LBG is on her way with reading: she came home screaming with joy last week because she has moved up a reading stage and is utterly delighted with herself. DH and I are so happy to see her love of reading grow by the day. Now that she has moved on to larger longer books, she often needs to leave some pages for the following day, so we have been plunged into the world of the bookmark.
With the awful weather beating down all around, The Girls and I made some fancy Rapunzel in the tower bookmarks to help keep the pages- Dimples will always need one of whatever LBG has!
They are very simple: a castle shape cut from the back of a cereal packet, or piece of card. And the identical shape from felt, though it would work with foam if you had that instead. Remember to cut out a window aperture from the felt that is the same size as the one drawn on your card. Don’t cut it out of the card.
I cut a head shape from the remaining card, which each girl coloured in. They also coloured in the window aperture that Rapunzel would be looking out of.
Whilst they were colouring I used some lengths of wool to make the plaited hair. I made them roughly the same length as the castle from window to base, and I left a short length of hair after the knot at one end of the plait and a longer length at the other end.
Once all the constituent parts were ready, we assembled. The felt castle front was stuck to the card and trimmed if needed. Then we decorated the castle walls with felt tipped pens: brick “styling” on one, ornate climbing flowers on the other. Next I secured the top section of plait to the window, with the long length of fringe loose at the top, leaving the rest of the plait length to dangle freely. You could stick it all down, but the hair is supposed to drape up and out of the book page and over into the next one, as you see with ribbon in diaries- this is to help secure the page marker.
At last I stuck on the face, draped the remaining fringe over and around the face and gluing in place, trimming where needed, to create a more realistic hairstyle!
Leave to dry then use in your favourite book: a great fairy-tale craft that is useful too. We’re now making them for all the girls’ friends…..
Conveniently enough we’ve just done a Fabulous Fairy Tale Crafts Hangout and have a whole bunch of other crafts to share with you. Take a look at the video as we explain how some things are made there. Plus, if I say so myself, we are quite witty!
Red Ted Art – Loo Roll Three Little Pigs Peanut Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs finger puppets; Cork Fairy Tale Folk
Kids Chaos – Jack and the Beanstalk Reward Chart; Teacup candle; Mirror mirror on the wall
Zing Zing Tree – Little Mermaid paper plate collage; Mad Hatters paper mache teacup; paper mache elf boots
Domestic Goddesque – Rapunzel bookmarks; Fairy Tale puppet theatre; Cinderella’s ‘glass’ slipper
Me and My Shadow – Little Red Riding Hood Cape; Lace Princess Crown; Magic Beans
Wendy at Tots says
plaited hair works really well. I can see some sticking and gluing coming on…
Danielle Vedmore says
They are so fab! My friends little girl is obsessed with Tangled so this is right up her street – will pass on the link! xoxo
Liz Burton says
These are such a clever idea! Love the plaited hair.
Zing Zing Tree says
Love these. So clever having the hair free to dangle out over the book!