Paper is the most available material for children's creativity from all available today. Moreover, in order to make an original craft it is not necessary to use colored paper- wonderful products can be made from ordinary white paper, from napkins, from cardboard tubes (from toilet paper), and a lot more. Do-it-yourself crafts made from colored paper can serve as a wonderful decoration for a child’s room or school class, and can also become a touching gift for an adult for any holiday - after all, what could be nicer than receiving some trinket from your child as a gift? did it myself.
Such work with non-traditional materials further develops the imagination and creative abilities of not only a child, but also an adult.
- Recently, paper has become very widespread - various techniques for making paper crafts have appeared. In addition to traditional applique, there are techniques such as papier-mâché, quilling, origami, and scrapbooking. They learned to make not only postcards from paper, but also various paintings, panels, albums, flowers and other decorative items. Needlewomen find use for any type of paper, from old newspapers to corrugated cardboard boxes. And due to the fact that paper is perfectly glued with paste or PVA glue, such crafts are widespread in school classes on creative development.
- Crafts made from colored paper and cardboard are no less popular, since cardboard, due to its density, holds its shape well. These materials make excellent boxes in which cardboard acts as a base, and colored paper is used to decorate the resulting base. Also, using colored cardboard, you can create various three-dimensional crafts, where it is also important to preserve the shape of the finished product.
Let's use the example of a master class on making bright tulips to see the use of colored cardboard in children's crafts.
For work we will need:
- Colored paper or cardboard;
- Wooden skewers;
- Glue.
Before you start, prepare several templates for flower buds. To do this, draw a blank and cut it out of colored paper. For each flower you will need three blanks; it is better to cut the buds out of paper different colors, then the bouquet will turn out brighter.
Stages of work
Stage 1
Fold the bud parts in half and glue the two halves of the two buds together. Separately, cut out from double-sided colored paper long leaves for flowers.
Stage 2
Wrap a wooden skewer with green floral tape or paint it with green paint, insert it into the glued parts of the bud and stick the third part of the flower on top - the stem-skewer will be well secured inside the bud. Next, glue the leaves on top of the skewer.
Stage 3
Ready-made flowers can be arranged in a bouquet, placed in a glass vase or planted in a pot. So that the flowers stay well in flower pot, you can fix them with plaster - to do this, dilute a small amount of plaster with water, pour the mixture into a pot, place flowers in it and wait until it dries completely. The top of the plaster can be decorated with pebbles or artificial grass.
Such paper tulips are a great opportunity for children 4 to 5 years old to strengthen their skills in working with scissors and glue, since the details of the buds are quite simple to cut out, and children of this age already know how to handle scissors a little.
Younger children (3 years and younger) will need a little help with cutting out the buds, but they can handle gluing the buds and leaves on their own, you just need to show them how and what to do.
With children in grades 3 - 4, you can make a postcard using the quilling technique - a very popular type of needlework today. This technique produces excellent volumetric greeting cards, paintings and panels. The only materials required are paper for quilling and glue, and of course a sheet of cardboard for the base of the entire craft.
In order to make a postcard using the quilling technique, you need to wrap special paper around a needle, toothpick or skewer, then unravel the workpiece and give it the desired shape. After this, form a specific composition for a greeting card from the blanks.
Due to its availability and ease of use, paper has become the basis for such an amazing art as origami, invented by the Japanese, in which original crafts are made by folding a paper sheet in a certain way without the use of glue or scissors. Probably, every child aged 5-6 years will be able to fold a simple paper boat or airplane without the help of adults, but origami is not limited to this - a variety of animals and birds are created using this technique. Experienced needlewomen make origami using paper modules that are held together with glue. Such compositions using plain paper look simply amazing.
For a child, such work will be quite difficult, so you can offer him to fold simpler paper figures, for example, this duck.
This duck is folded according to this pattern, and you will need a sheet of colored paper and parental help.
For children 7 years old (1st and 2nd grade students), it will be very interesting to make crafts to decorate the interior of their room or school classroom, especially on the eve of any holiday. On New Year- it could be Christmas decorations or snowflakes cut out with scissors, for your birthday you can give your child the opportunity to decorate his room or celebration venue with beautiful and bright paper garlands or checkboxes. The child will be very happy to take part in organizing the celebration and will take the task at hand seriously.
Video on the topic
In conclusion, we present to your attention several videos about what other crafts you can make with your child to develop his creative abilities. Thanks to these video lessons, you can always find an activity for your child that will benefit him.
Almost all children love to tinker with colored paper - cut, glue, tear. Such entertainment does not please parents at all, because, in the end, it is they who have to clean up children's “masterpieces” and “production” waste. However, working with colored paper is very useful for fine motor skills child, which in turn improves thought processes such as attention, memory and thinking. Making crafts from this material develops imagination and also helps the child explore the world. It’s good if a child creates together with mom or dad. The benefit of spending time together is emotional connection. Praise your child for his success, let him feel proud and want to do even more. We bring to your attention several crafts made from colored paper.
Craft “Cheerful Cloud” made from colored paper
This work is one of the easy crafts made from colored paper that even a three-year-old child can master. So, you will need:
- colored paper
- sheet of colored cardboard;
- glue;
- scissors;
- threads
Draw the outline of a cloud on white or blue paper and cut it out. From sheets of colored paper folded in half, cut out drop halves along the fold. Attach the left half of the other piece to the right half of one piece and glue them together. We do the same with the other two drops. We connect the halves with the flat side using glue, not forgetting to stretch the thread at the joint.
So we got one voluminous drop. In the same manner we make the desired number of droplets. Moreover, several drops can be attached to one thread different flower. Glue the ends of the threads onto a sheet of colored cardboard and a cloud on top.
Craft “Heart” from colored paper
The baby and dad can prepare such a beautiful craft card for mom for March 8th. You will need:
- colored paper;
- scissors;
- stapler;
- thread.
Craft from colored paper “Apple”
To make such a fun apple you will need:
- colored paper;
- glue;
- scissors.
For naturalness, the finished apple can be decorated with a core, worm or leaf. Using the same principle, three-dimensional crafts are made from colored paper in the shape of a mushroom, pear or heart.
Crafts made from paper and cardboard children do in kindergarten and in elementary school. This material can be called the most affordable, because for such crafts, which are described, you can take not only purchased colored paper, but also wrapping paper, old newspapers and magazines, and candy wrappers. It is very easy to work with, because you can easily cut it with scissors and fasten the elements with glue. Of course, you cannot begin the creative process without becoming familiar with all the materials and techniques for working with them.
Schoolchildren can make cardboard ones, so they can create a real dollhouse with their own hands, which will be no worse than those sold in the store.
How to make crafts from paper and cardboard
There are the main materials without which you cannot learn, how to make crafts from paper and cardboard, and before inviting your child to work with them, you need to focus on safety precautions, because you need to work with scissors and glue carefully. But first you need to buy material that will help realize your child’s wildest fantasies. The material can be of different quality: thin transparent or dense, which is very difficult to tear with your hands.
If you set yourself the task of adding volume to a figure, then for this you need to use soft thin sheets, for example, tissue or paper napkins. Almost all crafts require a white A4 size and a colored one, which will allow you to make a paper mosaic. But for appliqués, colored sheets should be denser so as not to get wet through.
Moderately dense material is used to make figures using the origami technique; in this case, when bending, there will be clear lines, so you need to choose polished or coated sheets.
Toys and three-dimensional figures can be made using cardboard - white or colored. In addition, a real master can take improvised materials - candy wrappers, foil, cardboard boxes, wallpaper scraps - to create beautiful crafts made of paper and cardboard.
In the process of work, you may need not only liquid PVA glue, which reliably fixes all the elements, fastening them to each other, but also a glue stick, which will help out in situations where you need to glue carefully, not allowing the liquid glue to go beyond the edges. As a general rule, a glue stick should be used when creating appliques to glue small parts. PVA always glues reliably, you can use it to glue large elements using dense material, and have no doubt that your craft will last a long time.
Before you start working with glue, work surface (desk) should be covered with newspapers or oilcloth so that after a fun creative process you don’t have to wash off frozen drops of glue for a long time. PVA glue can be bought immediately in a large jar; a liter of glue will last you a long time, and it costs much less than small jars. But from a large jar, which will be inconvenient to work with, it must be cast into a flat jar or even a lid to make the task easier for the child.
To make it convenient to apply the glue, you can use a special brush, then after each use it must be thoroughly washed so that it does not harden, or you can take a disposable stick rolled up with thick paper.
Crafts from paper and cardboard: master class
For some particularly complex elements, you need to use two pairs of scissors at once, one with rounded ends to cut paper, cut out large elements, others - small ones with straight blades, they should be used if it is necessary to cut through internal parts and make notches.
It is also necessary to prepare a ruler in advance, which will help you draw an even line and quickly cut off any even strip of paper, using a stationery knife to do. But this tool can only be trusted by teenagers, since a sharp blade can be dangerous for younger students.
Using a ruler, you can evenly tear off a strip of sheet; to do this, you need to press the ruler tightly with one hand, and with the other take the upper corner, lift it and pull it towards you with a sharp movement.
A pencil is used not only for drawing; it can be used, for example, to twist tubes. But to make a spiral, you need to use a ruler or scissors. The strip must be pressed against the tip of the scissors or the end of the ruler, and the paper must be pulled towards you along its entire length.
To unusual crafts made of paper and cardboard turned out neat and beautiful, you need to make the fold lines clear, carefully ironing, but it is not advisable to use your fingers for this, because there is a risk of cutting yourself on the thin edge, and staining the fold, because there may be particles of paint on your fingers, etc. To iron a fold, you need to take closed scissors and iron it on top, or put any blank sheet of paper on the main paper part.
If you tear the paper with a ruler, then you can only do this along the grain so that the tear edge is long and even, but if you try to tear against the grain, the edge will be uneven and the line may break. You can easily notice this trend if you practice on a regular newspaper.
While gluing the parts, you may have noticed that sometimes folds and wrinkles appear on the paper, this happens because you did not coat the surface with glue correctly, because if you glue an appliqué part to a base, then it is the base that needs to be lubricated with glue, and not the part itself. You need to coat the outline of the sheet with glue, and then attach the applique element itself. After this, its surface will be smooth, without wrinkles.
The element to be glued must be pressed firmly using a clean piece of flannel. The applique element must be smeared with PVA, placed on the base sheet, pressed in the center, straightened out and placed on top of clean paper. Then carefully iron with a flannel cloth from the center to the edges.
Original crafts made from paper and cardboard
Children always do original crafts made from paper and cardboard before the holidays, and usually these are greeting cards for mom or dad, grandma or grandpa. With your own hands you can make a very interesting postcard that will become pleasant surprise for the hero of the occasion. For such a card, the main feature of which is a voluminous flower in the center, you will need double-sided colored cardboard, PVA and scissors.
For decoration, you can also use beads, glitter, rhinestones and other elements that are sold in craft stores.
First, you need to fold the cardboard in half, make the fold even, carefully ironing it several times. The front part of the card can be decorated with yellow flowers cut from a colored sheet. You can attach a bead or rhinestone to the center of each flower to make the card look bright. You can deal with these flowers quickly, but the flower that will be inside will be voluminous and you will have to tinker with it. The elements of the internal volumetric flower should be symmetrical, relative to the middle, so that when closing the card, they fold well.
The flower will be multi-layered and you need to cut out three parts, one smaller than the other, and then glue it into the middle. You also need to cut out openwork leaves from green colored paper. You can sign the finished card and feel free to go to the holiday.
Unusual crafts made from paper and cardboard
The best gift for a grandmother is a photo frame, and it’s better if a caring grandson makes it with his own hands. Since it is made from lightweight materials, you can easily make it into a refrigerator magnet, hang it on the wall, or put it on your bedside table. To make these paper and cardboard crafts, master class will give the necessary advice and tips, all that remains is to prepare everything necessary materials and follow the tips to create original gifts with your own hands.
As a base, you can take a disposable shallow plate, onto which you can then attach a photograph. We will also need colored cardboard, in this case we will make a “seven-colored” cardboard, so we need to take seven different colors. To work with materials, you need to take scissors, and in order to securely fix all the elements of the craft, you will need not only PVA, but also a hot glue gun.
First you need to cut out seven petals from multi-colored cardboard so that they are the same size, first you need to make a template, and then cut out all seven elements using it. We definitely need to take into account that the petals beautifully surround our center.
You need to glue the petals to the back side, and you need to take a heat gun so that the fixation is reliable. When all the petals take their place, you need to paste the photo on PVA into the center of the plate.
Master class: paper and cardboard crafts
If you have stumbled upon our master class, cardboard and paper crafts You will definitely want to make voluminous ones with your child, because you can use any old newspapers or magazines, napkins, of course, you cannot do without the main materials - colored paper, scissors and felt-tip pens, with which you can finish drawing small details.
The crumpling method is very simple, and this is precisely why the child will like it, because for the basis of this craft you need to crumple several balls of different diameters from old newspapers. In this case, you need to crumple it so that the lump is dense; you can use additional threads that can be used to wrap the layers, fixing them and making them denser.
Since the ball will consist of several layers, it is unprofitable to make all the layers from colored sheets, so a sheet of the desired color or a napkin is used only for the top layer, and the previous ones are made from newspaper sheets.
Volumetric “Chicken”: you need to make two lumps, for this use A4 paper, and for the other - half as much, i.e. A3. For the top layer, take a yellow napkin or colored paper and wrap it around the lumps. From a large lump we will make the body of a chicken, and from a small lump we will make its head. Now the two blanks need to be fastened with glue.
For the legs, you can use a thick cocktail straw, from which you need to cut a 4 cm piece, then make a cut on one side, bending the fingers.