Crafty Weekends: The Paper Playhouse Review & Link Party

Sharing Saturday is still open for all child-oriented crafts, lessons, etc.!

Disclosure: I was sent these books to review free of charge from Quarto Books USA. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase them.

Today I am beginning a new weekend tradition. A weekly craft link party. Each week I will review a craft book/product/pattern and share some craft from it and then I will host a link party to see what crafts and books, products, patterns, etc. you have been making and using this week. There will also be features starting next week. Link up is below!

The Paper Playhouse Review

Today I am going to share The Paper Playhouse by Katrina Rodabaugh. This book has 22 projects for kids using paper, boxes and books. I let Hazel choose a couple of projects to try and she chose the puppet theater and the bird house bungalow. She wanted to use paper on her puppet theater so I let her pick some special paper for it. She chose pink sparkly of course.

We used a shipping box. We did not have one big enough so we took a trip to the store I work at and got one of theirs that was going to be recycled. We used this box for both projects. Hazel has wanted a puppet theater for some time and was really excited about this one. She has been making up puppet shows ever since it was finished. 

Hazel also has a thing for bird houses (and bird cages). She always wants the bird houses in the craft store that you can paint. Needless to say I knew she would want to make the bird house craft. I let her pick paper again and we changed the directions slightly. In the book each of the sides of the house are covered separately and then hot glued together. I taped the cardboard together with masking tape and then glued the paper on to it. I didn't want the seams to show. Here is a picture from the book of the bird house.

Source: Katrina Rodabaugh

I also used a lace trim since I could not find our pom pom trim. Hazel has named this bird Blossom and has her red ceramic bird visit it often.

She has not decided if she wants to hang it up or just leave it on a table so she can play with it. 

Hazel chose two of the crafts that used boxes. There are more crafts including crowns, bear masks, a doll house, a mini book and more. It is a fun book and it has some great activities and many use items from the recycle bin! Hazel did not try the projects on her own (actually she wanted to play more than craft by the time we got everything together), but the instructions are clear and easy to follow. It is a fun book for kids!

Crafty Weekend Link Party

Since this is the first Crafty Weekend Link Party there are no features this week. So we will jump right into the party. Please share family friendly crafts here. Just crafts and/or patterns--no recipes, lessons, etc. You can share craft product reviews as well.