Shamrock Wall Hanging

While thinking about what we could make for St. Patrick’s Day this year, I had a look in our craft cupboard.  Our store of empty paper towel rolls needs to be thinned down a little, so we’ve decided to make a shamrock wall hanging.

I took out some squares of heavy cardboard hiding in the back of our craft cupboard.  The children painted their interpretations of a rainbow onto these squares.  This is a great opportunity for a quick lesson/review of colour mixing with the paints.  I moved these to the cupboard and gave each child a cardboard roll to paint green.  These then sat over the weekend to dry.

I showed Tristan how to measure out widths of about 3cm along the cardboard roll and make a mark at each place.

He then gently squeezed the roll and cut the roll through at each of his marks.

Then Tristan and I carefully shaped the pieces of cardboard roll into heart shapes.  Each picture needs 3 or 4 hearts and an oval as well.

Now it’s time to glue the hearts onto the background board.  If the glue doesn’t work for you, use some masking tape to hold the hearts in place.  you can then paint over the masking tape to hide it.  We used a tacky craft glue, and it dried clear and worked fine.  Arrange the hearts with the pointy ends in the middle.  This will form your clover.  Use the oval piece of cardboard roll for the stem.

If you want to make this a little more complex for older children, they can paint the inside of the cardboard roll as well after it has been cut.  For this year we have skipped this step.

Feel free to add some glitter or other embellishments as you see fit or have on hand.  We used some chocolate wrappers to make little pots of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Tape a little ribbon loop to the back of the board when everything has dried and you have a lovely seasonal wall hanging.

Check back later in the week and I’ll post about how we’ve turned this shamrock wall hanging into a fun game!

If you are looking for Irish inspiration for your weekend meals, why not try Northern Irish Champ or Colcannon?  To see all of our St. Patrick’s Day activities head over to our St. Patrick’s Day page, or follow us on Pinterest.  Or see our Multicultural Activities for Kids page where you’ll find all of our multicultural ideas in one place.

And here are more fantastic ideas for St. Patrick’s Day crafts via #GetYourCraftOn:

• Red Ted Art has some pretty paper hearts.
• Zing Zing Tree has some lovely rainbow paint bleed art.
• Damson Lane has made some colourful rainbow fans.
• Here Come The Girls have a rainbow window decoration that will delight the neighbours.
• Grace’s Favours – Craft Adventures has had the sewing machine out to make a rainbow and cloud mobile.
• Kathy’s cluttered mind has made mixed media rainbow art.
• The Gingerbread House some gold salt dough coins.
• Hodge Podge shares how to make a pop-up shamrock card.
• Domestic Goddesque has 2 ideas to share; leprechaun hot chocolate and painting leprechauns with straws.