holiday crafts

St. Patrick’s Day Craft: Leprechaun Hats

With St. Patrick’s Day quickly approaching, the boys and I did a fun craft this past weekend. We made Leprechaun Hats. Here’s how to make them….The supplies you’ll need for one hat include a paper plate (the larger the better so they fit; ours were a bit small), green, black, and yellow construction paper or large craft foam sheets, green paint, sponge brush, scissors, pencil, Elmer’s Glue, green glitter, X-ACTO Knife/craft knife, stapler, and craft mat. Start by painting the paper plate green. When finished, set aside and let dry.Next, cut your green construction paper to the length/height you’d like your hat to be; cut 1-2 extra inches for attachment to the paper plate. Then cut out one long strip from your black construction paper; this will form the band. You’ll also cut a yellow rectangle for the buckle. Then draw a shamrock on green scraps that are left over, and cut those out, as well.Glue your yellow rectangle onto your black hat band. We decorated our shamrock with green glitter before adding that to the yellow buckle.

Then glue your band, once completed, to your hat (your green construction paper).Finally, roll your hat overlapping the ends of the paper enough to staple together well.Act silly with preschooler.:)Now your plate should be dry, so you can cut out the center (measuring with your hat roll & drawing a circle around it). I used my X-ACTO Knife; even Jacob got to use it just a bit. I love this knife because it’s retractable. It makes me nervous to let him use it, but he needs to learn how to use it properly, so I just stay right there with him and help him as needed.

Take your scissors, and cut 1-inch slits around the bottom of your green hat; this will allow you to fold over the slits and staple it to your plate.Voila, you have a Leprechaun hat! It’s a lot of fun, and the kids love playin’ with them. Happy St. Patrick’s Day from our house to yours!

(Disclosure: I was not compensated by Elmer’s/X-ACTO in any way, shape, or form for this post; I simply wanted to show some of the products that I love to craft with.)

Friday Showcase: Fun Fall Window Silhouettes

September 25, 2009 By Mel 1 Comment

We just love fall in our house; it’s such a fun time of year. It’s starting to cool down outside, and it’s getting cozy inside. With fall comes all the fun holidays, like Halloween and Thanksgiving.

I’d been promising Jacob for a while now that we’d make some fun silhouettes for our windows for Halloween. With needing to do art, we decided today was the day. I logged onto Martha Stewart’s website today and found some great templates and printed them out. Then I cut the shapes out with my craft knife. We took the template and traced around the edges with a white crayon onto black construction paper. After that, I let Jacob cut with his scissors (since I’m just not ready to place such a sharp, razor-blade knife in his hands yet….yikes!), and I cut with my handy dandy craft knife. Voila, we had really cute silhouettes for our windows: bats, cats, and witches. We have some more templates to try out, like pumpkins and a slightly larger bat. We used double-sided, transparent scrapbooking tape to stick them up on the windows. The best part is that now we have the templates for next time. He’s already wanting to do more, and since we are about out of construction paper, I think a trip to the dollar store is in order, so we can make more projects like this. Oh, and I think my artistic talent is finally looking up just a bit….:)LOL. Maybe papercrafts is my niche!