Papercraft Pencils

This afternoon I was lucky enough to 'crash' one of my colleagues, Angela Ferguson's, after school art club. I was really pleased to see that Angela was using one of the ideas that I has previously taught on one of my papercraft staff training session - papercraft pencils.

This is such a cute idea and simple to adapt to any project theme I thought I would share it on my blog!

The activity basically involves using a piece of paper to create your own unique pencil. Angela added the use of funky foam to create a little pencil topper.

This is cost effective activity and quick to do. It can be used as part of a design project to create your own stationary set (paper, envelopes, cards etc that coordinate with the pencil), a nice little extension project at the end of a session or even as an idea to raise money for the school (making lots of pencils and selling them at Christmas Bizarres, fun day etc).

 The children thoroughly enjoyed making these in today's session, as you can see in the picture below. These are some of the amazing Halloween designs the children came up with in just over half and hour!

 You can use this project to help assess children's fine motor skills and scissor skills -

Here's how we made our papercraft pencils...

 First you need to chose your piece of paper. This can be any type of paper from magazines, comics, wrapping paper, printed image, drawn images etc as long at the paper is not too thick to roll. You will need to cut a strip the same length of your pencil and wide enough to wrap around you pencil.

Generously glue both long sides of the paper, pritt stick is best for this. Line the pencil up carefully to one edge of the paper (make sure you have your paper up the right way).

 Taking your time, roll the paper tightly around the pencil. Glue the final edge of the paper and smooth this down. Make sure you apply enough glue to ensure the paper sticks.

 For the pencil topper we used funky foam but you could use strong card instead. Draw your design in pencil on the funky foam. For younger children you could use template for the children to draw around. We worked on a Halloween theme with the children using pumpkins, ghosts, stars etc

 When you are happy with your design fold the funky foam in half and cut out two of your shapes. By folding in half this will give you two images the same size which can be glued back to back either side at the end of your pencil. Felt tip pens can be used to add fine detail.

Voila! The finished article.

The children got quite creative with their pencil toppers. Amazing what you can do with a bit of paper, time and imagination.