tissue paper clothespin butterflies

Posted on April 10, 2013 by happyhooligans

Spring butterflies made with simple household items:

The temps are finally warming up here, and it’s beginning to feel like winter may well and truly be behind us. I’ve heard tell that we’re in for a major snowstorm tomorrow, but I’m crossing my fingers that it won’t happen! Despite that news, I’ve started to focus on some Spring crafting with the hooligans, and we made these tissue paper clothespin butterflies yesterday.

Did you see the simple paper towel butterflies we made the other day? These are even easier to make, but the process still has enough steps to make it fun and interesting for little ones.

Gather your supplies:

Several sheets of tissue paper
clothespin
paint
googly eyes
pipe cleaner (optional)
cork for stamping (optional)

Before we started, the hooligans played around with the clothespins. I love using wooden clothespins for fine-motor development. We always have a basket-full on our back deck, and the hooligans always enjoy playing with them. Opening and closing the pegs requires strength and co-ordination, and little ones love clipping them to edge of the basket. The older hooligans like to use them for hanging face-cloths and sun-hats to the small clothesline I’ve set up for them beside the playhouse.

Making the butterflies:

Each hooligan painted their clothespin in the colour of their choice, covering all sides and surfaces of the peg.

When they were dry, we added our tissue paper wings. I cut the tissue paper into 12 x 8 (approx) rectangles. You can go smaller than that, and you’ll get a smaller butterfly, but don’t go much larger, or there will be too much bulk for the clothespin to hold.

For the wings, gather your tissue paper up by cinching it in the middle. You can use 2 or three sheets of the same colour, or you can go with a few different colours.

Now clamp your clothespin around the cinched part of the tissue paper, and fluff the wings up a bit.

Adding the extras:

Next, the hooligans glued googly eyes to their clothespin.

Originally I thought we would stop there, but then I realized we needed antennae, and I thought it would be fun to add some interest to the wings.

To decorate the wings, we dipped wine corks into a bit of paint, and stamped the tissue paper with them.

Then we folded a pipe-cleaners in half, and wound each end around a finger to curl them. We tucked the folded end of the pipe-cleaner into clothespin to put the finishing touches on our butterflies.

Wouldn’t these look cute hanging in a window or in a child’s room?

Happy Spring!
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tissue paper snowflakes

Posted on January 23, 2012 by happyhooligans

Mother Nature hasn’t provided us with much snow this year, so today we set out to make some snowflakes of our own. Tissue paper snowflakes!

These simple snowflakes are very pretty, fun to make, and take only a couple of materials.

some white cardboard (about the weight of a cereal box)
blue and white tissue paper

The photos are fairly self-explanatory, but I’ll quickly tell you what we did.

I started by printing a snowflake template from an online colouring page. Then I cut that out, and traced it onto our cardboard.

Cutting the snowflake out took a bit of time, but it’s actually kind of fun if you like this kind of thing. I just kept making snips inward, dealing with all of the small spiky bits rather than cutting all around the outline in one fluid motion. (hopefully that makes sense)

Drizzle some glue on your cardboard.

Crumple up squares of tissue paper (I cut mine in approx. 3 or 4 inch squares).

And stick your tissue paper all over your snowflake.

So simple and so wintery!

tissue paper candy canes

Posted on December 15, 2011 by happyhooligans

If you’re looking to squeeze a quick and simple, last-minute craft in before the big day arrives, these tissue paper candy canes are perfect!

You’ll need some tissue paper in the colours of your choice, cut into 3 x 3 squares and a few candy canes to decorate (you can cut these out of some light-weight cardboard (think cereal box) or sturdy cardstock.

Have your little ones glue their squares on to their cardboard and then fluff up the tissue paper to fill in any gaps.. Punch a hole in the top, and thread a ribbon through.

We used red and white tissue for the first couple of candy canes, and then one little one said she wanted a pink one, which made me wish I’d offered more colours to the first two hooligans. I think tomorrow we’ll make some in different colours.

And there you are. Tissue paper candy canes to hang on your tree! Quick and easy and so cute!

tissue paper, button apple trees

Posted on September 22, 2011 by happyhooligans

Tissue paper,button apple trees: a sensory craft!

We made these tissue paper, button apple trees today. Again, I wanted to use materials that were interesting for the Hooligans to work with. You can check the sandpaper, foil and cork trees that we made earlier this week.

Trace your tree on textured paper:

We traced their arms and hands on some groovy wall paper samples that look just like wood. The tracings became the trunks and branches of the trees.

Add your tissue paper leaves:

Next the Hooligans crumpled up squares of green tissue paper to form the leaves of the tree. I absolutely LOVE using tissue paper this way for crafts. We’ve made so many tissue crafts. It’s so easy, and pretty much mess-free, and the kids love the whole crumpling part.