How Do You Make Crafts At Home With Your Children? Plus Free Valentine Card Creation Tips

Author: mmnewbold

Encouraging your child's creativity at home by creating craft items is very beneficial for their mental development.  Children can explore different textures, shapes and patterns, and discover how to put ideas into action by handling different materials, and sticking and gluing them together. But remember - crafting can be great fun, and also a good way to spend some quality time with your children.

Buying craft supplies from a craft store can cost quite a lot of money, so why not start your own junk/scraps box at home.  All you need is a box or a large storage bag that you keep in a cupboard ready to store your household packaging.   It's easy to start collecting and is amazing how quickly your junk box or bag fills up with useful items.  Each time you are in the kitchen preparing meals, keep all your empty boxes, tubs or cardboard tubes that you would normally throw in the bin or recyle, and add these to your craft box.  Whenever you come across any interesting items, such as packaging and wrappers from birthday gifts or Christmas presents,you can put them in your box ready for when you want to make one of our crafts.  Collect lots of items, from different shaped boxes, cardboard tubes, shiny paper, drinking straws, plastic bottle tops, and clean ice-lolly sticks. Even old outgrown tee shirts can be shredded into material strips.

Craft shops stock a comprehensive range of craft materials.  Why not visit your local store and buy a small variety of items to store in your box.  Look out for cheaper end of lines, two for the price of one, bargain buckets, and reduced price crafts that have damaged packaging. If you look out for these cheap deals, or just buy one or two inexpensive items per week, you will quickly build up a good stock of craft materials for your home craft projects. Look out for feathers, pom poms, wiggly eyes, wool, material, tissue paper, coloured paper and glitter.  Even at Christmas you could collect lots of shiny things to use, including small pieces of tinsel, wrapping paper, ribbons, gift tags, parcel twine, and shiny foil sweet wrappers.

While out and about around the shops, check out material stores for fabric scraps, odd buttons, and for balls of cheap wool or yarn. Cookware shops often sell cheap wooden spoons and spatulas. You can make a whole family of spoon puppets just by sticking fabric and wool onto spoons and drawing on faces with felt-tipped pens.

Don't forget to always have lots of paint, coloured crayons, glue and sticky tape at home!

Here are some tips for creating your own Valentines Cards. These are so simple to make but you may get a bit messy, so make sure you wear old clothes that you don't mind getting messy.

Valentines Cards

You will need:
Pink card,
Tissue paper,
Material,
Wiggly eyes,
Pens,
Glue,
Scissors.

To Make - Fold a sheet of pink card in half.  Write Happy Valentines Day at the top of the card, or print out a message using a computer, cut out and stick on.  Decorate the card with hearts, flowers or draw on funny creatures and stick on some wiggly eyes.

Tip - Don't forget to sign your card with a ? so the receiver doesn't  know who its from!

This craft and a lot more are available, along with photographs, in full colour, in our free Messy Tots mini-craft book by instant download. See the author details below to get your free copy today.


M Newbold is a prolific writer on many subjects. For a free full colour mini-craft book, visit:
http://www.cotswoldfamilylife.co.uk
www.cotswoldfamilylife.co.uk

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