An easy craft for kids and one that uses lots of creativity. A little folding, some glue and a few sparkles will render some unique, handmade ornaments that your kids will love and you will too.

You will need:

*Sturdy paper – construction paper or thicker, white or colored

*Scissors

*School glue

*Sequins, sparkles, glitter, beads, gold or silver spray paint.

*Something round to trace the circles onto the paper. An overturned glass will do.

Trace circles onto the paper and cut them out. You will need 8 circles for every ball ornament. Fold the circles according to the diagram and when you are done folding, open it up and cut on one fold to the middle (the dotted line in figure 4).

Now, pull 1/4 over the adjacent 1/4 and glue together so that you have a little cup of only three sides. Do this for all the circles. When you have them all done assenble you ball by gluing them together to form a ball. You can either spray paint them gold or silver once assembled or have the kids individually decorate each piece before assembly using glitter, beads, sequins, anything they can imagine. It’s fun to assemble differently decorated cubes togather for interesting and unique ornaments.

When the ornaments are assembled you can punch a small hole at the top to attach a string or glue one to the middle of the cubes as you assemble them.

When I was very young, someone (I don’t remember who) taught me how to make a paper dart. It was only much later that I realized that the design I’d been taught was different from everyone else’s paper darts. Instead of being the usual trangular shape, mine was a complex thing of triangles and rectangles. And, in my entire lifetime, I have never met anyone who makes darts the way I do. But it is such a good flyer that I have stayed with it and never learned how to make those triangular things.

And now I have decided to share my secret knowledge with the world (oh, you lucky people!). Here is how to make a completely different paper dart.

Fold a reasonably clean and flat piece of paper (any size, as long as it’s not square) so that a top corner meets the opposite edge, as in Step 1. Then fold it out again and do the same with the other top corner. Then unfold it and you should have something that looks like step 2, with creases where the lines are drawn.

Take the top corners of the paper, one in each hand, and pull it towards you, at the same time pressing in on the sides with your free fingers. You might have to encourage the very tip of the paper to fold correctly but it should look like Step 3 as you’re doing it. Then press it down flat so that the new folds become permanent.

At the base of the triangle you have created, grab an outer corner and bend it towards the centerline of the paper, again folding it flat when the edges line up, as in Step 4. The drawing shows the left side treated in this way while the right remains to be done.

When you have completed both sides, grab an outer of corner of one of the two triangles just created and fold it in to the center line again, as shown in Step 5. Repeat on the other side. Then fold the tip of the triangle towards you and down so that it covers the top of the triangles – as in Step 6.

Now fold the paper inwards along its center line, shown by the dotted line in the drawing. If you have been reasonably accurate with your folding, all the edges should meet and the sides be equal. All that remains is to fold out the wings along the line shown in Step 8, squash the folds flat so that they retain their shape, and you have a unique paper dart. It should look like this:

The great thing about this design is that you can alter its flying characteristics by forcing the wings into better profiles and perhaps even making small cuts to create ailerons and a tail. Have fun!

A quick gift for teachers or grandparents or for a favor at your Halloween party. All you need is some orange tissue paper, glue, a paintbrush, a black permanent marker and a glass jar.

Cut or tear tissue paper into stips. Paint a layer of glue onto the outside of a clean, glass jar. Place strips of paper over the jar onto the glue. If you want to make a layered texture, repeat the process by applying a little glue to the existing paper and placing more strips of paper. Stagger the strips in subsequent layers to enhance the textured effect.

Using a black marker, draw a jack o’lantern face on the jar. Fill with candy corn or other holiday candy.

Whenever you open an older book in the library and find the paper on the inside of the cover has been “marbled”, have you ever wondered how it’s done? Probably some complex industrial process, you might guess.

But actually it isn’t. It’s a fairly simple procedure requiring only a bit of practice and a flair for creating the patterns. Here’s what you need to get started :

* Some marbling ink — obtainable from most craft outlets.
* A tray big enough to take your paper, whether letter-sized, A4, or bigger.
* Paper — not varnished or shiny.
* Some newspaper to lay out the wet sheets.
* A paintbrush, stylus, comb or feather to create the patterns in the ink.

The process is simple.

* Fill a flat-bottomed tray with about an inch of water.
* With a brush or eye-dropper put a splash of ink on the water. It will spread out quickly in widening circles.
* Drop in other colours and experiment twirling them around with a comb or stylus.
* When satisfied, place the paper carefully on the liquid surface. Wait for about one minute.
* Hold one end of the paper and draw it up and out of the liquid.
* Wash the paper under running water to dislodge excess ink.
* Place the paper on newspaper to dry.
* When completely dry leave it under a few heavy books overnight to iron out the wrinkles.

There are many variations on this craft as you can guess, and I found five or six excellent books on marbling in the local library.

This is a really interesting craft if you have an artistic temperament. Home-marbled paper is also a good conversation piece. Some artists even do this for a living, supplying printers with bulk quantities, or special commissions.