In this household, whenever Dumpling tells me that she is bored, I'd ask her to challenge herself by creating things. There are days where she will cut up papers, staple and stick them together to make something new and there are days that I will suggest an activity. It was such a day on Good Friday as the little one has been homebound because she has been fighting a cold. I decided to let her work solely with existing materials we have at home and repurpose them for something useful in 'honour' of Earth Day.
(A typical usual crafting scene)
The idea started when Dumpling asked me what Earth Day is, when we were at the library and she saw a display of suggested titles, etc. In case you are not aware, Earth Day is an annual event on 22 April, where events are held worldwide to demonstrate support for environmental protection (
source).
That question triggered started a series of small pockets of activities to keep ourselves occupied (truthfully, and me from yelling at her too) for the past days where we have been home bound.
We made these.
Here's a close up :)
I first saw these page corner bookmarks
here and I fell in love with them. Practical and cute, these are definitely useful for us because Dumpling is going into chapter books and she finds it hard to track which page she has left off at. We have bookmarks but those are hard to come by these days and I thought why not make them ourselves especially when we can easily make them out of 'old materials'.
To start off, I did a demo where I snipped off the corner of a red packet and then pasted the cutout of a flower on the top corner. It looked like this (bottom photo).
I then showed her the web page where I saw those book corners and she really liked the monster series so away we crafted. :)
To start off, you will need these:
:: The gathering list
1) Old envelops (since we are on a recycling mission here)
2) Any old stock card items - post cards, inserts in magazines, flyers, etc. (These are lovely as the backing for the eyes or the teeth)
3) Newspapers / Hong Pau
4) Scissors
6) Glue
7) Marker
8) Optional: Masking / Washi Tapes
(I happened to receive some from Scotch Expressions Tapes from 3M and put them to good use here! I have to say that I am pretty impressed as they were easy to use, pretty and definitely easy to 'remove where it did not rip off the piece of paper it was stuck to)
:: Steps
1) Snip off the corner of any old envelops
2) I then added the sharp jagged teeth for Dumpling to cut them out
Now, for the above versions, there is no protruding backing piece like the pieces here:
3) If you prefer such an option, you will need to fold down the envelop corner and cut it out where it forms a square when "opened". Thereafter, fold one side up and cut it off. Because Dumpling was actively involved in this project, after folding up the triangle, I 'puffed' the piece up where she can start cutting by following and cutting up the line at the edge before cutting across.
4) Therafter, Dumpling stuck some washi tape on the remaining top triangular piece
5) She then pasted a row of teeth (made earlier by her by using the remaining bits from the earlier hong pau) to the underside and then added on the eye pieces (made from hong pau and newspapers)
6) Color in the eyes and voila! We are done!
She wanted to make more and came up with these with more of our Washi Tape:
And we even decided to stretch it a tad further by NOT making a monster but a jellyfish page corner bookmark! And we had to do was to stick on a strip of air bubble sheet and cut out some strips as the tentacles!
Aren't these page corner bookmarks the cutest??? These would also make lovely gift ideas too.
In honour of the upcoming Earth Day, stay tuned for the next post on some recommended stories which I have read with Dumpling on 'nature' and being environmentally responsible :)
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Disclosure: I received a few rolls of Scotch Expressions Tapes from 3M where I found them useful for our recycling project here and hence, the sharing. This is not a sponsored post.
