Chinese new year paper Ox

This was pretty simple really. I got the idea and the rough shape that was going to work from a book that my mate Barb sent me. It's a lovely and rather old, out of print book about paper craft for kids, called Paper Playtime. It was published in 1966 and has got a tonne of cute projects in it, most of which are to make simple animals from a sheet of card or a toilet roll tube.

I found one that was to make a buffalo and honestly it wasn't far off a shape that would work for an Ox, so I drew out the half template and let the kids paint it all red and gold, then I cut them out and we folded the ears out, the tail down and the horns up. They stood up pretty well, but they would work even better if I'd used thicker card like cereal box card or something like that.

Anyway, here are a few pics and a template if you want to make one yourself. I should say that all the pages I put up here for people to print if they want to are US letter sized paper, which has slightly different dimensions from the UK A4, because although I'm a Brit, I'm in the US, with a US printer at the mo, so make sure you check "fit to page" when you print em.

Gung hoy fat choi!

There is likely to be a bit of a surge in posting from me over the next few days, because I have a backlog of projects that I haven't managed to get up on here yet. We've all been a little under the weather on and off since Christmas and as much as we've kept up with the kiddy crafts, I've not kept up with the blogging.