Today’s craft is about your personalised alphabets/letters, which you can hang, place or paste anywhere you want. The craft is done in two steps, first is the cutting part which I will strongly recommend that you take help from elders in doing so. The next part is pasting and decorating, which you can do by yourself easily.

Note: As your letter can be any from the alphabet, not the one I chose so the inside measurements will change accordingly. The instructions below are for the letter H.

Things you need: (see picture 1)

1. Empty cardboard box (Flattened) (two ten inch length and eight inch wide pieces)

2. To make it 3D you need the following strips to paste in between: (see picture 2)

3. You need one-inch wide ten-inch length cardboard strips (two pieces),

One-inch wide, four-inch length cardboard strips (six pieces),

One-inch wide, two-inch length cardboard strips (four pieces).

1. Pencil

2. Scale

3. White/German glue

4. Scissors or paper cutter

5. Cotton yarn (the thicker the better) (you can also use ribbons, strings, paper ribbons)

For decoration:

(optional, see picture 3)

1. Colourful beads

2. Crape paper to make flowers

3. Sequences

4. Craft birds, butterfly, etc

Directions:

1. Draw the letter with pencil (the initial of your name) on the flattened cardboard; pictures 4, 5

2. Cut it out, picture 6.

3. Place it on the second piece of cardboard and carefully draw the same letter again; pictures 7 and 8.

4. Cut the second letter out; you now have two similar letters, picture 9.

5. Take all the one-inch wide strips and paste them with the glue on the relative edges of the letter, pictures 10 and 11.

6. When all the edges are carefully done; leave the letter to dry for about 30 minutes or check if it needs more time.

7. Now paste the copy of the same letter onto it carefully, picture 12 and leave it to dry.

8. Take any yarn string, tie a knot around the letter, then paste glue so that it remains stick, picture 13.

9. Start rolling the yarn string around the letter firmly, leaving no space in between the strings; picture 14, (you can use either one colour or many colours on the letter).

10. The corners are tricky, so be careful and try to fill the gaps; picture 15.

11. If you want to start with other colour tie a knot and paste glue there for instance, for letter H. I chose to change the middle colour; see picture 16.

12. When you are done, picture 17, it’s time to start with decoration. You can decorate anyway you want, by using pompoms, paper flowers, ribbons, beads, etc.

Published in Dawn, Young World July 8th, 2017