Tuesday 11 December 2012

Art Activity - Super Simple Paper Holiday Decorations

Recently I was instructing at a Pro-D day out of school care camp.  As part of the camp the kids made holiday decorations.  I didn't know what kind of supplies they would have so I created this super easy activity that uses simple materials.

What You Need:

Paper-I used plain 8 1/2 x 11 white computer paper.  To make your decorations fancier use coloured papers, origami paper, or double sided scrap booking paper
Scissors
Glue stick
Pencil
Something to create your design-I used markers, but you could use just about anything such as oil pastels, acrylic paint, glitter, stamps, etc.
String



Step One:


Start by creating a pattern on one side of your paper. Once you've created the first pattern, flip your paper over and create a different pattern using different colours.  You want the two sides to have a strong contrast so use two very different colours. In both examples the patterns are simple.







For the first example, on the one side I created a snowflake pattern (no surprise) and a candy cane stripe on the other.








The second example uses red presents and green trees-perfect complimentary colours for Christmas-to create a strong contrast.














Step Two:

Fold your piece of paper diagonally, bringing the lower right corner up to the top edge.




Step Three:

Cut off the excess part of the paper-BUT DON'T THROW IT OUT!



You should now have two pieces of paper-1 square and 1 small strip.


Step Four:

Fold the square piece in half diagonally, and then in half again to create a small triangle




Step Five:

Starting at the bottom make 4 diagonal cuts that are fairly evenly spaced but STOP before reaching the other edge



Carefully unfold your paper.  It should look like the one above.


Step Six:

Take your glue stick and glue together the points of the two innermost cuts, overlapping one on top of the other.


Flip over the paper and glue the points of the next two cuts, again overlapping one on top of the other.



Repeat the gluing process, flipping the paper over each time.






Step Seven:

Take the leftover strip of paper and create an even amount of circles about 6-10.  To create my circles I used the cap of the glue stick.  Make sure that each circle contains part of the pattern.  If you don't want to see pencil marks on the finished decoration, trace half the circles on one side of the paper and half on the other.  Cut out each circle.




To finish, hole punch the top of the decoration and thread a string through.  Glue two circles together (with the pencil marked sides facing in) while sandwiching the string between them.


The finished decorations!







2 comments:

  1. And if you make 6, you can arrange them into a star! Check out my tutorial @ sunporchstudio: http://sunporchstudio.com/2012/12/19/diy-holiday-stars/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just looked at your tutorial-very cool!

    ReplyDelete

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