A Frugal Birthday and Family Craft

Posted by: DeputyHeadmistress on Friday, August 21st, 2009

The above picture was taken from a birthday several years back- The humpty-dumpty tin, the costume jewelry, and the dress all came from a thrift shop.  Humpty Dumpty was this child's favorite nursery rhyme.  I shop at thrift shops and yard sales several times a year looking for birthday and Christmas items and I stash them away until needed.

For little girls, the gaudier the costume jewelry, the better.  For older girls you could take a few necklaces apart and give them the beads and findings for making their own jewelry.

One of our favorite thrift shop presents for little boys is men's work clothes, uniforms, hats, and accessories- a tool belt, a tie, a briefcase, a hard hat, and a military shirt are wonderful additions to the dress up box.

Here's the family craft: The flower in this little girl's hair is made from toilet paper.    This is a fun decoration for a special occasion, and it's also a fun craft that, for once, really is made with items every household will have on hand.;-)

  • Take six squares of toilet paper (two ply works better) or tissue paper (depending on the size flower you want) and lay them neatly one on top of the other, making sure that the end and sides are as even as possible
  • Fold the stack of tissue paper accordion style (into a fan)- the size of the folds largely depends on the size of your tissue/toilet paper. The tighter the fold the more I think it looks like a carnation.
  • Fold your fan in half, so the open ends are together.  If you are using plain toilet paper it does look pretty if at this point you run a colored marker slowly along the ends of the fan, or you take a bit of liquid food coloring or a paint brush dipped in water and food coloring and gently dab the ends with the colored water (being careful not to make it too wet)
  • When the fan is dry (if you used water instead of a marker to color it), you  either twist the end with the fold, tie a bit of string around it, or wrap a wire garbage tie around it.  You can also staple the folded end.
  • Start at the top of your fan and gently fan out or unfold the tissue paper so that no sheets are stuck together, being careful not to tear it. This makes the petals ruffle.  If you have two ply tissue, you can make it even more ruffly by separating the pliesRepeat this step with the other sheets until you have a light, fluffy flower. If needed, straighten out the petals one part at a time.

    • You can also make these with paper napkins if you are at a restaurant with fractious children who need to be entertained,   The tutorial here has a video that shows how to make fancier ones with brightly colored tissue paper from the craft store, and this step by step tutorial uses photographs to show more ideas for the tissue paper flowers.

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    Topics: what's in my hand?

    3 Responses to “A Frugal Birthday and Family Craft”

    My Boaz's Ruth Says:
    August 21st, 2009 at 11:12 am

    How did you get the flower to stay in her hair?

    Fine Craft Guild dotcom Says:
    August 21st, 2009 at 1:10 pm

    Hi,

    Thank you so much for linking to my site, FineCraftGuild.com for the free step by step tutorial for paper flowers.

    There are tons of other free tutorials online and for the frugal and free-seekers: you’ll find our site to be a lollishop.

    :-)
    Rose

    btw. TIP: How to keep a paper flower to stick in hair: generally a hot glue gun and a little hair clip will do the trick. You can also put a ribbon through the center and knot it to a hair tie to make a splashy hair bun.

     

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