With Anna’s 5th birthday party quickly approaching, we’ve been gearing our daily crafting projects towards that. The theme is Cinco de Mayo, which means lots of colorful and festive projects. Yesterday it was tissue paper flowers (we did a mix of these and these in various sizes) and today it was all about Tissue Paper 5’s.
I came across the idea for these while googling Cinco de Mayo party ideas for kids and knew immediately that we would be doing it at her party. I also knew that we would need to test out the process before having 20+ 3-6 year olds in our house crafting up a storm.
With a stockpile of tissue paper bits from making the tissue paper balloon bowls and the tissue paper flowers plus a habit of saving every single piece of tissue paper that comes into our house, this craft was all the more appealing.
I did pre-ripp all of the larger pieces of tissue paper into smaller bits for party purposes, but am 99% certain that Anna would have enjoyed ripping it up herself as well. There is definitely something very satisfying about getting to shred things.
For the font, I used Arialic Hollow (which can be downloaded here for free) but any outlined font or hand drawn number/letter will do. And just in case you don’t want to go to all that trouble, I’ve done the numbers 0-9 for you. (PDF, free)
» (Download the free PDF of all the above numbers here.) «
This would also be a fun project to do for letters, names, dates, or any other special occasion where you want things to stand out. I’m thinking kids initials, the graduation year for a party, anniversary numbers, your kiddos name… You get the idea. It’s basically a great way to add a little color and pizzazz to whatever party you’re throwing.
Inspiration for this project came from Blue Skies Ahead.
How To Make Tissue Paper 5’s
Supplies:
- Cardstock* or construction paper
- Computer + Printer (or pen/pencil if drawing by hand)
- Tissue paper* in a variety of colors
- Glue sticks*
- Scissors* (optional)
*This is an affiliate link. I make a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase it through the link.
Instructions:
- Print out your number(s) or letter(s) on heavy cardstock.
- Get all your supplies ready so they are in front of you. I put the tissue paper bits into a large bowl and then had our glue sticks and paper printed and ready to go.
- Start by gluing a small section of your number and then (rip if they aren’t already ripped into smaller pieces,) crumple up your tissue paper, and stick it onto your glued section. There is no right or wrong way to crumple the tissue paper.
- Continue gluing, (ripping,) crumpling and sticking tissue paper pieces onto your number(s) or letter(s) until the entire thing is filled in.
- Optional step: cut out your number(s) or letter(s).
- Admire your handy work!
- Hang them up for everyone to see.
A few notes about this project:
- The less space you leave between your tissue paper crumples, the more full it will look.
- I made the mistake of gluing the entire number in the beginning buuuuut it started to dry up before I got all the way through it. (I was stopping to take pictures every two minutes, though…). With little fingers, you’ll be better off putting glue in small sections at a time.
- Anna decided she wanted to cut out her number when she was done. It was a great way for her to practice her cutting skills and she did a great job. Unfortunately, she hated what it looked like and grumped about it for a while. I happen to like it either way, so it’s really a matter of preference and how much time you have set aside for the project.
- This project took about 15-20 minutes from start to finish, so would be a really great project for those days when you don’t have much energy or are just looking for something quick and fun to do.
- You could also hand draw a number, letter, or word onto a piece of paper or cardboard if you don’t feel like printing it out.
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