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Showing posts with label butterfly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label butterfly. Show all posts

More Butterflies--Origami

Sharing Saturday is still open!! Please stop by to share your child-oriented crafts and activities or to be inspired by the amazing ideas already shared!

Since my post for Friday was on butterflies I thought I would show you some more butterflies I have made (and have given to Hazel to decorate though she seems to just like to play with them).  (The post on Friday included some children's books about butterflies.)

These are all made with a technique called origami. I love origami. I used it as a math teacher to teach different skills and have just always thought the Japanese art of paper folding was really neat. Some is easier than others and I will get into this more later. I am going to start by giving you a bit of the history of paper and origami. My sources for this history will be two books: The Simple Art of Japanese Papercrafts by Mari Ono and Origami Flowers by Soonboke Smith.
Asian and Polynesian peoples are known to have created ceremonial and utilitarian handicrafts by folding and wearing ti leaves, palm fronds, and pounded mulberry bark long before paper was ever invented. This was the origins of origami. The word origami is the Japanese word for paper folding. (Source: Origami Flowers)

Papermaking was invented in China at the beginning of the second century and was brought to Japan in the sixth century CE. The original paper brought to Japan was weak and the people demanded better paper. The Japanese discovered that a plant indigenous to Japan, gampi, was an ideal raw material for paper and they used a new method to produce it. This created washi paper. In the eighth century a new method was developed using hemp and kozo. This method is called the nagashizuki method. It allowed for unusally thin, strong, resistant paper to be made. With these developments the use of paper became more than just for official documents and transcription of religious texts because paper was more available.
Source

The origin of origami is not completely known. Parts of it began to appear in different areas of Japan. When paper became more available, it became common for people to make cranes and boats and use them as decorations. The first origami book, The Secret of One Thousand Origami Cranes by Hiden Senbazuru Orikata was published in 1797.

In 1873 at the Vienna World Exposition the world was amazed to see all the things made out of paper by the Japanese. Until 1853 Japan was very isolated from the world. (Source: The Simple Art of Japanese Crafts)

I have to admit my nephew loves origami. While I was at the Cape last time he was visiting and we did quite a bit of origami together. I left my book there so he and my mother could continue to make some. I meant to take some pictures of the things we made, but alas I did not and left them there.
Some of my sources for my butterflies!

Now onto our butterflies. While at the Mass Audubon Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary Gift Shop, I found an origami butterfly kit (see picture on top of collage above). This was the start of my idea. I had several butterfly crafts to try and thought it would be neat to do some out of origami as well. Unfortunately I had some difficulties with the instructions. After several tries, I decided to practice with printer paper so I would not keep wasting my good origami paper (and the paper in the kit was double-sided to make more colorful butterflies).
After figuring this one out with the printer paper, I have not gone back and tried it with the origami paper. However, I loved the idea of being able to do make some with Hazel's drawings and paintings. This has not happened yet, but it will.
This purple butterfly was made from the instructions in the book, Making Origami Animals by Michael G. LaFosse (bottom left in collage above).
This pink butterfly includes a pipecleaner body and antennae. It was made using the instructions in the Holiday Origami book by Jill Smolinski (bottom right in collage above). It had the butterflies as an introduction to spring.
This dual color butterfly was among the easiest I made. The instructions came from Hansbirkeland.
The cabbage butterfly was among the next easiest for instructions found on line. These instructions came from the Origami Club.
The instructions for this beautiful butterfly are also on-line at Fabric Origami.
Although this one looks simple, it has more steps than most of the ones I made. With fifteen steps, it is definitely not simple. I found this one at Origami-fun.

My final butterfly had twenty-one steps! It is a butterfly by Akira Yoshizawa. There are several videos on-line for the Yoshizawa butterfly. I found the instructions at this blog.

If you would like even more of a challenge than twenty-one steps, you can check out these books. They had 50-100 steps for the butterflies, but they were complete with their six legs and all. I did not adventure that much to try them. Sorry!

I would also like to share with you this wonderful book, Butterflies for Kiri by Cathryn Falwell. It is a wonderful story of how a girl who loves to draw and paint receives a gift of an origami kit on which her aunt had made an origami butterfly in the wrapping. Kiri tries to make the butterfly and has difficulty, but with practice eventually is able to make it. It has instructions to make an origami butterfly in it. I know I followed them, but am not sure which one it is anymore. I may have misrepresented one of the ones above (if I did I'm guessing the purple one) and its instructions came from here.

Butterflies


Butterflies are another sign of summer to me. Hazel and I have been seeing quite a few and learning about them as well. Between our adventures at Mass Audubon (in and out of scheduled programs) and just in our yard, we have been seeing them everywhere! This summer Hazel has learned to recognize a monarch butterfly and has learned to say monarch. Oh, and I saw the Butterfly Lifecycle pieces at Michaels as well as the frog one we looked at with our program! We have also found a few books to help us learn about them.
The first is The Butterfly by Anna Milbourne and Cathy Shimmen. We bought this one at the zoo. It goes through the life of a butterfly from caterpillar to butterfly's eggs hatching. The pictures are nice and colorful.

The second is What's the Difference Between a Butterfly and a Moth? by Robin Koontz. I saw this book on Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational awhile ago and looked for it at the library. I have always wondered how you could tell the difference.

The third is A Butterfly Is Patient by Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long. This book goes into great detail about what characteristics a butterfly must have for its life cycle as well well labeled illustrations of the different species at all stages.

The fourth is my favorite. It is See How They Grow Butterfly photographed by Kim Taylor. This book starts with a photograph of an egg and its mother and takes you through every stage from hatching to pictures with exactly how many weeks it is old. The pictures are amazing!! I definitely recommend this one if you want to learn/teach more about the life cycle.

Today we did some butterfly crafts. First we borrowed an idea from One Artsy Mama and made beaded butterflies by putting beads on pipe cleaners. (I should add that she posted this the other day which is why I say she inspired it. Looking at my pins I see I had a similar one pinned and the original source is indietutes.) Now I did this from memory this morning and thought about using clothespins, but we didn't. We did it with pipe cleaners and beads. This probably made it easier, but not as great for use.

Next we took the idea from  Creative Play For Your Toddler: Steiner Waldorf Expertise and Toy Projects for 2-4s by Christopher Clouder and Janni Nicol. We used three squares of tissue paper and a pipe cleaner. We added on a wooden bead for the head. The book suggested making a mobile. We have not done that yet, but Hazel is enjoying playing with them.

Some of the other crafts I have done from this book can be found here and here.













We also did a similar one using tulle and a pipe cleaner.
The last thing I would like to share is a gift Hazel picked out for me awhile ago at Drumlin Farm Gift Shop.  (My birthday was this week, so I got to open them this week.)



We will be doing more butterfly crafts as well as dragonflies! Stay tuned!

This is where I share...


Fireflies Part 2

Did you check out our firefly paintings and the books we have been reading last week? As promised here are some more firefly crafts that we have been trying. This time we used some glow sticks to give our fireflies their light.


The first was inspired by somewhere on-line, but I cannot seem to find where again. I thought it was Family Fun Magazine, but I cannot seem to find it again. Anyway, you need a plastic Easter egg and a glow stick, some construction paper and googly eyes or marker and pipe cleaners if you want antennae and legs.


Put the glow stick inside the egg and then glue the construction paper wings on and eyes and pipe cleaners (we skipped this part). Let them dry and then play with them or hang them for a nighttime scene inside.


We also tried this with toilet paper rolls and construction paper. We put a glow stick inside and then put orange paper over the head end and yellow over the tail end then covered the roll in orange. We added white and orange wings and drew on a face.
I apologize now for my camera. It does not do well with the glow in the dark pictures or any nighttime pictures. 

Finally, our last inspiration was from Lorie at Reading Confetti. Using glow sticks to make fireflies or butterflies. Ours looks more like a butterfly.
 


We have a few more ideas to try with fireflies and then we are going to move onto butterflies. Of course, yesterday's story time got me thinking more and more about butterflies and bugs! I want to try a few ideas from Betsy over at Tippytoe Crafts. I always love her ideas!!




 This is where I share...
 

Readathon Week 3 at MeMeTales

I'm guest posting over at Happy Whimsical Hearts!! It is the day of her Happy Lil Hearts are Baking Link Party. Won't you come over and share with us?




As you know, we are participating in MeMeTales Readathon 2012. This is week 3 and in the first two weeks they have had 3,000 kids join in. For each child that joins they are donating a meal to FoodforEducation.org, so this is huge!! Plus the kids read 14,688 books this week. Their goal is to have 100,000 books read and donate 10,000 meals. If you haven't joined yet, please do. It is free and you get free books each week to go along with the theme that you can read on your computer or electronic book device.

T-Shirt Weather

Reminder: Sharing Saturday is still open!! So is the Teacher Gift Link Party! Please stop by both and share your amazing ideas!!
Hazel's Mermaid T-Shirt
My Mermaid T-Shirt
Summer has finally hit here in New England. So since it is t-shirt weather, we decided to paint our own. T-shirts were on sale this past week at Joann's (4 for $10) and AC Moore ($2.99). We bought a bunch in different colors for both of us and a few for gifts. I also used my 50% off coupon at Joann's to buy some metallic and glitter fabric paints. Needless to say we will be making some for the various holidays this year. I had seen a few places using freezer paper stencils and read somewhere that contact paper would also work. I also had seen a tutorial in Family Fun Magazine to make your own silk screens so they would be reusable, but I didn't want to invest the money and time into this. Since I had a piece of contact paper cut that wasn't used for its original intention, I went with that. It was so easy! I googled for free stencils and for certain pictures. We had decided we wanted mermaid t-shirts to enter in the Mermaid Project Competition.


So to start I traced the stencils onto the clear contact paper. Then using an Exacto type knife I cut out the portions for each color. (On some of the multi-colored ones if the colors were not too close I would cut them both out of one as to not waste Contact paper.) Then we chose the color for the first part and I put the stencil on the t-shirt with a magazine inbetween the layers of the fabric. We put some paint in a plastic egg carton and Hazel dabbed it on with sponge applicators I bought the last time we painted t-shirts for Valentine's Day.
Hard at work on her mermaid!
Close up on the mermaid painting
The mermaid was the only one we used twice. So we did these together each layer. First we did Hazel's and then I would remove the stencil and put it right on my t-shirt and dab the stencil with a paper towel since I wanted different colors.




Stencil Removed
Painted stencil



In between colors we had to wait four hours for the paint to dry completely. So we did all the first round and then waited. Did some second round before Hazel went to bed, but finished the second round in the morning as well as the third round from the ones we did the night before. Here are some of the ones we did. (There are more methods below!!)
We bought Hazel a new sun hat which she loves and she wanted a t-shirt to match it so I copied the fish and used the picture as a stencil. It came out pretty good. The unicorn I want to fix. I let Hazel choose the colors and the white she chose doesn't really show up well and neither does the pink mane and tail. Still thinking about what I will do with it though.

I bought some large farm animal stamps ages ago. Hazel wanted to use the duck one and I let her paint it whatever colors she wanted and as many times as she wanted. She wanted to make a mommy duck, a daddy duck and a baby duck so there are three. This was probably among the easiest method and the one she could basically do by herself!
Then for Father's Day, we made my father a t-shirt. Or at least I should say we started him a t-shirt. We did the front. We will bring it to him and give it to him but when my nephew comes for his visit this summer he will complete the back for him. I will leave him some of the paints to do it. We used Hazel's handprints to make a heart. I saw this idea at Craft Passion.
Hazel put paint on each of her hands and we made handprints. Then I used the paints directly from the bottle and drew the heart around her hands and wrote the words. Hazel calls my dad Pop. My nephew calls him by his first name so his will be different on the back.

We have some more ideas to try, so stay posted for another t-shirt post. Enjoy!