Crafts for Kids – Creative Quilling for Crowds – Fun Paper Art!
Children’s Art – Quilling for Crowds – “GLUEOLOGY” RULES
Quilling is the art of creating designs with narrow strips of paper that have been wound around a quilling tool to create a basic shape (s-shape, heart, eyeball, coil, spiral, etc.). The shapes are glued and arranged to form all sorts of eye-catching designs. Some would have you believe that this craft needs to be done with precision, with special tools, with just the right kind of paper, and done to a minimum. Target NO!
You can do fun quilling, with crowds of people, even little people! Stay loose, have creative fun, and forget about precision!
This is an overview:
GLUEOLOGY and FLEXIBILITY are the key!
DON’T WORRY SO MUCH about the exact right paper, the perfect tools, or the best glue.
Materials you need:
Scissors – child size
Any paper. Any color. Construction paper can be clunky, but it still works. The BEST paper is recycled (and free). Don’t BUY paper unless you have to. Ask a printer for scraps, scraps.
Use a paper cutter and, ahead of time, cut the paper into strips about ½ to 1 inch wide. They don’t all have to be exactly the same. A variety of lengths is good. Cut up piles so kids have lots of options.
White “school glue”. The BIG important instruction on using glue is this: “Use LITTLE drops of glue!” I have often put the glue in small cups with toothpicks sticking out, so the kids can only apply the glue in little bits with the toothpick.
Sticks: Small round wooden sticks, toothpicks, or pencils work to determine how tight your curls will be. Preschoolers can tightly wrap a strip of paper around a pencil. Older children have more success with a toothpick.
The action:
ROLL the paper: there is a wide variety of basic curls. At your event, you’ll want to consistently display these and have a variety of finished pieces available to view. Print pictures of the basic curls for people to see.
You especially want to have samples made of very basic quilling art. Examples: a mouse, a heart. A mouse is 3 tears, a slightly curly tail, a rolled eye, and that’s it… or you can go to the next step and fill the mouse’s body with lots of s-shaped curls. One Heart: Use a wider strip for the outer heart and fill in the heart with shapes.
SCIENCE TIME!!!!! GLUEOLOGY! Here is the key to your success! The science of glue is this: the reason glue holds things together is that the glue molecules mix with the paper molecules. So if you apply a puddle of glue, it’s harder for the glue molecules to mix with the paper molecules. So, you put some glue in one place, and then you put the two papers you want to glue together together, and then you PUSH the papers together, with the glue drop in the middle, wow! It quickly sticks and you can move on. Important so that children can move on!
USE IT: At a fair, kids need a way to take their creations with them. Your quilling project could be fragile. Use heavy fishing line (oh thrifty!) Hang their gear and they wear it as a necklace. Make sure everyone has an instruction sheet in their pocket, so they can get hooked on this wonderfully creative craft at home!
HOLIDAY THEMES:At a Christmas fair, we quilled snowflakes, glittered them, and gave them as Christmas gifts. Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Dwali, Kwanza… it works.
There are so many ways to use quilling for gifts, decorations, cards! This is a lifetime skill!