I don't know a single child who doesn't like to play pairs, so here is a simple little tutorial to make your own from a sheet of wrapping paper and some card.
As soon as I spotted this sheet of "Playtime" gift wrap with it's wonderful retro illustrations designed by Sean Sims I just knew I could have a bit of crafty and thrifty fun with it.
It was the fox that really caught my eye - I'm just loving the foxy trend at the moment.
My immediate thought when I spotted this gift wrap in my local Oliver Bonas store, was that it would lend itself really well to a kids handmade Alphabet memory game - here's a shot of the whole sheet of paper (which is 50% recycled, so another yay) which gives you an idea of just how many sets of the alphabet are on it:
Yup, I'm going to get quite some mileage out of this - if you want to make your own set then you can order the paper, along with with lots of other lovely paper goodies online from the nineteenseventythree website. - £2.00 a sheet.
So here's how to make your own little handmade memory game.
Gather your supplies:
- One sheet of the gorgeous gift wrap
- Cardboard - was £1.95 for a huge sheet from my local Art Supplies shop but you could easily substitute a cereal packet or any other suitable board which is probably lurking in your recycling box, rather than buying some cardboard.
- Decorative paper sheets - mine were from Tiger down in Shepherds Bush, a couple of pounds for a bumper pack of about twenty different sheets if I remember correctly - again, not strictly necessary but I did want to pretty up the backs of my cards.
- Scalpel or other cutting knife/blade
- Metal ruler
- Adhesive - I used Spray Mount as it's what I had to hand and it is fabulous but not cheap so just use some pva glue instead which you could also use to varnish your finished cards if you so desire.
Basically, I simply cut out two complete alphabet sections from the gift wrap, sprayed the back with my Spray Mount (in a well ventilated area) and stuck the sheets to the cardboard, making sure that all the edges were completely stuck down.
Then I trimmed it down to a manageable size, I found eight images worked well for me, and then stuck the decorative paper to the back
Make sure it's all nice and thoroughly dry and then cut out your individual cards - this is really easy to do as the all your lines are nicely laid out on the print for you already - easy peasy!
Of course being me, I didn't stop there, couldn't resist making a very quick little matchbox style box to store the cards in:
Or fail to notice that three images, backed with card and cut lengthways made really cute bookmarks - how sweet would they be tucked into a party bag:
And then I remembered some little wooden blocks I had in my project stash:
Yes I'm becoming somewhat obsessed and still have at least half the sheet left!
Dominoes anyone?
To be continued .....