Don’t you just love this cute pasta lion card? With all the hot weather we’ve had this week, crafting has been the last thing on our mind. Thankfully it’s been a cooler today and we decided it was time to wheel the craft drawers back out, especially as we had a birthday card we needed to make! We wanted to make something a bit different and just love how this turned card turned out.
Here’s what we used
Dry pasta
Orange paint
Coloured paper (pink and beige)
Card
Black marker
Eye stickers
How to make our cute pasta lion card
Take your pasta and cover it in your orange paint before putting it aside to dry.
Whilst your pasta is drying it’s time to make the lions face. To make your face shape draw a circle and then add two semi-circles near the top as you can see above. Once you have your shape, cut it out.
Cut out and glue down two small semi circles for the ears and a triangle for the nose.
Give your lion two eyes and then use your marker to draw on a mouth and some whiskers.
Once your pasta is dry, take your piece of card and fold it in half. Glue your lion’s face onto the card, then use a generous amount of glue to secure your pasta in a circle around the head to make the mane. Add your personalised message and your lion card is finished! Doesn’t he look fab?
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A few weeks back, my son asked me if we could buy a puppet theatre to play with. I have to say I was shocked at the prices of some of the puppets that we looked at! I know too well what my son is like, he’ll desperately want something and when he finally gets it he’ll play with it for a couple of days before it disappears to the back of the cupboard for goodness knows how long. It was then that I had the idea that maybe we could make our own DIY cardboard puppet theatre. That way we wouldn’t just spend time together playing with it but also building it too.
My little guy loved the idea and said that he wanted to make a red puppet show. So, when our big craft order arrived we instantly got to work on the box. It’s been so lovely spending so much time together over the last few days. I wasn’t sure how he was going to get on with no school but having him home has been such a pleasure. The best thing about this project is that it’s one we can keep adding to over time by adding new puppets to our collection!
To start with, take your cardboard box and open the ends. Cut off the Back of the box to give you three equal sections as you can see above. Our box was a little bit small so rather than cutting the ends off we glued them together at the corners to make it taller.
Draw your window onto your puppet theatre before cutting it out. Then, cut the top of your theatre into a slight arch.
*just an after thought. If you want to easily add working curtains make sure the sides pieces are a couple of cm higher than the top of your window. We didn’t do this and had to fiddle with our curtains to get them to hang properly.
Now for the fun part! Cover your puppet theatre in your chosen paint. You may want to paint the front and back, we only did the front as we’re running low on red paint!
To hang the curtains you’ll need to make a hole at the top of each of your two sides. They’ll need to be 2-3cm higher than your window. Thread a length of string through one hole, across the middle and out the other hole. Pull the string tightly before knotting the ends securely on the outside of your theatre. My son cut up an old pillowcase to make his curtains and folded them over his string before securing the loose end in place with double sided tape (I had originally planned on tidying the curtains up and sewing them together for him. To be honest though, his double sided tape has held up perfectly).
*If like ours, your curtains a little bit low use some tape or glue in the centre to lift them slightly.
To make your changeable scenery, cut out some different floors (such as grass and sea). Attach magnets to each side. You’ll also need to line up two magnets just beneath your window so you can switch your scenery.
To finish add some decoration to the front of your show. We wanted to keep it as simple as possible so we just glued on some white paper stripes and some yellow stars. once dry you puppet theatre is finished! Doesn’t it look fab? My son is so pleased with his!
