This post has been linked to learning cooperative ABC&123 - check them out!
This is a close-up of our Advent calendar. These are "real" Danish hearts. You can find a tutorial for making them here or by Googling "Danish heart baskets". They're fun to do if you're old enough, but no good for our five-year old. Also they're much easier with paper than with felt - I know because we tried felt last year. But here's what I'm talking about today:
This is our Advent "wreath". Cute, and much easier! We got ours from Ikea, full of tea-lights. Now the tea-lights are hidden it looks much better.
Here's what you need. Well some of what you need. Old wrapping paper or craft paper in various colours - we used both. Scissors, pencil, ruler, template...
You can use the template for making real Danish hearts too - click on the picture if you want a better look. To make the template, we used the bottom of a wine glass and then extended the sides till they were the same length as the diameter of the wineglass (you can see I've marked the identical lengths "A"). To make our decoration we needed to cut out four hearts from plain paper (any colour would do) because I wasn't sure about Froglet gluing stuff directly onto the backdrop. And for some reason I started drawing six. Never mind eh. Don't worry about that little mark on the template where it says "plus a bit"- that's not relevant here. It just shows to make the cuts a bit longer so it's easier to weave the strips together on a real heart basket.
Here I'm cutting out the template from the coloured paper that we're using to decorate our hearts. Whatever colours you like - we always used red-and-green when I was little.Cut out the semi-circle and then divide the square into equal parts - I think sixteen would be more traditional but we chose the easy option and did nine. Froglet only cut the little squares out because I don't really trust him with curvy lines yet for something that's actually going to be in the middle of the table for a month! Yes I know. One day I may be less of a perfectionist.
Glue your cut-out paper onto the plain paper heart, making sure your child knows to alternate the colours like a chess-board. Then stick your heart onto whatever you're using it for, if you didn't do that directly. I glued ours on a piece of gold wrapping paper cut to more-or-less fit around the inside of the Ikea candle vase...
Turns out I didn't measure that carefully enough and the vase is wider at the top than the bottom so it doesn't sit quite flat. But at least my semi-circles are well-cut-out. :-)
