Folded Paper Christmas Trees

I love these little trees so much. They're not super hard to make, once you get the hang of it, and the decorating part is exceptionally fun. I even made one for the library's pet fish, Dewey, so he could have a festive holiday season.

When I did this craft with teens, I had them follow along with me while I made one; with kids (even older kids), I made them in advance, up to the part where I cut off the bottom, and let them do the rest themselves.

What You Need:

• Paper, but into squares - any kind, but origami paper is very festive
• Scissors
• Sequins, stickers, glitter, and other decorating accouterments 
• Patience

What To Do:

1. Make sure your paper is cut into squares. They don't have to be perfect, but a rectangle won't work for this. 

2. Choose which side of the paper is the outside. Fold your square in half, and then in half again, with the outside showing. You will now have 4 smaller squares.

3. Unfold your paper and fold it in half diagonally, just once.

4. Unfold your paper and flip it upside down. Fold the other diagonal, so that it's facing away from all the other folds you made (with the inside of the paper showing). 

5. Unfold your paper. The fold you made in the opposite direction will want to push into the center - let it! Your paper should flatten into a square with the sides pushed in, as in the photo. 

6. Lay your paper flat on the table, looking like a diamond with the open end toward you. Then, take one of the corners and bring it into the middle, so what was the top edge is now on the center line.

 

7. Repeat with the other side.

8. Flip over and repeat with both the other corners.

9. THIS IS THE HARD PART. Unfold one of your new folds and make it into a little pouch. Take the folded edge there, and press it into the center line. This is called "inverting the fold," and it's the most difficult part to explain to someone. Instead of one large flap, you will have two smaller ones after this step. 

Before

After

10. Repeat with the other three folds. You should now have 8 flaps. (When pre-folding the trees, this is the spot where I generally stop to let the kids finish the project.)

11. Cut the short part of the kite off. Now you'll have a tall triangle.

12. You'll see in the photo here that I've made 3 short lines parallel to the bottom of the triangle. Cut along these lines, being sure not to go all the way to the center of the tree. (You don't have to draw the lines, but I found it helpful for the kids to see what I was doing.

13. On the right side only, from each cut mark, fold the paper down into a little triangle. This makes the points on the tree branches. Flip the "page" over to the right, and fold down the cut marks for all pages.

14. When you get to the last page, turn the entire tree over and fold these sides down on the right, as well. By doing it this way, the entire tree has folds only on one side of the branches, and looks nicely symmetrical. 

15. Now your tree is complete! It's the perfect time to pull out the decorations and spangle it up with sequins, glitter, a star for the top, maybe some presents for the base. Enjoy! 

Repeat until you have an entire forest.

I hope this tutorial makes sense to you; please let me know if it doesn't, and I will try to clarify. 

Paint Chip Notebooks

I love this craft. 

These pocket-sized notebooks that are so cute, I can't stand it! They're also incredibly easy to make, which I will show you step-by-step, with glamorous photos.















First of all, did you know that paint chips look like this these days? At all the hardware stores I visited, the paint chips were short and wide, rather than long and skinny. If yours are different, you will need to measure your own pages, but I've done all the hard work for you, if you happen to have paint chips that look like these. 

In addition to your paint chips, you need: 
-Hot glue (recommended) or a stapler
-Copy paper
-A pen or pencil
-A ruler

Step One

Using the ruler, measure out pages for your notebook. In this case, the pages are 4 inches wide by 2.25 inches tall. I traced grid lines onto a sheet of copy paper, and cut several sheets at once. You could trace one page out and then photocopy it, which makes this simple craft even quicker. 

Step Two

Using your ruler again, measure from the corner of the long side of the paint chip. (Note: measure from the corner, not from the curvy part of the end.) Starting at the bottom end, measure out:
- 2 inches
- 1/4 inch
- 2 1/4 inches
- 1/4 inch

Measure from both sides, and draw the lines in with pen. This makes nice, sharp creases, which you want to fold along, thus making a cute little packet. 

Once you fold along the creases, it makes a box with open sides, much like a gum packet.

Step Three

Now: Have a stack of your little pages ready to go. 

See the pocket made by the end fold of the paint chip in the photo here? Put a stripe of hot glue all the way across the cardboard, and then place your pages in. Fold the end flap over, and hold it for a few seconds. It should hold in this position. If it doesn't, add a bit more glue - you want the end flap to stay bent over like this.

Why? Well! Because now you can tuck the other end underneath the flap, and it will hold itself closed like a matchbook. Isn't it gorgeous?

Please note that the adorable flap has a tiny little bear on it (because the brand is Behr), and the writing of the paint color are facing the right side up. That's because we carefully measured from the *bottom* of the paint chip. Well done, us!

And that's it! You're done! Do you love it so much?! I DO!

Upcycled CD Art

 This summer's theme is music: LIBRARIES ROCK! So, naturally, I had to come up with / find / steal plenty of music-themed art projects. I'm going to post my craft ideas on this blog before SRP starts, so anyone can use these for their upcoming programs, too. Please enjoy. And share. And tell your friends.

Anyway. Let's start off with two ways to use old CDs or DVDs to make some new and exciting art projects.

CD Scratch Art

Did you ever, as a kid, crayon over a paper in bright colors, and then in black? And then, with a pencil or a toothpick, scratch through the black to the colors beneath, to make some very cool art?

Or, perhaps you've just bought the pre-made scratch-off bookmarks or other shapes that they sell through Oriental Trading and other such websites?

Either way. Scratch art is very cool! And it's also super easy to make old CDs into brand new artwork. All you need is:
- Old CDs or DVDs
- Acrylic paint & brushes
- Toothpicks or something else of similar size
- Pencil (optional)







Step One:


Using acrylic paint, completely cover the shiny side of an old CD or DVD disc. It's totally your call what color you use, but I really like the way that the black makes the shiny silver stand out. 








Step Two: You don't have to plan out your design ahead of time, but it can be nice to have at least a vague idea of what you're doing. If you feel so inclined, sketch out your design lightly with a pencil. It can be as simple or as complicated as you desire.













 Step Three: Using a toothpick (or something else of that size - a small dowel, the end of a paintbrush, a BBQ kabob skewer, whatever), scratch through the paint to make a design. 

Enjoy the wondrous beauty that is your new piece of artwork.

CD Suncatchers

 You need actual CDs for this one, because DVDs aren't put together the same way, but any CD should do! I am using discs from an old audio book for this, and they're working perfectly. Excellent use of discards if I do say so myself! 

There are a couple ways to do this that I've seen, involving puffy paints pr colored glue to make the lines of "stained glass," but I'm doing this with kids, so I'm going for the easiest method: markers.


Step One: Remove the Silver

I read a few sets of instructions online that weren't totally clear on this part, so I'm going to spell it out in very clear steps.  Put your CD down and scratch the top of it with something somewhat sharp - I used the edge of my scissors - to make a little scratch in the silver. You might even see it start to flake away. 

See that little scratch there? Now, put a piece of tape over it - regular old Scotch tape will work, but you'll need quite a bit of it.









Now, pull off the tape. A big chunk of lovely silver CD should peel off with the tape. 

Excellent. Now we've got it started.

Now, cover the rest of the CD (again, top side) with more tape. 

When you peel it off, the rest of the silver should come off, too! 


Most of mine came off in one large, silver sheet (which I saved, and will figure out what to do with it later.)


If you have any small bits of silver left (mine usually stuck around the outside edges and also a bit around the sticker in the center), you can use another piece of tape to remove it.


Getting off the library sticker was the hardest part, but Goo Gone and rubbing alcohol worked for that. 

Step Two: Color the plastic.

As I said above, there are a few different methods for this, but I wanted to use what I thought would work best for my patrons. Puffy paint and colored glue would look amazing, but I didn't want to make the kids wait for that to dry, so we're just using markers. As before, you can make your design as simple or elaborate as you like, though I recommend coloring over a piece of white paper, so you can see the colors on the clear plastic CD as brightly as possible. The design above (on the musical note CD) was made by coloring in shapes, and outlining them with a black marker.

Step Three: Profit? Enjoy.



I will add to the blog as new ideas are planned and tested. Please check back soon to see what else I've got planned!

Tiny Easels

I love this so much.

I remember seeing this craft a while back, and loving it, and then not doing anything with it and forgetting all about it, but then - and I don't even know why - it popped into my head the other day. 

A quick Google turned up this amazing Instructable, but since I can't always watch videos at work, and since I like to take photos as I do stuff so that I remember how I did it, and since why the heck not, I decided to take photos of the process and post it on here.

What You Need

• 6 clothespins (the kind you pinch open, not clothes pegs)
• 1 small dowel - a toothpick will work in a pinch
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks

That's it. So easy.

What To Do

1. Plug in your hot glue gun to preheat. The rest of this goes pretty fast. Now, take apart 2 of your clothespins. This is easily doable by twisting the top part away from the bottom part. 
2. Take one of the half-pins and apply glue to the edge that was the bottom inside when it was a whole pin (see photo). Glue to the bottom inside of one of the whole pins. Repeat twice more, since you need three of these. I made sure to make all 3 of mine facing the same direction, but I really don't think it makes much of a difference. You should now have three identical pins with glued-on legs, one complete and untouched pin, and a small dowel.
   
3. Thread the dowel through the top holes of three clothes pins. I turned the middle one upside down here, so they were all facing in the same general direction. NOTE: This looks much nicer when it's done if your front legs (the outside two) have the extended side of the pins on the table, and the unglued side on top.
   
4. Gently pinch the two outside pins so they are touching the center pin, while angling them outward like a capital letter A.
    
5. Dab hot glue at the base of the whole clothespins, and lay your last (whole) pin on the glue, thus attaching it to the easel. This is the stand where you can rest your artwork.
6. Stand up the tripod by allowing the center pin to fall back, as a third foot. You can see the dowel sticking out both ends of the top of your easel. You can either break of the unneeded pieces, or mark the spot with a pencil and cut it off. (My dowel was thin enough to use a pair of scissors to cut it.)
   
7. If desired, dab hot glue onto the dowel where it meets the pins, to keep the whole thing in one piece. I also added a dot of hot glue to the bottom of each leg, to add traction, so it stands up without slipping. Paint or decorate as you please.
8. Add artwork/post-it notes, or photos to your easel, and enjoy.

  

How It Went

I actually have this project on the calendar for next month, but I wanted to make sure I had the steps all set to go ahead of time - this was a test to make sure it wasn't frustratingly difficult, and it was perfect! I'm really looking forward to this one. I hope I get a nice crowd. The plan is to make tiny easels, and then paint "Mini Masterpieces" to go on top of them. (Maybe I'll even bring in my Bob Ross Funko to take photos with the tiny paintings! How cute would that be?)

Having said that, I have my sample on my desk, and even though it's only been there for a day, I've already gotten several compliments on it, from people of all ages. I wouldn't do this with the younger crowd, because hot glue, but it would make a nice adult craft, too. 

Science Club: Forensics

As an avid fan of Forensic Files, I can assure you that I think forensic science is fascinating. As such, I figured it would be a fun idea to bring a little bit of it into science club. Specifically, we're concentrating on ink chromatography and fingerprints today.

Chromatography

Chromatography is the separation of a material (in this case, ink) into its component parts (in this case, the colors that make up the ink) by using a solution in which it dissolves (such as rubbing alcohol) on a medium in which different colors move at different rates (here, a coffee filter).

Basically: Different brands of pen will use different types of ink, which are all *slightly* different shades of blue. Perhaps one pen is a little more green, and another is a bit more purple, but it's hard to tell by looking right at the ink. What to do? Separate the ink into its component colors! Every pen will have a different pattern, and you'll be able to see which pen wrote the note.

The Story

I started by telling a very sad story: SOMEONE has stolen Miss Kat's chocolate! They left a note saying, "sorry!" but didn't sign it. How can we figure out whodunnit?

Well, I just so happen to have collected the favorite pen of three of my coworkers. I've already used chromatography to analyze the ink in the note - now we have to analyze the ink in the pens to see which pen wrote the note (and therefore which person ate my chocolate). 

You Will Need

• At least 3 pens of the same color, in different brands (I used blue pens, because it was easier to see the color differences in blue than black ink)
• Coffee filters
• Rubbing alcohol
• Clear plastic cups
• Pencils and small binder clips

Setting Up

Step 3: My guilty party.

1. Cut the coffee filters into rectangles, roughly 1" wide and 3" long. You will need 3 rectangles per participants, plus extras in case anyone messes up.

2. Label the pens, so we can keep track of which pen makes which mark. I labeled mine with the names of coworkers (with their consent), but using A, B, and C, or 1, 2, and 3 would work just fine. 

3. Use chromatography to separate out the ink of one of the pens, as described below. This is your guilty party, which the scientists will all try to match the suspects' pens to.

Chromatography

Each participant gets one lab report, three coffee filter rectangles, three binder clips, a pencil, and a plastic cup.

Take turns using the pens to write on the coffee filters; at the top of each, write the suspect's name. About 1/2" from the bottom of the filter, draw a thick horizontal line (or, scribble with pen enough that it looks like one solid line). 

Clip one binder clip to the top of each rectangle, and thread all three clips through the pencil. Add about 1/2" of rubbing alcohol to your plastic cup, and suspend your pencil and its test rectangles over the cup. The bottoms of the rectangles should reach the liquid, but the ink line should be above the liquid's surface.

Wait and watch in wonder as the ink starts to separate. It may take a good 15 minutes before your samples are done, so this is a good time to start on fingerprinting. (Of course, it starts right away, so sometimes it's hard to stop watching it...)

See that teal stripe at the bottom?
It was LAURA who stole my chocolate!

Once the ink has stopped separating, you can carefully remove the rectangles from the cup, and examine them to see which pen wrote the note - and therefore which coworker stole the chocolate.

NOTE: If you don't want to use rubbing alcohol, this experiment can be done with washable markers and water.

Fingerprinting

I had originally intended to use an ink pad for fingerprinting, but that can be messy, and there's an easier way.

What You Need

• Pencils
• 2 pieces of paper per participant
• Clear tape

What to Do

1. Using your pencil, make a large dark mark on your paper. 
2. When you have plenty of graphite on the paper, rub your finger in the spot until it's covered. 
3. Then, press the sticky side of a piece of clear tape to your finger and press down. 
4. Remove the tape and stick it to a piece of clean paper (or, in this case, the lab report). 
5. Repeat for all fingers.

Then, take a look at all the whorls, arches, and loops that your fingerprints have. Do any of yours match? Do they match anyone else at the table? They shouldn't! It's a one in a million chance that someone has even one fingerprint the same as you do. 

Lab Report

Here's the lab report I made up for Chromatography and Fingerprinting. I actually taped my Guilty sample to the "The Culprit" section of the paper and color-photocopied it before we began.