Paper Cups Christmas Tree

The other day when we were at Starbucks, I saw one of their decorations in their store. It looks like a white tree made out of thick strips of paper. I didn't take a closer look at it but it looks interesting to me and had given me an idea. I thought I'll try to make a similar Christmas Tree with my son and well, it became my personal favourite now. Oh, I did help with curling here because it will take him ages to curl all the strips.

Christmas is around the corner. If you do not have a Christmas tree at home, why not make it to add it a bit of festive feel?

Materials needed:

• 10 Paper Cups
• 1 Rubber Band
• 1 (Balloon) Stick
• 2 Stickers of the same size and shape
• Some Paper Clay or any Self Dry Clay

Tools needed:

• Scissors
• Pencil
• Thick Cloth

How to do it:

1. Measure 0.5cm from the rim of the cup and draw around it.
2. Increase the measurement by 0.5cm for the next cup, ie, Cup No. 2 will be 1cm, No.3 - 1.5cm, No.4 - 2cm and so on.
3. Cut the rim according to the line drew above. Now all the cups will be of different height.
4. Label the cups with the tallest cup as 10 and the shortest cup as 1.
5. Have a thick cloth or folded cloth on your table.
6. Place a cup on the cloth, bottom down.
7. Position the tip of the pencil to the middle of the cup.
8. Pierce the cup to get a hole but don't pierce the pencil through as the hole may be too big.
9. Cut the cup in strips. Don't have to worry about the thickness. Irregular thickness looks nicer in my opinion.
10. Curl the strips using the stick or pencil *hardest part for kids*.
11. Tie a rubber band round the stick to use it as a 'stopper' to prevent the cups from slipping down.
12. Position it 12cm from the base of the stick.
13. Pierce the top of the stick through the cup with the base facing outwards, starting from No. 10, leaving a bit of space in between 2 cups.
14. Put aside.
15. Roll the clay to form a ball, flatten the base slightly.
16. Push the stick with the cups into the base to hold it.
17. Stick on the stickers, back to back, between the tip of the stick or alternatively, you can use cut out pictures and stick with double-sided tape.
18. Cut off excess stick.
19. Now you have your own Christmas Tree!

Note:
I wrapped the dried clay with flower paper (whatever you call that). You can leave it as it is or paint it if you like.

* Boy at Work *

* Our Christmas Tree *

Christmas Flower Memo Clip

Today's the last day of school and it's party day for the kids at school. We did some candy cane butterfly for my son's classmates.

His Chinese Teacher will still be teaching him next year but not for his English Teacher, Mrs Eunice. She is a really good teacher. My son kept telling me Mrs Eunice taught me this and that. Hopefully, his new English Teacher will be as good as Mrs Eunice.

Anyway, we did Christmas presents for the teachers too for all the hard work and patience they put in to nurture the kids. I told my son it's Christmas Flowers that we are doing so we are going to paint it in shades of red but he wanted it in blue and green too. He said they looked more like pinwheels and wind mills! Oh well!

We had planned to paint the base too but the clay took longer than we thought to dry, so we had to leave it unpainted. I should have put them in the oven to bake it. Anyway, we do hope the teachers like it.


Materials needed:

• 8 Penne Pasta
• 2 Ice Cream Sticks
• 1 Clothes Peg
• 1 (adult) handful Paper Clay
• Paints
• Glitters (optional)
• *Gun glue to be handled under supervision or by an adult

How to do it:

1. Paint the penne pasta.
2. Sprinkle glitters while they are still wet.
3. Leave them aside to dry.
4. Put some gun glue on one (open) end of one penne pasta.
5. Stick it to the back of the 'back' of a second penne pasta will the open end facing outwards.
6. Repeat till all eight penne pasta are joined together.
7. Spread more gun glue on the centre of the joined pasta flower.
8. Stick the two ice cream sticks together side by side to the middle of the pasta flower.
9. Spread on one side of the clothes peg with gun glue.
10. Press it on to the top middle of the two ice cream stick, with the end able to gasp pointing up.
11. Side aside.
12. Roll the paper clay to shape.
13. Stick the end of the ice-cream stick into the blob of paper clay.
14. Set aside for the clay to dry and you can paint the base.
15. Once the project is completely finished and dried, you can use it to clip paper or light object using the clothes peg behind.

* X'mas Flower Memo Clip *

Candy Cane Butterfly

I mentioned in my previous post that I was preparing my son's Christmas Goodies for his friends in school. I had this idea from those (tube) perfume sample we received.

You can use it as a card with message written on the inside and instead of Candy Canes, you can use pens or pencils too. But since it's for Christmas, I bought candy canes. You can even hang it on your Christmas tree to decorate it. It will look pretty!

I did most of the cutting here as we need to prepare 20 and he and his little sister did the rest.

Materials needed:

• Paper (I used 160gsm paper)
• Stickers or Colouring Medium to decorate
• Candy Cane

How to do it:

1. Print the butterfly template on the paper.
2. Have an older child or adult cut out the shape.
3. Decorate the cut-out butterfly with stickers or colour it.
4. Slip the candy cane through the cut out slot on the butterfly.
5. You can hang it on your Christmas tree using the 'hook' on the candy

• Click HERE for the butterfly template.
  
  

* Having fun with the stickers *

* Santa's little helper *

Butterfly Finger Corsage

My son's school is having a party on the last the of school and I was helping him with the Christmas Goodies for his classmates, which will be shown in the next post. My daughter saw it and wanted to be Santa's little elf. *wink*

Anyway, I immediately went to create and print out a smaller butterfly template so she could have fun too and not disrupt our 'project'. I meant for her to wear the craft on her finger or wrist but she preferred to have it on her hair instead. It does look nice too! My son saw the end result and wanted one too!

Materials needed:

• Paper (I used 160gsm paper)
• Pipe cleaner (longer if you want to wear it on the wrist)
• Stickers or Colouring Medium to decorate

How to do it:

1. Print the butterfly template on the paper.
2. Have an older child or adult cut out the shape.
3. Decorate the cut-out butterfly with stickers or colour it.
4. Have an adult poke 2 holes with a pin on the paper for the pipe cleaner.
5. Use the pipe cleaner to go through the holes.
6. Wear the butterfly by securing the pipe cleaner around your finger or wrist.

• Click HERE for the butterfly template.
  

Mussel Shell Flower

My son and I were thinking what to do for his teacher, Mrs Eunice, as a thank you gift for having put in so much effort to help the kids present an item for their school's concert.

Since I have a lot of my mussel shell from here, I thought we can do a simple craft with it.


Materials needed:

• 7 Mussel shells, all from the same side
• 2 circle Cardboard, 5cm and 7cm diameter each
• 1 (Balloon) Stick, cut to desired length
• Double-sided Tape
• Scotch Tape

How to do it:

1. Colour one side of the smaller circle if you like.
2. Stick the circles with double-sided tapes and set aside. If you have coloured the smaller circle, then tape the non-coloured side.
3. Place shell, inside (shiny part) down and the thiner part outward, to form a flower pattern.
4. Remove the protective paper from tape of the larger circle.
5. Stick it over the center of all shells.
6. Turn it over.
7. Remove the protective paper from tape of the smaller circle.
8. Stick it over the center of all shells.
9. Turn it over again.
10. Place the stick with one end to the middle of the larger circle.
11. Stick on scotch-tape to secure it.

Note:
The number of shells needed depends on the size of your shells.

* Sticking the smaller circle over the shells *


* the Mussel Shell Flower *