Are you making new year’s resolutions with your children? We always do and I have lists of the girls’ plans going back a few years now. It’s lovely to look back and see what they were aiming for each time – learning to swim, riding a bike without stabilisers, learning to fly (still working on that one!). This year we have some New Year fairies who are helping us with our wishes – not just plans for ourselves but also wishes we’re making for friends and family and even wishes we’re sending out into the universe for those we don’t know. Here’s how we made our New Year fairies and how our wish tree works.
Leaving behind the Christmas colours of red and green, we’re starting the new year with a bam! We chose lots of colourful card to make our fairies as bright as we could. We traced around a mug to get our circles and then drew on simple fairy outlines.
Then we created our beautiful fairies. We used oil pastels, glitter, gemstones and pencil crayons, and found it much easier to adorn our fairies while the card was still flat. Anything goes and we tried to make our fairies as joyful as we could. Everyone can join in with this and it’s lovely to see how each fairy turns out differently.
On the reverse side of each fairy is where you can write your new year wish. It could be something the children would like to do for themselves this year, a skill they’d like to learn, a place they’d like to go. It’s also nice to include some wishes you’re making on behalf of others too. (The girls said I’m not allowed to show you a photo of this bit because if you tell someone what you wish for it won’t come true.)
Once decorated, we used scissors to cut around the fairy outline and folded the base around to create the fairy shape. A staple holds it all in place.
Once your wishes are made and all your glue and glitter is dry, you can fasten a tread on the back of each fairy’s head and hang them on your Wish Tree. Ours is made from a collection of twisty branches that we place in a vase on our hall table.
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This is SOOOOO cute! I love this idea!
How long do you leave this up? Do you ever “re-open” them to see if the wishes came true? Sooo fun…
What a very fun idea, and a great activity for the kids to do during all of their free time around the holidays. Looks like a lot of glittery fun!!
what a great idea.. my fairy loving kids would love this!
What a lovley idea! And it will take away the sting of removing the Christmas tree and declaring Christmas over!
What a cute idea! Will be pinning =)
Happy New Year!!!!
What a fun idea.I might even do this myself tonight as I have no plans of celebration.
[...] making a New Year wish tree [...]
[...] :: add decorations on top. We cut out some of the hearts, flowers and ladybirds from the baby clothes and used fabric glue to stick them on the front of the eggs :: then we stitched around the outside using a simple running stitch. We popped some cotton wool inside just before we completed stitching all the way round and made a loop at the top so we could hang the eggs. The heirloom Easter eggs are a mix and match of the girls baby clothes, with a few extra feathers added here and there. They’ll be hung on our Easter tree, which sits in the hallway to welcome everyone as they arrive. The tree itself is made from twisted branches gathered from the local park and placed in a large vase. Pussy willow and forsythia make beautiful Easter trees too. We use our branches all year round and change the decorations to match the season – you might have seen our Valentine gratitude tree and our New Year angel wish tree. [...]
That’s a lovely idea. I will definitely do this next year. Anything with fairies on is sure to go down well!
[...] so I love to start the new year with a resolution of some kind. In the past we’ve made a wish tree and wishing wands but today we decided to try something different. Combining art with good [...]
[...] individual resolutions out as well as a master list for the family. You could also make a lovely resolution / wish tree to remind your family to keep moving forward. Nothing motivates a child like watching their [...]
[...] :: add decorations on top. We cut out some of the hearts, flowers and ladybirds from the baby clothes and used fabric glue to stick them on the front of the eggs :: then we stitched around the outside using a simple running stitch. We popped some cotton wool inside just before we completed stitching all the way round and made a loop at the top so we could hang the eggs. The heirloom Easter eggs are a mix and match of the girls baby clothes, with a few extra feathers added here and there. They’ll be hung on our Easter tree, which sits in the hallway to welcome everyone as they arrive. The tree itself is made from twisted branches gathered from the local park and placed in a large vase. Pussy willow and forsythia make beautiful Easter trees too. We use our branches all year round and change the decorations to match the season – you might have seen our Valentine gratitude tree and our New Year angel wish tree. [...]