I‘ve been making these colourful paper garlands to brighten up our new home. They are really easy and very inexpensive. All you need are some long strips of paper and a few dabs of glue.
If you stick or draw some eyes on the end they also make great paper snakes/catterpillars. My three year old even managed to make his own snake (with a little guidance).
Click on the link below for a step by step tutorial.
Step by step
1. First of all you need to create some very long strips of paper. I only had A5 paper so cut four strips from each sheet of paper (for this step-by-step I only used two of each colour). The strips were 3.5cm wide by 21cm long. You can cut the strips as wide as you want – I just thought 3.5cm was a nice size!
2. I then glued the shorter strips together to form two long ‘rainbow’ strips.
3. Glue the end of the first strip to the end of the second strip at a 90° angle.
4. Fold the vertical strip down and crease.
5. Fold the horizontal strip across and crease.
6. Fold the vertical strip up and crease.
7. Continue folding the horizontal and vertical strips in the same manner until you run out of paper (at which point you can glue the ends together or you can add more strips of paper to make the garland longer).
Hope this makes sense. Leave a comment if you run into problems!
looking forward to the how-to!
OOh where do you get that lovely paper?
x
Thanks Erin – hope you have a bash.
Hi twolittleseeds. The paper was just a spiral bound A5 pad from Paperchase. Nothing fancy. I’m just a bit of a sucker for beautiful bright colours!
Love the concertinas, we made them with our kiddies when they were little, not so long, not so pretty, not so colourful. Love them.
This is so lovely and simple! I went and bought a packet of colored office paper yesterday so I can do this with my older son today.
Brilliant!
Used to make these with the perforated margins that we had to pull off of computer paper, but yours is soooo much prettier!
I used to make caterpillars like this when I was in elementary school but your colors are beautiful and I love the long chains!! My girls would love making this : )
Ooh, memory lane! Thanks for refreshing it, will be the perfect craft with the little nieces on the 2nd day of christmas!
Great! I used to make some of those as legs and arms of paper monkeys. It was lovely to see it in those bright colors. We followed the idea and the result was aproved by my litle son: http://tsuruhaus.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/lagarta-de-papel-e-outras-guirlandas/
These are lovely :). My children and I are doing a Spongebob tree this Christmas – this garland will fit the tropical theme perfectly (plus, I’ll get to use up some of my paper scraps lol)! Thanks for posting this idea!
I’ve found the step-by-step guidelines really easy to follow. Well done!!
Hi Amy, thanks for the comments. The camera I use is a Nikon D3000. Itβs an entry level digital SLR and has been great π
Hi! Thanks,I did this and it turned out amazing. Now i am planning to put it on a little box so when you open it, the snake pops out! π
Yay…glad it went well Irsa ^_^
I remember doing that too! π
Hi Beste,
So sorry, I tried google translate but could not understand your question. Can you explain again?
nice π
ΧΧ ΧΧ¦Χ’ ΧΧΧΧ
Which glue did you use? Stick? Liquid?
Hi Tal,
Just a glue-stick for this project. Kate ^_^
A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i USED IT FOR MY HOMEWORK
I really liked this and Im doing it but is there a video for building it? And if I fold vertical and horizontal at the end it will surely look like in the images?
I just did it and its really fun to do it, even though a little long but at the end it looks beautiful. I did it of 21 cm long and I pasted each strip to one another 1 cm so they were 20 cm but its really good. Thank you a lot !!!!!!!!
very good design and greet idea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yefl5JYThwo
This was beautiful Admin. Thank you for your reflections.
Thank you so much! I just made this as a rainbow garland to hang in my son’s room for his birthday! So beautiful π
You have an amazing way with words. This article was as informative as it was beautifully written.
This was so fun to make and I can give it to my cousin.
I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation for the exceptional quality and depth of heardle decades your insightful content. Your expertise shines through every word, leaving readers like myself inspired and enlightened.