After School Craft Club - February 2018

At our after school craft club I have been making the following projects with a small group of children. The idea was for them to experiment with different mediums that they wouldn't get the opportunity to have a play with at school.

Due to the length of time we have for each weekly session, I made the pizza style craft boxes out of Kraft card ready for them to decorate.


Week 1  -     Decorate craft boxes
Week 2  -     Stamp and ink a postcard
Week 3  -     Make a heart plaque
Week 4  -     Make a set of ATCs (artist trade cards)

These are the samples made to show the group.

We had a lot to squeeze into our sessions so I made some adjustments along the way but these samples were made for inspiration. 

The heart plaque was made using card die cut from an Amazon box, along with the card for the ATCs. The ATCs had a layer of white card stuck to the top with its design. 

For example the first card with "Love" was stamped, the second "sprout" card was made with card around my Christmas crackers and the "watch" card a mix of stamping and inking the edges.

I used some pigment inks, stamps, sequins and pearl drops on the postcard.  All things that could easily be purchased from places like The Works, Poundland etc..  apart from the "creativity" stamp which is from Visible Image.

I wanted to show the group that you could use various things around the home to craft with such as packaging, cereal boxes, odd buttons, broken jewellery, even the ribbon strings of tops (that are there to stop them sliding off the hangers). Charity shops are also good places for lucky finds. You can pick up craft glue and other crafty bits with your pocket money from affordable craft places like The Works, which have a great selection from £1 (or less in the sale).

Week 1  -  the group experimented with stencils and using pigment inks to decorate their boxes.

Week 2  -  I brought in 3 of my distress oxide inks to show the group how these inks react when water is added and their chalky texture when dry. You can layer up the colour using these oxides as opposed to them mixing together.

I love the way how each one is very different. Once dry the boxes were spritzed with a metallic mica powder which they loved the effect. As there was some time left along with some unused ink, we made a start on the postcards.

Each stamped their postcard using the Creativity stamp by Visible Image and then used small pieces of sponge to ink their postcards. Some stippled the ink to get a more mottled effect and others sponged for a more intense colour. Again each postcard is very different, which is the great thing about art, it's your own creativity, there is no right or wrong way.

Once dry I gave each postcard a coat of water resistant modge podge.

Week 3  -   We made the heart shaped plaques. These were all die cut using an Amazon box I had and the white card (packaging) layer from my son's calendar. This card is lovely and smooth, ideal for crafting.

I made a pack for each of the group to use so that they had exactly the same materials but it was their choice what they used and how they wanted it to look.  They were shown how to make dimensional flowers out of the die cut flower shapes.  

They each had two large card hearts one brown from the Amazon box and one with a white side cut from the calendar packing card. When they sandwiched the two pieces together with glue and the piece of lace to hang it with, in the middle, they left the white side showing. This will form the back layer of the heart plaque as they covered the brown layer with pretty paper. When the heart spins around it then gives them a nice which base that they can easily write on or leave plain. As the medium shaped hearts were going to be covered and stuck down it didn't matter that they were brown. The box packaging also gives a little more of a solid feel to the plaque.

I thought they all made a really good job of their plaques, perfect to keep or even better for a Mothers Day gift.  I explained that they didn't need dies to cut these shapes out, they'd look just as good cut out by hand, I just happen to have them being a crafter.

Week 4  -   ATCs (artist trade cards). I used the same Amazon box for the base of these cards as they all had a set of 3 to make. They used either a selection of rectangular patterned papers or plan white card to decorate and stick to their ATC cards. 

They had a choice of die cut shapes, peel offs glitter glue, metallic pearl drops, some gems and pigment inks to create whatever they wanted.

I was really impressed with how they used what was available to them.  Week one, they hadn't used stencils before and some of them decided to use the peel offs, in the same way, to get a stencilled effect by inking through the peel off and then peeling it off leaving an outline which they could decorate around.

Some of them do need to put the finishing touches on them but sadly we ran out of time but they have enough materials to finish them off later along with the embellishments to decorate their boxes.

On the back of the ATCs you would put the following information:-

Made by:-

Title:  (what it is or if it has a theme)

Date:

ATCs are artist trade cards measuring   2 . 5" x  3 . 5  inches, normally in card. They are often made with greyboard, mdf, canvas and many other sturdy materials that can handle various mediums used on them.  They are made with the intention to swap or trade with other artists and crafters and not to be made to sell or be sold.

I made a set of these for each of my group to take away with them along with their makes.

I thought the ATCs  would be a great idea to introduce to this group whose ages range from around 7 - 11yrs old.  Children are always swapping trading cards of various different sorts so why not create your own and swap among your friends.

Creativity needs to be nurtured especially at this age where they tend to think that if something doesn't look perfect, that its rubbish. Hopefully, I have shown them that if they don't like what they have made that they can always change or improve it rather than discarding it.

It's been great fun. looking forward to the next group.

Happy Crafting.