Camp Crafts

I like to take a little simple craft to camp for the girls to do if they want to. Last year we made layered felt butterfly finger puppets (http://artteajannell.blogspot.com/2010/09/felt-butterflies.html), and this year we made wrapped or colored bracelets out of the large craft (popsicle) sticks. We bent the sticks prior to camp. To do this we gently boiled the sticks in hot water on the stove for 30 minutes, then let them soak for at least another half hour. Then carefully work them to soften and bend to fit into the inside of glasses to dry. This makes the curve. We found that fewer broke if we fitted them into a larger set of glasses, and then transferred them to smaller juice-type glasses to finish drying to the right size. Later, when you glue or draw on them, the moisture can make the curve loosen up. We put rubber bands around them after decorating to help them dry again to the correct size.

To make the banded color, we put a bit of glue on the inside of one end of a bracelet and glued the end of embroidery floss to it. Then we smoothed glue on the front in about 1 " sections and wrapped it with floss, repeating until done. Glue the floss/yarn end to the back at the other end of the bracelet when you get done. You can start or stop colors as you go, gluing the ends in the back at the start and end of each color.

I found that verigated floss worked great for these. The girls added beads when they wrapped for added interest on a couple of them. We used permanemt markers to draw on the colored bracelets. When done, we brushed a coat of Mod Podge on them to seal.