A Paper Wardrobe

All right, I finally gave in.  I didn't want to.  I thought this activity would drive me nuts and be quite nightmarish with the hangers and the templates and the paper and the cutting, but I was wrong.  My daughter has been begging me to buy this "fashion template" kit for her since she was 4.  It says age 8!   It had disaster written all over it.  Well, I kept saying no, she kept saying yes to the tune of SAVING the $21 to buy it.  Seriously, she is one determined little girl, and guess what . . .

 We had a BALL!!  This is A telling me "I TOLD YOU SO!!!"

 This is my boy loving it too!

I resisted buying this book because it seemed so manufactured and overpriced.  Couldn't we have more fun just making clothes up ourselves?  This pre-done template thing didn't seem to give a lot of creative license.  Well, we had to make the closet, at the very least, because you can't make all these beautiful clothes without a gorgeous place to put them!  We made a fabulous model while we were at it.  There's a mini-tutorial for the closet down below.

I have to say, it really was fun.  As prescribed as the templates were, there were so many ways to play with shapes and colors and patterns.  I kind of wanted this shirt for real:

Goes to show that you really shouldn't judge a thing until you try it.  I guess doing this with six year old Allie is a lot different than doing it when she was four, but still, in terms of entertainment, this surpassed my level of expectation ten-fold.  We spent hours making clothes, hanging them up, gluing them together, trying different combos.  I mean, seriously, I had as much fun as they did.  What toy activity has surprised you recently?

A Paper Wardrobe

Materials:
Shoebox
Scrapbooking paper
Yarn
Awl or something to poke the holes with
Glue

1. Find an old shoe box.

 2. Cut paper in sizes to line the box.

 3. Glue paper to the box.

 4. Poke a hole for the closet rod (yarn) on each side of the box about two and a half inches in from the side (we did it closer in the photo below but ended up poking another hole further back). The rod could be made from 16 to 18 gauge wire as well, but the yarn was fine.

 5. String up the yarn (rod) by tying multiple knots at each end on the outside of the box after threading through the holes.  Pull the yarn as taut as you can.

 6. Go to town with the templates and paper!

 Hope you all have a great weekend!