The girls’ school has a lantern making competition, and being the sporting parents that we are, we decided to join in by making traditional lanterns.

After googling, checking out a friend’s father’s DIY lanterns photos on FB, buying the materials (i.e. cellophane paper, craft wire), our dining area was turned into a work shop. The hubs and I did the wire shaping, the girls drew and cut out the designs they wanted to stick on the lanterns, and I glued on the cellophane paper. The whole of last weekend was spent on this.

Zara wanted a rabbit shaped lantern, while Zaria who didn’t really care had a cuboctahedron shaped lantern just because we had a frame from an old lantern to follow.

I wasn’t good at smoothing out the cellophane paper. Sunning it didn’t work, and I was told I should blow it with a hot hair dryer after gluing on to smoothen it. Maybe next year.

But at least it’s functional!

After all the gluing was done I hung it to dry, the evening sun actually casted a beautiful shadow of the lantern on the ground.

In the night we tried lighting them up, and the girls were pretty happy with the results.

Did we win? The results will be out coming Friday, but it’s unlikely that we will as I’d seen the ones submitted by the others, and they were way more creative, or beautifully done than ours. Oh well, at least we did try.

Happy Mid Autumn Festival Everyone!

We got ourselves our 1st box of Little Paper Crate craft, and it’s the Get Into The Wild set.

The craft arrived at our door step in a, well, little paper crate.

The girls were really excited to open and check out what came in the box (actually, me too).

This was the content of the box, all laid out. Oh wow, this is something that will keep the girls occupied (usefully and creatively) for a couple of hours.

Little Paper Crate is created especially for children to explore the world of arts and crafts at a convenience, this allows the children to manage the project themselves, with minimum help from the parents.

The simple instruction booklet has easy to follow steps.

The girls decided to split the responsibility. Zaria will make the alligator and colour the back drop for the puppet stage. While Zara will work on the snake, and all the puppets.

Instructions are so simple, Zaria who’s just Standard 1 is able to read and follow the step by step instructions. With minimal help, she managed to get her Alligator Chomper done!

She then went on to work on the back drop for the Puppet Stage.

With both of them working on different projects, the stage, the puppets, the snakes were all ready in an hour.

Time for a Get Into The Wild Puppet Show. In Zaria’s case, she got excited with having the alligator chomping up the animals in the wild.

Here is one happy girl who managed to create her own props for her puppet show!

How do you buy or order your Little Paper Crate?
You actually subscribe to it (3 months, 6 months, and 1 year subscriptions are available).
Each month, a new box will arrive at your doorstep, and in the box will be a new project theme, along with the materials and step-by-step guides towards completing the individual projects.
So children can configure projects on their own, and parents do not need figure out what crafts to work with their children and to go around hunting for arts and crafts material.

Wonderful isn’t it?