St. Patrick's Day Charms

I decided to start blogging again- mainly as a way to catalog the activities and crafts I do at home.  I've been struck lately by how much I've forgotten from Scarlett's first few years, so I need to start documenting the things we do together before #2 arrives! This will also be a way for me to share the crafts I do with my friends who ask!

To start off, here's the craft Scarlett and I plan to do for St. Patrick's Day.  

These are lucky charms that we'll put together to give to friends and family throughout the week.  I feel like we never say "Thank You" or "I Love You" to the people around us enough, so we use these little season crafts as a way to show appreciation to people in our lives!

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

• Scrapbook Paper
• Scissors
• Glue
• Pennies 
• Optional: Hole Punch & String

I always do the prep work like cutting ahead of time since that's something Scarlett can't do yet.  This time I also decided to put together an example one so she can see what we're trying to accomplish.

This craft is super simple.  Basically go to your craft store and get some pretty scrapbook papers.  I like these packs of 6x6inch sheets because it gives you a lot of variety in colors and patterns.  Since I'm a penny-pincher, I find these packs of paper to be too costly most of the time, but I can often find them on clearance at Target at the end of each season. You could just as easily do this activity with colored construction paper, or have your kids paint white papers. For this activity, just make sure there's plenty of green pages.

Next, choose some green sheets of paper, and cut out little hearts, about an inch long, you'll want 4 hearts for each charm because they'll come together to make a four-leaf clover. Here's a picture of my hearts, cut and (not so neatly) organized in stacks in 4!





Next you'll need square cards for the background.  Again, I used some sheets from the scrapbook pack I cut my hearts from. I used a paper cutter to cut the 6x6 sheets into even 3x3 cards.

Now comes the fun part!  Arrange 4 hearts into a clover shape and paste them to your small card.  Take a shiny penny and glue it in the center of the clover.  

This was meant to be the end of the project- but it seemed like something was missing.  So I opened up my word processor and printed off a little tag (once again using pages from the scrapbook pack.)

And Voila!  Little charms for our friends and family!

So there it is!  I've got an Easter craft up my sleeve, so stay tuned for that!