Creative Family Fun

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Holidays

Sparkly Christmas Tree Banner

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You may have notice that we’ve been crafting a lot lately with tissue paper and our latest creation is this sparkly Christmas tree bunting.

I’m sure we’ll eventually move on to a different medium, but until then we’ve been having fun and making beautiful artwork with our tissue paper.

Now, on to this easy kids craft!

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Supplies Needed:

Green tissue paper
Clear contact paper
Glitter
Scissors
Needle and thread

I cut small squares of contact paper and laid it down sticky side up on our trays. I was using the trays in an attempt to contain some of the glitter.

We then started sprinkling the glitter. The mess is actually minimal this way, since the contact paper catches most of it (unless, of course, your 2-yr-old manages to pull the top of the glitter bottle off).

After you’re satisfied with the amount of glitter, it’s time to cover the entire piece of Contact Paper with tissue paper. I had originally intended the girls to tear the tissue paper into small bits, but they wanted to go with large pieces instead.

After all the contact paper is covered, put another piece of contact paper on top so that your glitter and tissue paper is sandwiched in between.

Now, you need to cut it into tree-shaped triangles. We were able to get several tree shapes out of each girl’s glittery contact paper.

Just look at that pile!

Next, I took the needle and some strong thread and started threading the trees. I just ran the needle once through a spot near the top of each tree.

It was surprisingly easy to pierce the needle through the contact paper, so much so that I know Lizzie would have been able to have handled this part on her own.

We alternated the trees, one purple then one gold on the string. Once we were done, it was time to hang in the window.

The result was beautiful and I’m glad we went with the large pieces of tissue paper instead of the small. I just love the look of it!

Now, what should we do next with our stockpile of tissue paper?

Recycled Paper Chains

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Do you have a lot of leftover Christmas cards?

So do we!

I’ve been thinking about what to do with them and finally decided to just keep things simple and make paper chains from those old Christmas cards.

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The girls and I gathered around the Christmas tree with a pile of old cards, several pair of our fun scissors and a stapler.

No mess, no glue, just time together listening to Christmas carols.

We cut strip after strip after strip until we ran out of cards.

At this point, the girls were quite eager to see what the chain was going to look like.

We set up an assembly line.

I was manning the stapler and the girls were handing me strips.

Finally, our pile of strips turned into a very pretty paper chain.

A paper chain that we soon found out was perfect for tying up little sisters! (Just kidding! No child was actually tied up… we just had fun taking silly pictures!)

Don’t ever underestimate the fun of a simple activity this holiday season. Use what you have and do what you know how to do. You’ll have fun just spending the time together!

What is your favorite simple Christmas activity?

Christmas Tree Cards

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We were inspired by Dilly-Dali Art’s homemade Christmas cards on day 2 of the Creative Christmas Countdown and decided to make some of our own. We did our own twist on the paper scrap ornaments and came up with these Christmas tree collage cards. It was such a fun Christmas craft to make.

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Supplies Needed:

Colored tissue paper torn into small pieces
White paper (we used copy paper)
Cardstock or construction paper
Glue (I used a mixture of 1 part glue to 1 part water for this project)
Paint brushes
Markers
Stickers

For the first step in this project, we made collages with our tissue paper on the white copy paper.

When gluing down tissue paper, you will want to thin out your glue. Using 1 part glue to 1 part water was perfect for this project. We were able to apply it with paint brushes in a thin layer.

To further secure your collage, apply more glue on top of your tissue paper. Don’t worry, it will dry clear.

We worked and worked until our papers were covered.

This was the messiest part of the whole project, so of course, it was the part the girls liked best!

The paper was a bit soggy when we were done, but it did dry nicely.

After our collages were dry, we cut simple triangles out of the paper.

We attached them to the front of the folded card stock with double-sided tape. You could also used a glue stick to attach the triangles.

We used the markers to draw the trunks, then had fun decorating our trees with stickers.

Here are Lizzie’s finished cards. She wanted to make sure her trees were well decorated!

And yes, your eyes do not deceive you, there are Halloween stickers on the first card!

These are AJ’s finished cards. She decided to put her stickers inside the cards!

We had a lot of fun making our cards! Thank you Dilly-Dali Art for the inspiration!

Thankful Trees

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Our Fall Bucket List would not be complete this year without making Thankful Trees. When thinking about this project, I decided I wanted it to be more about thankfulness than about the artwork.

I drew simple tree shapes on brown construction paper, then cut out a bunch of construction paper leaves.

Then, armed with the leaves and my trusted black Sharpie, I gathered the girls to talk about thankfulness.

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We read the book Thanksgiving Is for Giving Thanks by Margaret Sutherland. This is a very sweet book that gives the kids a wonderful and very simply stated introduction to thankfulness.

After reading the book, we talked about what we were thankful for. Lizzie was able to give me quite a good list.

I recorded all the things they were thankful for on the leaves, then we went to the table and started gluing.

We talked a bit more about thankfulness while the girls used their glue sticks.

Lizzie’s list: food, friends, flowers, Mommy, my kitchen (i.e. her play kitchen), sister, Daddy, books, and ice cream (aren’t we all).

AJ’s list as dictated to my by Lizzie: sister, books, Charlie (our dog), milk, Mommy, food, Lucy (our cat), her baby doll, and Daddy.

What are you thankful for?

Hand Print Turkey Cards

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One the items on our Fall Bucket List that we hadn’t completed yet was “make hand print turkeys.” Since Thanksgiving is coming up soon, it was time to do them.

This craft was much more adult-led than the other projects we’ve been doing, but the girls enjoyed it nonetheless.

The first item of business, was painting the girls’ hands. Make sure you use washable paint! I did each girl one at a time since I had nightmares of colorful hand prints all over my walls.

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Once the hands were painted, we pressed them on the paper. We were turning these into cards, so I had already pre-cut and pre-folded the paper.

Once they were dry, we added beaks, eyes, legs, and grass.

The cards are two folded sheets of paper nestled inside each other – four pages total.  The turkeys got progressively small with the first being Lizzie’s, the second AJ’s, and the third was Lizzie’s thumbprint for the body and AJ’s fingerprints for the feathers.

They’re going in the mail soon, so that hopefully the recipients get them before Thanksgiving!

What Thanksgiving projects have you been doing lately?