Crafts-Hobbies Vivian | 10 Mar 2010 07:27 am
How to Make Hand Stamped Christmas Wrapping With Children Using Potatoes
My friend’s two young children across the road have been asking me to do some Christmas Crafts with them for a while now. They had asked if we could make some Christmas wrapping paper. So this past weekend we set to creating, allowing their Mum and Dad to disappear Christmas shopping!
The girls have been making some Christmas presents at school but needed some Christmas wrapping paper to wrap them up in. They thus came armed with their creations to wrap. If you too have children and need to keep them busy for an afternoon, this idea will suit you. It’s quick and easy and you can occupy the children for however long is necessary!
Here’s the How To:-
We washed the potatoes, (unfortunately they were not handpicked from the garden, perhaps next year!) and cut them in ? discarding the rest. The girls selected a Christmas cookie stencil to use, these being a star and a Christmas tree. The girls then pushed their Christmas cookie stencils into the potatoes. With my help, they then trimmed off the excess potato around the stencil to further outline the star and the tree and cut into the opposite end of the potato to create a handle so they could hold them more easily.
The girls then either brushed or sponged paint onto the potatoes and stamped as they wished all over brown lunch bags. The younger child did the stars which were all one color and the older child used the tree and used two colors. You will find they don’t dry as fast as the children want them too!!
Whilst they were drying, the girls picked through my ribbon box and found all the colors they wanted to use to add some zing to their Christmas wrapping. We did find a small amount of glitter glue and added this to the star wrap to highlight one particular star and left to dry again.
When they were dry the girls added further decorations and I helped them to add the ribbons to secure their Christmas presents inside. We even made some matching tags to go with the bags.
We hope we have inspired you to create you own hand stamped Christmas wrapping.
Carolyne Roberts – A Master Gardener in Hillsborough County Florida.
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