I made some colorful ones with funny faces and also Alice and Mr Giraffe.
You can draw any faces you like or use cut-out illustrations. Or even more fun – use your family photos! I found the illustration of Alice with her neck grown so very long ( I love this part in the book) and ‘off with her head’! John Tenniel’s Illustration of Alice in Wonderland is copyright-free so you can download freely. For the giraffe, I just drew one based on a vintage image on the web (wasn’t free). Use any photos or photocopy of drawings from your books to create your own telescopic toys.

How to Make These Telescopic Paper Toys

1. Roll up a small piece of paper to the size of a pencil. Mine’s about the length of my index finger.
2. Cut your favorite paper into a very long strip, use thin and smooth paper. Thick and textured paper will not work very well. The strip width needs to be shorter than the piece from the step 1.  You can cut one letter or A4 size paper into a few strips and connect them with tape to make one long piece. It helps to make sure when you cut it that the strip is parallel along its length.  The longer the strip the taller your telescopic tube will be!
Tape one end to the rolled up paper tube from step one, aligned to one end of the tube.
3. Roll up the long strip around the core. Roll it tight.
When you’ve finished rolling it very tight, loosen the whole roll slightly by letting it unravel a tiny little bit. Glue or tape the end.
4. Draw a face, cut a photo or drawing and tape to the core tube bit that sticks out.
Done!

Now you can stretch it out to make it super tall! Decorate with arms on the body or you can draw on the stretched part. I drew the spots of the giraffe after it’s stretched out. Surprise people by magically making them grow tall!

Have fun making them short and tall! If the paper gets stuck when you push it back, just turn it as if rolling it into a tighter tube, as you push to help it.

We hope you enjoy making these, feel free to post your own versions on our Facebook, we’d love to see them!

Simple cards and gift tags set

Dad Rocks! DIY paper gift idea

For home improvement dads, this is a bit more challenging paper craft – Happy Father’s Day pop-up toolbox card

That’s it for this year! Happy father’s day!

They are called pocket totems. Any animal loving child would love this precious little friend hiding in a pocket! You can imagine a certain sense of magic.

You can also join the Totem of the month club and receive a wonderful variety of animals throughout the year.

I want them all! Don’t you?

These super fun jointed doll family members dancing together is from Sweet Paul.

My Crazy Family dry erase book from All For The Boys.

Mini family dolls from Fellow Fellow with photos of your family’s faces. Smile!

For a deep sea family adventure (great for bath time and paddling pool fun) see our bottle submarine where you can cut out and stick your family faces in the windows – all aboard!

Here are a few of my favorites I came across recently, all of them are handmade with a little touch of magic.

I saw this super cute hopping bunnies mobile on pinterest recently – how adorable is this?!

It’s from Patricija’s GARDEN on Etsy, and if you can be patient and wait 3 weeks, it can be made to order. She knits absolutely adorable animals and makes baby crib mobiles with elephants, horses and puppies. Aww..!

We’re loving this splash of colors and forms from Frazier & Wing.
They’re made from simple flat papers but arranged together to form a full voluminous, chandelier like mobile. Some of them explode in joyful colors. Lovely!

I also love the delicacy of these origami mobiles by Kidivist. These animals are folded in beautiful Chiyogami Japanese papers, so I can imagine they will look exquisite up close. You can see the structure of the mobile is made with delicate care to achieve that perfect weightless look.

This next baby mobile is not a product, but an inspiration for your DIY! It’s made by Lindsay from Fifteen Sixteen for her baby Liza.
It looks dreamy. I love the subtle elements that give the feeling that they are almost not there, but you can just catch a glimpse of them.

I hope these help you dream away a little more…

It’s by the authors Isabel Minhós Martins & Bernardo Carvalho, published by Planeta Tangerina. It’s all in Portuguese and and I couldn’t find a copy available on Amazon. Strange that such a nice book is not published widely. I only found another book –  ’Cuore di Mamma’ - by the same authors in Portuguese. Anyway, I took some photos to share with you – enjoy!

Dad Coat, Dad Airplane

Dad Sofa, Dad Engine

The text is very simple and you can just guess most of them easily without even knowing any Portuguese.

The title was tricky. You can figure out that ‘Pai’ is father, but I didn’t get straight away what Pê de Pai means. After very confusing translations from google  ’Foot of Father’ or ‘Peach Father’, I finally realised it just means letter P of ‘Pai’, so it would be ‘D for Dad’. It seems obvious now, doesn’t it!

This dad can be anything a little child needs or wants – Dad airplane, Dad sofa, Dad doctor, Dad tractor, Dad ambulance, Dad ladder … Beautiful and simple concept, beautifully and simply illustrated.

Dad Tunnel, Little Dad

Dad Crane, Dad Tractor

Hope to see this book and more from these authors in English too!

With 4th of July approaching fast, we have this super cute giveaway, handpicked for your party by our fab sponsor Jennifer of Sweet Estelle’s Baking Supplies on Etsy. There’s also a special 15% discount for all our readers, using the coupon code below.

Jennifer’s shop was named after her grandmma Estelle who ‘never skimped on decorations, favors or elaborate cakes’ and is just full of pretty retro supplies that will seriously enhance the cute factor of your baked treats. We’ve teamed up with her to bring some 4th of July treats to you! Jennifer put these items together for the lucky winner. Thanks Jennifer!

The prize will be (as shown in the photo above):

flag cookie cutter
star cookie cutter
red food coloring
24 straws (red stripe and stars)
50 cupcake liners (red gingham and blue polka dot)
2 ounces of red, white and blue star quin sprinkles

To enter to win all these, simply comment below about what you’re planning to do this 4th of July. You can tell us some activity ideas you have in mind or a recipe you want to try… share and inspire others! Haven’t thought of any yet and are surprised at how fast it’s coming? Don’t worry, the giveaway will be open until the 14th so there’s plenty of time to think about it. When it comes to planning for the party, I know the first place you’ll run for help is Pinterest, so we’ll see you there as well! I’ll surely be pinning my favorite finds on my board from now on.

And there’s more! Jennifer’s offering a 15% discount on all orders from now till the 14th. Use coupon code FIREWORKS15 and stock up your party supplies. Take a look at Sweet Estelle’s lovely store, tons more adorable things like these.

Share your plans and ideas in the comments! The comments will be open until the 14th. This giveaway is open to US residents only.

We’ll choose one random winner and announce the winner on our facebook and google plus pages on the 15th.

Good luck everyone! : )

This giveaway is now closed and we have a winner!
Congrats to Michelle O’Laughlin chosen at random (to keep it absolutely impartial) by ‘And the winner is’ wordpress plugin. (We’ll email you Michelle!)

Thanks to everyone for leaving such fabulous comments! I couldn’t reply to all but totally enjoyed having fun conversation going on here and it’s nice to hear you’re all planning for a wonderful day of celebration. Thanks again to our sponsor Sweet Estelle’s for giving away this cute party set!

A few projects are coming for Father’s Day and the first one is these geeky DIY typography glasses. They looked pretty cool when I tried them out and we’ll definitely be wearing these on Father’s Day. Hope you join us!

Oh and we have a cute giveaway coming tomorrow!

The templates and instructions are over here. Have a peek & hope you enjoy making them!

Stay tuned, we also have the cutest giveaway coming next week!

Also the Rain & Rainbow board game that was first published for PBS Kids Club Thirteen is on the site now. So if you haven’t caught up with it yet, have a look!

If that’s not enough for your weekend (you have lots of energy!), there are a few more fun things over at Kids Club Thirteen. Like these Circus balancing toys.

I’m trying to sort out restoring old comments which I’d be too sad to lose, plus restart our regular newsletters, so you may receive our fresh new newsletter in your inbox soon. Happy Friday!