Macaroni Holiday Craft

Editor's Note: I LOVE finding new ways to cutsie up my gifts, so when a fellow publisher mom shared her craft, I couldn't resist sharing. I love this idea!

As you may know, I love doing crafts with my daughter.  I especially love doing holiday crafts, so from now until the end of December, I'm going to be sharing some great handmade holiday crafts. 

The first one are these handmade Christmas bows.  The best part about this craft is that it uses recycled materials.

This craft may be a challenge for younger children when folding the strips of paper.  Some kids will be able to cut the strips of paper themselves and some will not.  Let kids use their creativity on this by choosing what paper they want to use, if they want to use crayons to color, glue pom poms to it, or however else they choose to design their bows.

Material:

- Strips of paper.  We used a Target catalog for one bow and old calendar pages for the others.

- Stapler

- Glue

- Small piece of cardboard (from a cereal box) for the back of the bow (optional)

- Different cut out shapes (you can use magazine or old calendar pages for this step to) that can be used to cover the staple (optional).  Stickers can also be used.

Directions:

- First decide what you are going to use for your bows.  This is a great step for young children to participate in.  They can choose pages from magazines, catalogs, or calendar pages.

- Cut long strips from the pages.  Our strips were approximately 5" long.

- Take one end of the strip and fold it back to the middle of the strip, then the other end will fold up to the middle of the strip.  Your strip should resemble an 8.  Adults and older children only can staple the center of the strip.  If you're doing this with younger children, they can use glue or tape rather than staples.

- Repeat the above step using 3 more strips.




- Glue two of the strips together (as pictured below).



- Glue the 3rd strip as pictured below.



- Glue the 4th strip (as shown below).  Then glue another shape or small picture to the top so that it covers the staple.



And if you're like me, and you haven't gotten any gifts to use these on, cut out the center of a paper plate, and let kids glue these bows around the outside of the paper plate to make a very pretty wreath.