Paper Shamrocks DIY

These shamrocks are so quick and easy to make you will find yourself with an armload in no time.

1) Gather your supplies
-paper
-paper cutter (scissors if you don't have one)
-stapler

(not shown: glue and thread to hang)

2) I first saw this idea HERE and knew this would be a great craft Sierra could put together in no time flat. Here is how we made ours. Chose three colours of contrasting papers in greenish tones. I had three greens but two of them were very similar so I used yellow for the centre instead of the third green.

My papers were 9"X12" in size to begin with. I used a green paper with sparkles in it for the outer piece and cut (with my paper cutter) that paper into 1" strips along the longest side of the paper (1"X12" strips).

3) Next I chose the darkest green and cut it into 1" strips. However this time I cut them along the short side of the paper so I ended up with 1"X9" strips.

4) For the yellow centres I cut 1"X12" strips the same size as the first green pieces.

5) You will end up with a pile of strips. Each shamrock requires 1 yellow (my centre colour choice), and two each of two shades of different sized green papers.

6) Take a yellow strip and fold it in half.

7) Layer a short dark green piece, the two of the longer green pieces and then another short dark pieces and stack these in between the folded yellow centre piece and staple together to hold in place.

8) Fold the yellow centre piece over outwards, to touch the base as shown below.

9) Repeat and fold the dark green piece over and then the light piece.

10) Carefully flip it over and repeat steps 9 and 10 on the other side and staple to secure all pieces together in place.

11) Repeat to make three of these heart shapes.

12) Cut the excess paper off below the staple.

13) Hot glue the three hearts together and add a strip of paper to be the stem.

14) Attach a string and hang. I originally planned to hang these in the window but they are quite big and being green they were a bit hard to see.

 

So we hung them near our photo wall above our couch.

We also tried to make a smaller size by cutting off two inches from each piece before assembling the pieces but it didn't make a huge size diference. If you want smaller ones I'd recommend taking 4" off each piece.

Sierra made hers pretty much by herself. She cut the strips, placed the pieces together in order, did the first staple to secure them. She then folded them over one by one but asked for help doing the final staple as the pieces kept slipping and she found it frustrating to have to redo it.

All in all I think these turned out pretty cute and were a simple craft for her to do pretty much by herself. We don't do a lot of St Patricks Day decorating but a splash of colour this winter is always welcome in my house!