Paper Goods Projects // Book Review
It is rainy season here in Holland. Rain means we spend more time than I would like inside the house! Paper Goods Projects arrived just in time to try to tame our inside boredom [60 crafts, 112 pages].
The projects are simple and patterns are provided. I let the kids flip through the book to decide on a few we wanted to try out.
The only hitch is that since we live abroad, some of the supplies otherwise readily available in the States were a bit hard to come by. Luckily I came over here with a full stash of craft supplies so we got to work right away.
H picked out the Santa made out of a cardboard tube, some paper and a cupcake wrapper. I ended up sort of using the pattern in the book as a guide. I substituted the cupcake wrapper with cotton balls to get a fuzzier Santa Claus. The Santa in the book is intended to be a treat holder. We opted to just make little Santas to sit out on display.
The book is not ideal for little kids, but would be fine for older kids competent with scissors. I had all the pieces ready for H when he got up from nap and he easily glued his Santa together.
I noticed when I was finished with the project that mine looked a bit like the Dutch Sinterklaas. I added a little cross to his hat and he sat proudly in our Sint boat, sailing back to Spain. (Read more about our experience with Sinterklaas.)
Overall I found the projects in this book cute, but not particularly unique. One project has you paint boxes to make a small town and another has you making masks out of paper plates.
I like that the book provides the needed patterns in the back but they all require that you enlarge the pattern slightly. This is a pain. I do have a scanner, but online patterns that don’t need to be altered are easier for a busy mom. (For the Santa project, I ended up just tracing it right from the book and enlarging it a bit when I made the final cuts.)
We enjoyed our Santa project, but I can’t say that additional projects from the book are high on my list of things to try.
I received a free review copy of this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for this review. All opinions are my own.
