Arts & Craft #1 - Paper Quiling for Teacher's Day

Arts and crafts has never been my strong suit and if I had to draw to save my life I would probably be dead by now. Hahaha! Anyway, I decided to number my posts as I hope to do more arty and crafty stuff with my little ones.

A couple of weeks ago, after he had came back from school and unpacked his bag, I started looking at his school schedule and notes, I realised that there was a request for us to do something simple like make a card for Teacher's Day. I panicked of course, as Teacher's Day celebration in his school was the next day!! Horror of horrors! I didn't want my little guy to be the only one at school that didn't do anything just because his Mom forgot! My brain worked furiously to think of something that we could make easily and within a few hours. I scoured Pinterest and came across a cute little card with paper quilling elements on it. Mind you, I had NO IDEA that it was paper quilling at that time. Suddenly, I remembered that during the Team Malaysia Chinese New Year event, @elizacheng had stuff for the kids that looked similar so that. I quickly hunted high and low for the trinket and breathed a sigh of relief when I found it somewhere on my office desk. I scrutinised it and decided that it looked easy enough to do and was so happy that I would be able to go home and do it with Chapati. Once again I had NO IDEA whatsoever that this was paper quilling!

@elizacheng's original handiwork

I happily got together my supplies for the project and this was the list I got:

1. Sheafs of coloured A4 Paper - I got the bright, neon and pastel ones
2. Long ruler
3. Two pair of scissors - big one for me and little one for Chapati
4. 1 liter bottle of white liquid glue
5. A few pieces of white A4 paper
6. 1 piece of cardboard or drawing block paper (I used drawing block paper)

It is a pretty simple list of supplies and I got most of them cheap at the MR DIY shop in Mahkota Cheras. The bottle of glue was under RM10 and the pretty strings were RM2 per roll. Everything else was stuff that I bought before and they were just lying around the house. So here is the steps that I took to make them.

Step 1:

• Pick a shape that you like, my son choose a heart and a square. He wanted to make three for his favoured teachers. We decided on two hearts and one square. I measured a square that was 6 cm x 6 cm on a white piece of A4 paper and drawing block paper .
• The heart shape I just traced from the example that I had. Basically you can have any size you want but I wanted to make one that his little hands could carry easily.
• Stick the A4 piece and the drawing block piece together with glue to make it stiff.
• Then I outlined the shape with brush markers. I guess you could use colours pencils or pain paint I mean. Just go crazy and make it pretty.

Outlining the shapes with my brush markers

Step 2:

• Draw lines on the coloured paper approximately 0.5 cm. I used my ruler to estimate so I didn't bother to measure.
• Cut out the strips of measured paper of various colours.

Coloured papers galore

I just drew lines using my ruler to estimate the size for the strip

Step 3:

• Roll the strip however you like. It is a pretty arduous task and it takes forever to roll them. Towards to the end, my fingers were starting to cramp and I was happy when I had just enough for the shapes I cut out. My little champion was rolling strips of papers like crazy. Towards the end, he was tired and needed to rest! Hahaha

Poor little Chapati, he actually rolled a lot of strips!

Step 4:

• Pour out the glue on a flat surface and so that you can dip your rolls on it.
• Spread the glue thickly on the shapes and stick the rolls directly on. I had to hold them there for a while for them to adhere to the surface of the paper

Step 5:

• Once all your shapes are filled with paper rolls, thread a paper string through one of the rolls and voila! You have a little heart on a string to give someone!

Step 6:

• Turn behind and write down a little message to that special person!

Our 3 finished little works of art!

The next day he happily carried all three shapes to school and gave them out proudly whilst I nursed a funny feeling in my finger and an achy neck! I decided to chat with @elizacheng and tell her how I managed to do it. She laughed when I told her everything I had done. 😆 She said, "That's paper quilling my dear and there is actually a tool to roll the paper and you can even buy pre-cut paper in all colours!" I laughed like crazy and nearly strangled her! 😱🤪😤 Oh well, it was a good two hours sitting with my son doing something together! It was so worth it!

My little champion showing off his work at school!

Thanks for reading my first arts and craft post! We have some pretty awesome and talented Mamas in arts, crafts and needlework! Come, join us on discord and follow our community account if you want to find something to do together with your little kiddos!