Not Safe for Children

Those of you who know me, know I love an inappropriate children’s craft.  Not like THAT kind of inappropriate, but a craft that is well above a childs skill set, or that has questionable (or dubious) spiritual merit are quite possible my favorites.  Case in point, my sunday school littles made pop up easter cards where inside the card Jesus popped up from the tomb and the card said Kaboom Jesus! Yes, Kathleen was horrified.

One year at our ornament party the kids made fabric christmas wreathes that involved tying strips of cloth around a ring, only most of the children were too young, or not digitally dexterous enough to tie the knots, so Max, Katie, and Paul wound up making their wreaths, and then assisting everyone else make theirs.  I am fairly certain the wreaths Kyle and Hilda took home were theirs in name only.  

Honestly, I really do know how to choose crafts appropriate to a child’s age and skill level.  I have 40 youtube videos as evidence, don’t I.  But I also have an appreciation for a craft that just goes wrong.  Something about being overly ambitious or setting a goal and falling woefully short, it just appeals to me.  

Which brings me to this years crafting with littles fail.  Months ago I realized the big heavy duty die cutter at church can be used to cut things more than paper.  In fact, if the die cutters appear worn down, or dull, you can sharpen them by cutting tin foil.  Which lead me to this creatively genius idea that perhaps using disposable aluminum pans we could create ornaments with this years christmas crafts.  I even brought an unused disposable pan from home to test the theory.  

I was correct.  It worked really well.  The only hiccup was that regular markers and paints didn’t stick to the aluminum.  I did some research and alcohol based inks or maybe permanent sharpies are the only things that would work.  I am not 100% on board with the littles using anything other than waterbased paints.  Likewise, anything with permanent in the name seems like a fundamentally bad idea with the under 6 crowd.  Then I realized that the sof aluminum of the dispossable pans was lightweignt enough that a toothpick or an dull pencil could be used to create “embossed” images.  I was really excited about how genius this going to be.  Plus, the cutting action of the die cutter smooths and rounds the edges of the aluminum so it wasn’t likely to cut or poke any little fingers.

I was really looking forward to this one, because I thought the littles would be excited about it.  When I went to get the disposable pans we would need I discovered that the ones I found at the dollar tree were holiday themed and that one side (the outside) all had a holiday pattern printed on them.  Not my favorite, and not what I had planned.  

Not to be discouraged, I went next door to Ace hardware and found a roll of aluminium flashing.  It is a little heavier than disposable pans, but I thought it would work as a substitute.  In theory I was absolutely correct.

In practice… Sure I was able to use the die cutter to cut out the shapes of the praying children and the angel wings.  It was more arduous that the original aluminim pans were.  Also there was a trick to it, that took me a while to figure out (for some reason it worked better when running the dies in sideways rather than head to toe).  But I did manage to finish cutting them all out.  Yeah me.

Did I mention the aluminim flashing was thicker than the disposable pans?  That means that no matter how much pressure I put down with a pencil or toothpick made any sort of impression the other side.  So no angel wings embossed with creativity of tiny children.  And honestly?  The only way I could affix the angel wings to the tiny praying children silhouettes was using hot glue, another thing that is not safe for tiny children.

So, to the parents of my sunday school class, let me say this, when you see the truly beautiful angel children ornaments that I made for each and every child in my care this year, please know that your child supervised my hot gluing skills and then they painstakingly chose the colored cord I tied to the angel as a way to hang them.