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....!

Spider Halloween Headbands!

We had a lovely afternoon at Mencap making our creepy, crawly, scary, colourful Spider Halloween Headbands...

Using ready-made spiders, flowers, feathers, organza bits and ribbons we attached a elastic headband - using plastic coated ties and lots of black sticky electrical tape to secure the embellishments...

The girls will be wearing them to the Braintree Mencap Halloween party!

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...