paper

With my lanterns being featured in St Albans Quarterley it has prompted me to re visit this idea for Mother's Day, this would be a companion to go with the tea lights in jar gift idea. You will find the basic lantern tutorial here. In the photographs you will see I have used a mixture of glasses and jars for the lanterns. Some of the jars, the round ribbed ones, once contained scented candles.

This is a guest post by Maggy at Red Ted Art. I think it's a lovely idea to make and create characters from children's books together, it brings them to life and enables children to have more interaction with the story.

Over at Red Ted Art , my son (Red Ted (2)) and I (Maggy (old)) do lots of crafts projects. Sometimes Pip Squeak (0) joins us. Usually we are inspired by books that we read - the tagline from another crafty mum being – story + art = great stART.

I saw this idea for a card on Frugal Family Fun Blog, Valerie has created a lovely tutorial, showing children making the cards. I just like the clever way she has not only utilised the concertina effect but also the curve of the cupcake case, to such good effect.

I received my Artist Trading Card swap, it arrived in the post from Kathie in Massachusetts. I love it! It only measures 67cm x 89cm, but it's a work of art in miniature.

I found this amazing Japanese website. It has the most adorable print-and-build models. It's called the Paper Museum and the downloads are free. The website is full of cute shops, vehicles, food, decorations, packaging, cards and lots more. All are ingeniously made from card. After some indecision because of the choice, I plumped for the toy shop it was easy to make. Its construction was very precise. When it's completed it stands 23cm in height.