Fairy Craft: Make Fairy Paper Dolls

         Creating Fairy Paper Dolls is fun for children and very inexpensive. It makes a wonderful party craft, too. Embellishing the paper dolls offers children a chance to be quite creative.

        If you’re not particularly artistic, pick up a fairy-themed coloring book at your local dollar store and choose a couple of the fairies within to serve as your paper dolls. Copy and cut the dolls before the party, to save time. To make them a bit sturdier, glue them onto cardstock before cutting.    

       Set up a table for children to make paper dolls and put out plenty of markers, colored pencils and crayons — but add some additional items to make this simple craft much more fun for the children. Glitter glue works well, and the kind highlighted with sparkles and stars looks particularly magical when brushed across a fairy’s skirt.

       Children older than 6 often enjoy gluing sequins onto a fairy’s dress, but this will add as much as 10 extra minutes to the time allotted for this project. It can create crowd control problems for you because some children will painstakingly cover the fairy’s dress with sequins while others will tire of this craft after gluing about 10 sequins, and want to move on to something else. 

           If you do want the craft to take awhile, and children are old enough to do more than color and add sparkle, turn the paper doll activity into a decoupage project. Providing an assortment of fabric scraps, wrapping paper and tissue paper will enable girls to have fun with a little fashion design. Sheer fabric, glittery tissue paper or sparkle tulle looks fabulous when glued over a fairy’s wings. Metallic fabric scraps or metallic wrapping paper add sheen and shine to a fairy’s skirt. 

             If you decide to use tissue paper to create the fairy’s dress and wings, show children how to embellish the tissue paper with glitter glue for extra sparkle.    

              It’s also possible to create a Fairy Garden Mobile by making an assortment of paper dolls, pretty butterflies and dragonflies.  There’s no hard and fast rule, but one design that works well is to place a larger fairy doll in the center of the mobile, and hang two butterflies and two dragonflies around her.

           To create the structure for a very simple and inexpensive mobile, you will need yarn or sturdy sring, and a small circular hook to hang the mobile. These little hooks are sold in fabric, craft and sewing stores.

           Start by  tying a circle of yarn about 6 to 8 inches in diameter. Lay the circle on a flat surface. Place the metal hook in the center of the circle. Next, cut four equal lengths of string. Lay the four small strings inside the circle so that the create a plus sign, touching both the metal hook and the circle of string. Now simply tie one end of each small string to the hook andone end to the original circle of yard. 

           Lift by the hook. Now you have a basic mobile structure from which to work. Tie the fairy paper doll from the center of your mobile, attaching her to the metal hook.  Her string needs to be the longest on your mobile.  Add shorter strings to hold butterflies and dragonflies. Tie these strings onto the original circle of yarn. Balance is the key to having your mobile hang straight. 

          Older children can create the mobile as well as the dolls, but for a preschool children, this craft will work best if you create the mobiles in advance and allow the children to decorate and add the fairies.