Rolling Our Own Craft Tubes

TP rolls, craft tubes, whatever you want to call them — we're showing a number of crafts based on covering empty toilet paper rolls, or using the brightly-colored versions we used to sell in the store. Corporate came up with some instructions to (excuse the pun) roll our own from cardstock. The big issue I have with their instructions is, umm, staples. Not the office superstore down the road, but those U-shaped metal wires that are made to pierce two or more pieces of paper and then get their uprights stamped down into a bow shape (when the machines work properly). Even with the sometimes sharp points inside, these can pose hazards to young hands instructed to stick their fingers inside the tube to glue various craft materials in place.

There's a better way to do this, though it takes a little more time, and a handful of perfectly-reusable Jumbo Gem Clips (standard trombone-shaped paper clips).

Step 1. Cut out your blank form. This is a 7.5" x 4.5" rectangle of cardstock. A paper cutter will give you a more even edge than scissors, but it's not necessary. You could even use fancy-shape scissors on the long edges of the rectangle, to get a fancy top and/or bottom of your tube.

Step 2. Use a bone folder, or a ruler with a sharp (metal) edge, to induce a curl in your rectangle. Hold a short edge of the rectangle firmly in the center. Place the ruler parallel to that edge, as near to it as possible, and at an angle to the table. Press firmly with the ruler and pull the ruler towards the opposite short edge of the paper. This will curl the edge away from the edge you are holding. Turn the paper 180 degrees (so you will now be holding the curled end) and repeat. You may need to do this a couple of times to create enough roll to allow you to roll the cardstock neatly.

 

Step 3. Use your hands to form a roll from the curved paper. It should be about 1-1/2" in diameter, but it can vary depending on your hands and your needs. This will be just shy of two full rotations of the paper.

Step 4. Place a thin line of white glue along the open edge of the roll. Aleene's Fast Grab Tacky Glue works best, but Elmer's School Glue will do just fine, and it's child safe.

Step 5. Use paper clips to clamp the edges in place until the glue dries. Press down in the center (un-clamped area) to help the glue adhere there as well.

Step 6. Remove the paper clips. Your craft roll is ready to use.

By the way, given the potential for the spread of harmful bacteria, I would not recommend using actual empty toilet paper tubes for crafting.

Content Versus Skill Level

Over the past several weeks, I've been puzzled by the craft selections for some of our Saturday morning "Kids Club" projects.

At its best, Kids Club is a lot of fun. Pay a couple of bucks, let your kid get creative for a half-hour, possibly meet new friends, and at the end of it they'll have a craft they can show-and-tell, give as a gift, or keep for themselves. They may have even learned a new skill in the process.

At its worst, any one-size-fits-all children's craft program can be an exercise in frustration.

As any parent or teacher will tell you, the key to a successful kids craft is providing interesting content at an appropriate skill level. That's not always as straightforward as it seems — especially for "drop-in" teachers and leaders who are not acquainted with your individual child's development level.
(This is why, when suggesting appropriate craft kits and supplies, I always tell parents, "The ages listed are guidelines: you know your own child's development level and attention span best." It's also why planning a craft that spans a large range of ages and development levels (our Kids Club is aimed at ages 3-12) is a considerable challenge.)

The challenge I've seen over the early part of October has been a mismatch between content and skill level. We've been pushing licensing relationships with Sprout and Disney Junior, whose progamming is aimed at the preschool set. The crafts we've featured included cutting out a number of very small pieces of felt, foam, and cardboard, and sticking them together in a very specific order — a skillset better suited towards pre-teens or older. As expected, the content drew only preschoolers and kindergarteners. The parents ended up doing most of the drawing and cutting, while the kids quickly got bored (even with Vampirina scenes to color in). The craft took the parents more than a half-hour to complete.

Thankfully, our child-friendly events aren't limited to Kids Club. Most recently, we had a couple of slime events, a pumpkin-decorating event, and a Hallowe'en T-shirt painting event. While these were meant for all ages, it was mostly kids participating with parents looking on and helping when needed. Corporate templates given as jump-off points were ignored beyond my introduction of them, and creativity was completely unleashed. Last month's two-hour Emoji Cupcake Decorating class, aimed at adults, was a largely parent-child bonding event, with everyone riffing after the original three emojis (heart eyes, poop, and crazy) were completed. Our annual Gingerbread House event is similar. The keys to success are a match of content (kid friendly) with skill level, and parental involvement.

What's This "Slime" Thing All About?

If you've been anywhere around primary-school children this past year, you've heard them wax poetic about slime.

We're not talking here about the oozing texture of decomposing vegetables, but a complex colloid usually* made from copious amounts of white or clear glue (particularly Elmer's glue products) that has been partially solidified by the reaction of baking soda (a mild acid) with borax, detergent, or contact lens solution (mild bases), and given color and texture with food dyes, acrylic paints, glitter, pompoms, miniature styrofoam balls, pony beads, pieces of string, googly eyes, and pretty much anything these youngsters can get a hold of.

Slime has been a strong component of Michaels' children's craft supply sales and family events since the beginning of the summer, along with a number of slime-themed events. Parents have been purchasing gallon upon gallon of glue for slime-making; kids have been trading slime, giving it away, and even starting their own slime businesses. Some have become YouTube stars, demonstrating new or different slime recipes.

Like most adults, I didn't get the attraction of slime — so I asked some of our young customers. At its most basic, playing with slime gives kids the same sort of hand-stress release that adults get from foam-filled stress balls (and other-shaped promotional items). But it goes a bit further, and as "they" say, you really have to play with it a bit to understand the attraction. I got a chance to do this as "leader" for our October 7 "MAKEbreak: Customize Pumpkin Slime" event.

Slime is not as stiff as stress-ball foam. It can be stretched out like dough (even thinner than many doughs!), and plain slime is great for massaging the spaces between your fingers. The texturizers (those beads and pompoms and stuff) can stimulate small areas like the pads of one's fingers. Except for leaving my fingers feeling covered in glue residue, I can easily understand how kids like to keep kneading, squeezing, and stretching those balls of slime.

Slime's visual and tactile stimulation brings to mind Twiddlemuffs, a leftover-yarn charity project discussed on the LoveKnitting and LoveCrochet blogs. These muffs, made from multiple colors and textures of yarn, with buttons and notions sewn inside and out, help calm Alzheimer's and dementia patients and help them focus. (They are in some ways low-tech versions of the "fidget boxes" that were popular these past two summers.)

In addition to our earlier pumpkin slime event, we'll be having a free MAKEbreak: Customize Glow in the Dark Slime event this coming Saturday (the 21st) from 1 to 3PM, and a tuition-free (you will need to purchase supplies) Make-Your-Own Slime Cupcake event on the the evening of October 30th.


*YouTube videos have recipes for slime made from other ingredients such as liquid or colloidal soaps and sugar or salt, nail polish and vegetable oil, or Crayola Model Magic and hand lotion, but most of these require a couple days' standing plus freezer time in order to cure.

Build a Fall Wreath

Today, Michaels Arts and Crafts Stores had a "MAKEBreak" event from 1 to 3pm.

If you haven't heard of MAKEBreak, I think the older label, "Make It — Take It" describes it much better... While MAKEBreak is meant to be read as "take a break and make something", I read it more as "make something and break it". (How many of your childhood crafts got home from school the way they looked at the end of the class?) That said, one of the biggest virtues of the Maker movement is the freedom to break the "rules" and put existing components together in new and different ways to create useful systems and devices.

(Personal prejudice here: I dislike the co-option of the "Maker Movement" by craft stores, sewing stores, and art stores; the original idea was to use electronics and circuitry to create novel useful items, to solve problems that aren't addressed by products currently in the marketplace. In short, "everybody can be an inventor". I'm also STEAMED at the addition of "art" into STEM; I fear it will only serve to further disenfranchise the girls and women who need to get into, and understand, science and engineering.)

Today's craft was called "Fall Door Decor", but it was just creating a fall wreath. You purchased the wreath at Michaels; the store supplied the flowers, fillers, and the floral wire and hot glue to put it all together. The entire project should take about a half hour.

For children, the MAKEBreak project was to create a wreath from their own handprints. (Mom and Dad: if you've a place to store this next to their hand turkeys, you can try this again next year and show them how they've grown!) As it turned out, the hand wreath took more time than the grapevine wreath, but it turned out to be a great parent-child bonding craft.

As often happens with Michaels' floral crafts, the selection of materials will varies from store to store. Remember to sign up early for the best chance at finding a spot, and the best of the materials for your trend floral creations.

As always, there was the Saturday Morning Kids Club® from 10 to noon. Today's half-hour sessions focused on creating Craft Stick Characters.