Kids Craft: "Pop-up" Penguin and Snowman Card

One mid-week night at bedtime reading  (which she does next to me on my bed while I read my book or knit or crochet, unless she requests that I read to her sometimes) she laid Ramona and Her Mother (the next book in the series she is currently into) down on the bed quite suddenly and reached for her "Ideas Book" and pencil which reside on the nightstand, always handy and accessible. You never know... some wonderful ideas have a way of popping into the head when in bed and it is a shame to not jot them down right away.

She scratched away with her pencil on the little Ideas Book, not letting me watch too closely. And then declared, "I had an idea for the card I wanted to make for Oggie's birthday, Mama, and I just had to write it down. I am going to make it this weekend and I didn't want to forget it."

Sure enough, she got to work that weekend - a weekend before Og's birthday - assembling the materials and shutting the door for that much-needed privacy to keep it a surprise for Og.

Of course, this closed-door policy is not for Mama: when I was in and out of that room quickly putting clothes away I glimpsed some salt sprinkling work going on; and when I was getting materials for my own project I noticed some cut paper of recognizable shapes; and when I went to get the puzzle that Oggie wanted to do I saw the assembly and gluing... so, although I tried not to peek, I couldn't miss it.

"So what? It's just a card", my mind tried to nay-say when I thought of writing a whole post on this. "It's not earth-shattering or uber-ingenious".

Why then have I dedicated a post to a simple card?

As I stared at the details and recognized the effort and was finally offered a few explanatory notes by Ana, I was touched by the thoughtfulness. Hopefully, Oggie gets to read this post when he is ready, and is able to better appreciate his sister's affectionate gesture someday, even if they get on each other's nerves and can't go 10 minutes together without being disagreeable.

1. The salt sprinkled painting is the background ice; not just a colored background.
2. The penguin pieces were cut out meticulously and assembled - the feet can be tricky to cut out.
3. There are 4 penguins as Og is turning 4: each penguin has only one word to say which makes up the message of the card.
4. And, not the least of all, the penguins are "pop-up" of sorts: a small accordion-folded piece of paper holds them up from the background giving the extra dimension!

She admitted that next time she would like to use a dark blue card rather than light blue as the salt-sprinkled icy terrain of the penguins are lost on this light blue background. Since we didn't have any dark blue, and white didn't seem special, she settled on the readily available light blue card seen here.

Oh, and the "pop-up" snowman says, "From: Ana" at the back of the card.