Paper Creatures (a crafty and creative term break-activity)

It's the May term-break.

I have visions of Cara and Theo children playing together like the loving siblings that they are. Marbles, maybe, perhaps some junk modelling, definitely some games in the garden, a trip to the beach, a trip to the park...

The children have visions of binge watching the telly, reading - but only at night and until stupid o'clock; and somehow their vision also involves roughly ten kilos of ice cream each. And that's only the stuff they can agree on.

When it comes to term-break activities - just to spell it out - their ideas and mine are not very compatible. At ten, seven and eight months, even the kids are not that compatible, really.

So while it's ever so lovely not having to get up in the morning to rush Theo and Cara to school, I'm already missing my laid back baby days by Tuesday mid-day. By evening I can feel the lack of sleepy baby cuddles at all the times that suit me, I stare at my offspring as they insist on remaining incompatible from dawn to bedtime, and seek solace on Instagram.

Instagram and other social media are for bad parents. Claimed a hateful article in the Daily Mail recently. Or maybe it didn't - I didn't read their article. But I have proof that Instagram is good for parents: It saved our term-break holiday!

Close to midnight I came across a delightful little paper creature (on that very addictive platform), the German artist/illustrator "frau_annika"'s alter ego who is having exactly the kind of fun I could not persuade my two to enjoy together. Trips to the beach, the park, eating pancakes... Check her out: frau_annika and #papierfraeulein (the below images are reproduced with permission).

frau_annika draws the most delightful paper mini-me's over at Instagram

The little #papierfraeulein seems to be doing *just* the kind of thing I'd love, too

I lost an hour of sleep to loking up every image of hers, but woke up the next morning, an enegised motivated parent that rounded up the children to get crafting. They took a look at the pictures and were in agreement that this was a great thing to try and do, creating their own paper creatures to stage around the house and photograph.

We got out paper, card, pens, scissors and a gluestick - and other than a camera that's all you'll need.

Paper creatures? Woo hoo, we're up for this!

A few scribbles in, they all decided that mini-me's were perhaps not within their skill range, at least not to the level of perfection that they envisioned, and so they settled on paper monsters and animals, mostly. And before I knew it, the kichen was overrun! A friendly giraffe nibbled the herbs and the tomatoes, bats hung from the fridge, a multi-coloured gorilla dangled from the extractor fan and a scissor-handed monster was trying to persuade everybody that healthy snacks were a good idea. Not likely, little monster - the children had been promised pancakes for lunch and one little Miss had already clampered atop a chair to be able to wield her giant fork better.

Paper giraffe snacking on cherry tomatoes

That's a LOT of pancake for one little Miss

A healthy snack, perhaps?

This knife-fingered little monster is also desperate to cut up healthy snacks - but no such luck

Two tips for making it work better: If you don't have any suitable white card (we didn't), use paper but glue it to another one or two layers of paper before you cut it out - otherwise you'll end up cutting it out twice. Then, to stand your paper creatures up, they need to have a little paper arm or ledge at the back. Glue it onto the finished piece.

Me, I was really keen to try and see if I had a little paper creature in me too - but I haven't found that our yet, thanks to the little person creature I still had in me 8 and a half months ago. Also known as "Papierfresserchen" (little paper eater), the little sugar cannot be let near paper as she will do her best to shred and eat it with her six little (brand new) teeth. I was silly enough to stand near the table with her - a minute later I was wiping a hole cup of fresh tea off the floor and racking up a considerable bill on the swear jar front.
My next attempt at keeping her out of trouble didn't go so well either: The innocent looking drawer I let her loose on hadn't been baby-proofed yet and before I knew it she was waving the kitchen machine's cutting blades at me.
With the kitchen floor messed up and the dining room being a sea of paper, the house was down to only one or two half tidy rooms - but the kids were happy and were still drawing, tracing and cutting well into the next week, and that makes for a happy mum... and one day I WILL find a little time to create my own paper mini-me!

And baby gets up to no-good while the big ones craft