy Quizzes and Answers and Simple Crafts and Activities...
read on for more details on how to get yours...

My eBook Simple Crafts and Activities is now available to buy for a nominal fee of £2.75 (Paypal only please) and then can be downloaded instantly in a PDF file format - ready to print either in total or only the pages you need for a project...

This eBook will save you hours of searching for crafts and activities - suitable for the older folk, but also many craft projects for any age...

All my tutorials have printable templates to make it easy for you...

So click here and have a look...Simple Crafts and Activities

41 easy Quizzes with Answers is available if you are looking for quizzes - especially set for the older generation... Also only £2.75 and printable PDF file download.

Cat Collage A4 Calendars - Tutorial!

We made Cat Collage A4 Calendars at Mencap this week...

What better way to start a new term in the New Year?

The choice of schemes is endless but we decided on Cats!

Enjoy making yours with your group...

What you will need...

A4 Card - we used Black Card

Strips of coloured paper - plain and/or designed

Cat pictures - cut from a book found in a charity shop

 Templates to print - Cat drawings to be coloured in and cut out 

(gathered from free colouring pages)

Glue stick

Punch and string for hanging

Calendar tabs - we found ours on eBay

Doubled-sided adhesive tape

How to make...

Glue your strips of coloured paper onto the card - leave some black showing through if you like

Colour in you cats and stick them and other cut-out cats on top of your strips of coloured paper

Using double sided tape or glue - stick on the calendar tab

Punch two holes at the centre top and thread a piece of string/cord through for hanging.

Three New Christmas Placemats - Print and Colour-in..!

Keep everyone busy, in the run up to the Festive Season - Three new printable Christmas Placemats, for you and your groups and families to colour-in, ready for your Christmas Dinner table...

Here is the link ...   Three Christmas Placemats

Also - why not make this little felt Christmas stocking - fill it with candy and hang it on your tree...!

Tutorial - Felt Christmas Stocking Decoration

Easy 3D Tissue Flowers in a Vase - Tutorial and template

So easy to make these 3D Tissue Flowers - we put them in a vase and mounted them onto black card...! 

These tissue flowers can also be made to decorate greeting cards - just make them smaller to fit your card.

What you will need...

Tissue paper

Stems - we used wooden coffee stick-stirrers but you can use string, paper strips etc

Print-out of template for vase

A4 sheet black card

Strip coloured paper for "table cloth"

Double sided sticky pads

Glue stick

Stapler

Stickers and bows (optional)

How to make them...

Cut out one vase template (there are two on each print-out) crease down lines on sides and bottom.

Turn it over and colour-in your vase front.

Then on the coloured side - Apply glue to the tabs - bottom and sides..

Attach the bottom tab to your black card and then ...

folding your glued tabs inwards, attach you vase to the black card. Push the tabs inwards so the vase is 3D and not flat.

Fold your tissue paper so you have about 20 layers of tissue (approx 9cms square) and staple twice in centre as per picture below.

Cut into a circle (no need to measure - doesn't matter if a bit wobbly!) and then cut into edges about 1cm (as below)

Then, one layer at a time, separate the tissue layers and pinch up into the centre.

Place your stems in the vase (fix in place with a piece of double-sided adhesive pad) and then attach your flowers - also using double-sided adhesive pads.

Finish with a strip of coloured paper across the bottom "table cloth" and we added a few butterfly stickers...

These 3D Tissue Flowers can also be used on greeting cards - make them any size you want...!

Paper Lanterns - Tutorial...!

I'm sure most of you have made these Paper Lanterns at some time in your life - either as a child or with your own children - but in case you need a brush-up here is a good tutorial...

First Pallette

Diwali - an ancient Hindu festival, known as "The Festival of Lights" is celebrated this week and these lanterns are also great for Christmas decorations too...

We used thin card for the Lanterns and decorated them with glitter, stickers, ribbon, lace and shiny confetti, but you can use anything you have, that will enhance these colourful Lanterns.
 

Enjoy making your lanterns....!

Beady Head Keyrings - Tutorial Wooden Bead & Felt Dolls

You just must love these little Beady Head Keyrings!

We made them at Mencap this week and even two little boy Beady Heads appeared..

We discovered how to make these little fellows by following 

this very good Tutorial...

Artmind

We used self adhesive felt for the clothes and stuck the buttons and bling on with double side adhesive tape. 

We added a keyring and some of the class made a string of beads to hang alongside.

Have fun making your own Beady Heads!

Village Collage - Easy but so Creative!

Jenna with our Village Collage

Collage is always a favourite project at our Art and Craft Group. It is very creative and I am always intrigued with what our group produces.

We chose to do a Village Collage this week. We used old magazines and I asked them not to worry about the actual pictures, but to just look at the colours in the pictures.

After all the cutting and sticking had been done, we outlined their houses with a black felt tip pen. No precise measuring was done! The charm of the houses in our village is their slightly wonky look - straight out of fairyland...

Then we cut around each cluster of houses (on the A4 card) to make an interesting shape and stuck them all onto a sheet of A2 black card.

All you will need for this project is...

Old magazines or junk mail

Glue sticks

Black pen

A4 Card (we used mixed colours)

A sheet of A2 card (for every 4 x  A4 cards)

Butterfly stickers (optional)

Have fun making your village!

My Blog is now User-Friendly! Eight new Craft and Quiz Menu Buttons...

After five years of posting Craft and Quizzes onto my Blog, I felt it was time to make it more User-friendly...

I have added eight new pages - each one containing a list of links to the Tutorials in my Blog.

Each page has a button in the Menu above - so do have a browse and see what you fancy having a look at...

Thanks to all my visitors - do hope you find my Blog helpful in finding suitable Craft and Quizzes for your groups, yourself and your families...

Pop Up Books Monsters and Frozen - a lot of fun and easy to do craft - Tutorial!

 Monster Pop Up Book 

Frozen Pop Up Book

 When we say we made Monsters and Frozen "Pop Up Books" at Mencap Art and Craft Group, we actually made one Pop Up page in our Project Books. These books are carried through the year and added to, with different themes - many relating to the seasons and holidays in the calendar year. 

What you will need -

Either, like us, an A4 book with good quality art paper or you can just fold an A3 sheet of card in half and use that...

Glue stick

Colouring in pens

A4 sheet of thin card to make the Pop Up facility - to make this, look at this excellent tutorial...

Extreme Paper Crafting - Pop up basics  (Follow Tutorial 1 The Box)

If you want to use my Frozen or Monsters prints, here is the link

Monsters Pop Up

Frozen Pop Up

or you can use you own pictures - do check the sizes as they need to be within the page when the book or card is closed...

How to make up...

Colour in the pictures

Glue the Pop Up facility into you book or card - make sure you do not glue the bits that Pop Out...

Glue and place your pictures 

Here are some we made...

Mod Podge on Hardback Notebooks - Decorating the cover!

This week, at Mencap, we decided to try our hand at using Mod Podge...!

What you will need...

Deciding that working on a flat surface was the best choice for a first attempt, we bought some A5 Hardback Notebooks.

A Bottle of Mod Podge Gloss 

Some Sponge "Brushes"

We decided to use some fairy and woodland cutouts we had and some craft paper that we use for backing paper, on greeting cards. 

(Mod Podge works best on fairly thick paper we found - sheets of thin paper wrinkled a lot - sometimes this is a desired effect, but not for our project)  

How to do it...

We found Mod Podge Rocks a very useful site, with loads of tutorials - here is the link...explains how to use Mod Podge far better than I can!

 Learn How to Use Mod Podge

So enjoy using this wonderful product - don't worry if it looks white and patchy when you finish your work - by the next day it will have dried clear and bright - very rewarding! 

Beach Hut Birthday Cards Tutorial - Summer Activity!

Caroline and Paula's cards

 As we started the last term of the year at Mencap, we decided to make Beach Hut Birthday cards - a last bit of Summer fun, by the look of the changing weather, here in Essex...Autumn approaches!

What you need...

Blank greeting cards (rectangular shape)
Coloured paper 
Thin card (for the door)
Happy Birthday wording - stickers or print my sheet out here
Colouring-in pens 
Glue stick
Seaside theme stickers (optional)

How to make...

With the card folded, make a mark on the top edge, half way across. 
Make another mark on each side of the card, about a third of the way down.
Draw a line from these side marks to the top mark and then cut, to make the roof shape.

Cut a rectangle of thin card for the door.

Cut strips of coloured paper for the stripes on the roof and walls. Cut them about 1cm longer than you need.

Using a glue stick (any glue actually will do) stick the coloured strips of paper onto the roof and walls. (Leave some white stripes showing if you like)

Let the ends of the strips stick out from the card. When dry, turn the card over and trim the strips back to the edges of the card.

Glue on the door.

Colour-in and attach the "Happy Birthday" and apply the seaside theme stickers.

Nicola made this bright card!

 Enjoy making these Beach Hut Birthday Cards with your group...

The Wizard of Oz - a Poster!

 The Wizard of Oz

 

Some of our group at Mencap in Braintree are going to Southend-on-Sea in August to see the stage show of "The Wizard of Oz", so we decided to make a poster...

The prints of the original cover and first page of L. Frank Baum's book (1900) we found on Gutenberg

The characters - printable versions of Dorothy with Toto, Scarecrow, Tin Man, the Lion and The Wizard of Oz himself, were easily found on Google images. 

We added the witch's hat, a rainbow (essential!) and Dorothy's red shoes. 

The Yellow Brick Road and the Emerald City and the "frame" we made from coloured electrical tape (I was surprised at how many colours are available in electric tape these days - will have to keep it in mind for future projects, as so easy to use) 

To finish off, we stuck flower stickers down the edges of the yellow bricks and a few butterflies found their way on as well!

Next week is the end of the term so we will be having our usual party food and games afternoon... plus achievement certificates all round!