The children and I are really into our papercraft at the moment, we love combing a few embellishments, with some simple ideas to create stunning effects for cards, and anything else for that matter. For National Kite Day, and for Valentines Day, we thought we would create a Valentines Card for older children, or even one that you might be able to give to your partner with a little help from the kids.
The best thing about this card is that it meant I could get out my Sizzix Big Shot machine, which I absolutely love, and can’t recommend enough for adding some truly gorgeous touches to your cards. It is safe for the kids to use with supervision too. My kids have been since they were around six or seven years old.
Before we show you how to do this, you can adapt the basic design, and sentiment however you like to fit in with the materials that you have, and the ideas that your child has too. My daughter wanted to use a heart motif, an iron on one, which she had seen when we were shopping in John Lewis. But, you acn just an easily make a heart shaped kite with some tissue paper, or just cut one out. Whatever your children would like to do on the theme – why not give it a bash?
Anyway, enough chatter and on to the card….
Materials
- White plain card, scalloped, but it doesn’t need to be
- Dovecraft crafting paper, we used some hearts design, but you can use anything you like
- Yellow button
- Six oblong glass buttons, or alternatively some silver glitter glue
- Heart motif (any colour, but we had a silver one)
- Thin red ribbon
- White bow buttons/toggles. If you can’t find these then some satin bows could work well instead
- Sizzix framelits dies; oval set of four
- Printer, for the sentiment :-D
- Bostik micro dots
- Foam sticky pads
Method
1. Use your guillotine, and a guiding hand to cut out your craft paper to the size of your white card, and stick it down with some glue
2. Stick your yellow button in the top right-hand corner, and create your sun! Make sure you allow enough room from the edge of the tope of the card for your sunbeams though. If you are going to use glitter glue instead of buttons, you just need to make a few lovely glitter trails from your button
3. Add the sunbeams to the sun, leaving a little gap. Because these toggles are a little bumpy, we found that the micro dots were by far and away the best way of sticking them to the card, and making sure they actually stayed there ;-)
4. You now need to prepare your ribbons. Cut five lengths of ribbon from your real, all the same length. Be careful that you cut them cleanly so the ends don’t fray
5. Thread on your white bow toggle anyway that you like. We have spaced them out, but they aren’t even on each of the kite trails, but its really up to you what you do, of course. If you are struggling to thread them through your toggles, then use a large needle. You might want to help with kids with this one :-D
6. Carefully place your heart motif, or draw your heart in, on the top left of the sun, allowing enough room for the kite ribbons. Use the foam pads to attached the motif so it is raised off the card slightly
7. Push the ends of your ribbon under the heart kite, and secure them with white glue, or micro dots, whichever you prefer. Make sure you are happy with how they are spaced out. Give yourself enough room to add the sentiment over to the right and at the bottom
8. Cut out the background for your sentiment with one of the larger Sizzix Paperlit dies. Again, we used “I love you” Dovecraft paper here, but you could just use simple red card of course
9. Write out your “You make my heart take flight” sentiment on your computer, and then print it out. Make sure that your Sizzix die fits around it, and then cut it out
10. Place the larger oval on the bottom right, just over some of the kite trails and stick down with foam pads
11. Add the smaller oval, complete with your sentiment to it, and stick with more foam pads
12. You are ready to give to your sweetheart!
I so hope you like this. It is actually part of a great set of Quirky Blog Hops that I am doing with the Kid Blogger Network and Witty Hoots. If you have anything that you would like to link up in our Kite Flying Day linky, then do feel free. Please also visit the other wonderful blogs taking part in the linky – there are some gorgeous crafts, and ideas for you, all centred around kites.
Here are the other bloggers – why not pop on over and visit them all, and then link up?
- Witty Hoots made these easy to make Kite Gift Tags that would brighten any present
- Peakle Pie shares some cute Kite Bookmarks, ideal for readers young and old!
- Creative World of Varya
- Crafty Kids at Home shares a kite collage activity in Lets Go Fly a Kite
- Kid World Citizen
- Pray Species creates these adorable crafts in
Happy flying!
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Helen
Helen is a mum to two, social media consultant, and website editor; and this site is (we think) the only Social Enterprise parenting magazine!Since giving up being a business analyst when juggling travel, work and kids proved too complicated, she founded KiddyCharts so she could be with her kids, and use those grey cells at the same time.KiddyCharts has reach of over 1.1million across social and the site. The blog works with big family brands (including travel) to help promote their services, as well as offering free resources to parents of kids under 10.It gives 51%+ profits to Reverence for Life, who fund a number of important initiatives in Africa, including bringing running water and basic equipment to a school in Tanzania.Helen has worked as a digital marketing consultant (IDM qualified) with various organisations, including Channel Mum, Truprint, Talk to Mums, and Micro Scooters. She loves to be creative in the brand campaigns she works on.Get in touch TODAY!