Recently Harriet came home from preschool with these adorable, hole-punched sewing cards. She loved showing us how to “sew” them with yarn that had been wrapped at the end with tape, and was quite upset when we briefly lost one.
They reminded me of bulkier cards Bea used to have from Melissa and Doug, and also that toys and games are often better and more engrossing when you make them yourself. We decided to make a few with watercolor paper (which we always have around) and some leftover yarn—some are for our trip to Virginia, and others are for Harriet’s cousin Charlie, who will be traveling to see family in Canada later this week.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Trace and cut out a shape you like. Decorate it or leave it plain.
2. Hole punch the edges.
3. Cut a generous length of yarn, and wrap the ends in tape (like a shoelace). Secure one end of the yarn to your shape. Make a collection and give them to your cousin!
The next papercraft is more ephemeral: homemade wrapping paper. We haven’t bought wrapping paper in years because we always have rolls of paper around—the kind you can thread through an easel, or just tape to the floor. While I prefer brown kraft paper (for brown-paper-packages vibes, plus it’s more opaque), this year what we had was white paper, so we used that. Just paint a repeating pattern of stripes or dots, or choose something easy (or hard, if you want a challenge) that you can repeat—and voilà, one-of-a-kind wrapping paper! (Storebought wrapping paper has a lot of plastic packaging for a small amount of paper, and many varieties—especially the glittery ones—are full of microplastics.)
Even painting experiments look good wrapped around a present, especially if you cut strips in contrasting colors and wrap them around like ribbon.
If I’m feeling ambitious (or when someone has a short name) I’ll also cut out the letters of their name and glue them to the paper.
Finally, my favorite paper craft—and a great gift—is a good old fashioned board game. We make ours out of leftover cardboard, paint, markers, and cardstock or watercolor paper. Our tips for making a board game as a present are:
1. Think of a theme that fits your recipient. So, for Bea I might make a board game about books and building a library (I have not made this game yet). Maybe the object is to collect books in different categories until you have a full shelf of books. How do you collect the books? Maybe by answering questions (harder to make), or maybe by collecting cards?
2. Next, make the board. So far we’ve made games that just follow a single track around a board, with the center of the board reserved for cards you draw as you move around the spaces by rolling dice. But there are other ways of setting up the board—you could have four corners that progress to a central point, or a point system (good for a math game).
You can paint the board with watercolors or tempera paint. Or you can color/watercolor individual pieces of paper and glue that to the board. Another thing about papercraft is the more you layer your elements, the more interesting the final product will look. Mod Podge is great for layering and making the final product shiny and protected.
3. The game pieces are key. Our favorite thing to do is cut pieces of cardboard and draw on them with markers, but you could also use little collected objects (à la Monopoly) or make some out of clay or sculpey.
4. If you’re more of a plan-ahead person, you can design your game to fit inside of a box you already have (tip: hinge your board in the center with tape so it’ll fold up smaller). But, if you don’t have a box, you can always make one out of cardboard, tape, and glue.
We made one that we’re excited to give Mamie and Grampa. Here is a little preview:
Bright solstice, Frog Troublers!
also wine boxes the little cardboard cases like you get at a wine festival
make darling doll houses!
i love the homemade wrapping paper
and all of your fabulous crafts i am ashamed that i used store bought paper to wrap presents but it is actually ancient and i am going use every bit of it until it’s all gone !
i love a year filled with Peace Love Luck and Frogs!!!