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Top 5 arts and crafts


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Pompoms are fun and easy to make.
Pompoms are fun and easy to make.

Keep the wee ones amused and occupied with some of these crafty ideas.

Pomtastic pompoms

A fun and creative way to wile away the hours is to make your own pompoms. Big or small, these fluffy friends can be used for all manner of things – colourful decorations to hang in the house, accessories for clothes and footwear or create a whole furry family to play with. How do you make them? It really could not be simpler! All you need is two discs of firm cardboard with a hole in the middle and a ball of wool. Tie the wool string in the middle of the hole and start wrapping the wool through the hole and over the cardboard discs – and just keep going! To finish, snip away at the edge of the pompom. Remove the cardboard discs and tie off the wool in the middle of your pompom, then fluff it up. Use different wools as you wrap the discs to create a multi-coloured or rainbow effect.

Finger puppet friends

Use coloured paper or fabric to create a family of friends to pop on the end of little fingers or glued onto the fingers of an old glove. Get creative and make finger puppets of favourite characters, from Frozen to Star Wars, Paw Patrol to Peppa Pig. The body section – that fits over the finger – is simply paper or fabric rolled into a cone that’s snug enough to fit securely onto a finger. The head and limbs can be drawn, decorated and cut out of a separate piece of card and glued in place.

Make your own colourful bookmark.
Make your own colourful bookmark.

Brilliant bookmarks

Encourage younger ones to read more and get creative with some colourful bookmarks. Any scraps of fabric, cardboard or paper will work and can be decorated any way you want! All you need is to create a strip long enough to poke out of both ends of your book. Here are some ideas. Use furry fabric to create your own animal kingdom of bookmarks. Glue or sew on beads for eyes and a nose, make a tail, paws and ears from extra strips of fabric or wool. You could even make a lion’s mane from a yellow pompom! Cardboard and paper can work just as well. Colour them in or decorate with beads, sequins, buttons, stickers – whatever you like. Just make sure any glue is completely dry before putting your bookmark in your book!

Magical mobiles

Easy! All you need is string and something to use for the frame – a large ring or square of sturdy material such as plastic, wood, firm cardboard or wire. Tie several ‘cables’ of equal length of string/wire around your frame and pull up each cable together and fasten. You will need a small ring at the top of the cables so you can hang the mobile. Use wire or string to make cables that hang down from the frame and decorate with anything you like. Make paper flowers and thread through the hanging cables, string beads and buttons or cut out pictures of your favourite people, characters or animals and attach to the hanging cables. You can make the mobiles even bigger by using wire or dowling wood and attaching smaller branches to the main frame – just make sure it is sturdy enough to hold all the branches and decorations.

Perfect pockets

Keep pens, pencils, toys and treasures safely tucked away at the end of the day in handy hanging storage pockets. Use a large square or rectangle of fabric – or sew together a patchwork of colourful fabrics – for the background and attach (glue or sew) smaller pockets for storing small or lightweight toys and possessions.

For extra sturdiness, fold over the top and bottom edge of the background, and sew or glue in place, leaving space to thread through wire or dowling to strengthen the frame. Decorate pockets or create them from different coloured fabrics. Recycle an old pair of jeans or trousers – make sure they’re old – and you will have ready-made pockets that can be glued or sewn in place!


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