Kids Craft: Silly Penguins Greeting cards

Penguin is Og's best friend.

He loves everything about them, thinks they are silly. Spends the most time looking at them at the Zoo/Aquarium.

When the kids and I sat down to toss around ideas for Holiday cards, penguin among them, Og latched on to it, even remembering the "Penguin Works" - i.e., Easy Paper Penguin Cards we made last year.

Potato-stamped Penguins, Paint Blob Penguins and Fingerprint Penguin were a few options we considered before settling on this one.

This year, being a year older, it seemed like a good idea to add on layers to that Paper Penguin project and let him experiment with the parts.

It does take a bit of preparation to make the project less frustrating for the 3 year old. I was glad to have found this McGill Paper Punch for $2.99 at a neighborhood store and was happy to put it to good use.

But, if the paper Punch isn't available, can use stickers, or simply cut out paper feet like I did for the Easy Paper Penguin cards last year. Now, this Holly & Berries Punch makes a bow, a sock, a star, 2 holly leaves and berries of different sizes and we wanted to use as many of the pieces as possible.

Items Used:
McGill Holly & Berries Punch 92099
Black, Orange and White card stock or construction paper for penguin
Light blue or white card stock greeting cards - simply cut an 8½x11 paper as desired
Teal blue, lilac, light blue and sparkly white tissue paper (I used the scraps I had saved from wrapping presents)
Stick glue

The Wintry Effect was the basic background layer: tissue papers glued in layers on the greeting card face. Simply apply glue all over the front of the greeting card and paste the tissue paper, preferably cut to size. We implied a sort of horizon by overlapping dark color and the sparkly white tissue paper.

Next come the penguins on this icy landscape. The first couple started out as nice little guys - star-bellied and non-star-bellied, with bow-tie and a restrained charm.

Then, Oggie decided to let a couple of penguins go wild... if you notice the droppings from the penguin's bottom, I hope it brings a smile :) The left one below slid on the icy shore and landed in the ocean. the right one is gazing at the vast ocean while doing his business. (Og's interpretation, not mine).

Ana made a couple of "girl" penguins with bow on their head rather than the neck; and one who was pretending to be a moose.

All in all a fantastic hour and a half well-spent having good fun and getting a few Holiday Cards ready in the process!