With a stripy circus tent and colourful pinwheels to bring the circus right to your room. It’s the perfect way to jazz up the party room.
You could also make larger versions of the circus tent and larger pinwheels to decorate the rest of the room with!
Summary:
Time: 10 mins
Age: Little kids to Big kids
Difficulty: A litte tricky
You will need:
- Glass jars
- Brightly coloured sweets
- Card in bright colours
- Scissors
- Lollipop sticks
- Pipe cleaners
- Glue
Step 1: Cut strips of card
Cut some long strips of card, about 3 cms wide.
Choose bright rainbow colours.
Step 2: Concertina folds
Fold the strips of card in concertina folds.
Start at one end of your strip of card and make a fold of about half a centimetre.
Then fold the card back by another half centimetre.
Keep folding the strip of card into concertina folds until you reach the end.
Step 3: Glue the ends of your concertina
Glue the ends of your concertina card together. This makes a little circle of folded card, like the picture above.
The little circle needs to be secured very securely.
We used a glue gun for this. If you don’t have a glue gun then use very tacky glue or staple them together.
Step 4: Make your circles
This is the slightly tricky bit. Gently squash down your circle of card to make it lie flat.
The tricky bit is that when it lies flat it wants to jump back up again so keep a finger it to keep it lying down.
If you can find someone to help and hold down the circle at this stage it makes things a lot easier.
Step 5: Add the lolly sticks
Still holding down your pinwheel circle place a large blob of glue in the centre. Then place a wooden lollipop stick down on top of the glue.
Press down with your finger for a minute until the glue is dry.
You can also place a heavy object on top to keep the pressure on until the glue is dry.
Step 6: Ta-da! Your pinwheels are ready
Once the glue is dry your pinwheels are ready.
Make a few more in different colours. They look amazing when they are all bunched together.
Step 7: Bring out the sweeties
Fill glass jars with rainbow coloured sweeties.
You can use any brightly coloured sweets you like, such as Skittles, Smarties or jelly beans.
Then pop in a couple of pinwheels into each jar.
You could stop here and place these colourful jars in the centre of the table to make colourful decorations.
We chose to add a pop of extra colour by making a circus tent too. Read on to find out how we made this.
Step 8: Cut out a circus tent
Cut a circus tent shape from card. Then cut two little rectangles of card.
Cut small slits in both the rectangles and the bottom of the tent so that you can slot the rectangles in place to make your tent stand up.
Step 9: Make the tent stripy
Cut thick strips of red card to make the circus tent stripes.
Glue them in place and then turn over your tent and trim off the ends.
You now have a brightly striped circus tent.
All it needs are a few more embellishments to make it really stand out.
Step 10: Make some cheery bunting
Take two pipe cleaners. Then fold a strip of card I half lengthways and cut out lots of little triangles.
Glue the triangles over the pipe cleaner. Add lots and lots of triangles all the way to the end of each pipe cleaner.
You can also adapt this simple technique to make larger bunting to decorate the party room.
Just use ribbon or string and cut out much larger triangles and glue them in place to make pretty bunting in minutes!
Step 11: Decorate your circus tent
Secure the bunting to the top of the tent by taping it in place at the back.
We then glued on a red door and added a few embellishments with a Sharpie.
Your colourful circus tent is now ready.
You can place it in pride of place at the centre of the party table and arrange the sweetie and pinwheels jars around it.
Roll-up, roll-up! All you need now are the party guests to arrive.
They could all take home a pinwheel and a handful of sweeties in their party bags too.
