Paper Circle Fun

Today Miss E and I traced and cut circles, made a card each, addressed and stuffed an envelope, and took a little walk to our mailbox together. She really enjoyed stamping the envelope, finding out that the envelope has a sticky flap if you lick it, and finally getting carried "like a baby" so that she could place the envelope inside the mail box "all by [her]self". The whole thing felt like a movie montage. Haha!

We recycle Miss E's daily report cards from school for our circles.

The paper circles are a gift for our friends in Cali :) We have had so much fun making things with them, and I thought it'd be a fun little something to share with friends who cannot be here with us to join in the paper circl fun in person. There is so much that can be done with these cool little shapes!

The whole thing started because of this amazing book, Picture Pie, which shows you how to make flat paper flowers, birds, bugs, etc. by cutting circles into fractions, the way you would cut a pizza pie. Math AND art. I'm in love.

 I googled "Picture Pie" and clicked images and LOTS of images of the book and art inspired by it instantly appeared, so I won't add the pictures I took to respect the book's artist. But I'll include some images I found, since they are already out and they might be good inspiration for you. The first one explains the process pretty well, and hopefully after you see how it goes, you can copy the design from the other images more easily.















You can also add more shapes and get creative:








Picture Pie style fun with paper circles is not the only way to enjoy little paper circles. I found lots of other things one can do with paper shapes. Makes me want to get a 2in circle punch!

I've always been a sucker for a garland. You can sew them or glue the string inside a two-circle sandwich. You can turn several strands into a cute mobile. You can go 3D by folding three or more circles in half and gluing the flaps together! It's unsurprisingly endless, the garland fun.

From http://www.brit.co/paper-decor/

from sunsail.com

Look at this cool art idea from mer mag:




And how about this scalloped art by You Are My Fave?! (There are a couple other ideas in this link too)



And then there is also the 3D stuff you can make!
Like these tulips:  (Click and scroll down for a brief explanation of the steps)





And this other flower design (from the same link above)




Finally a truly complicated and time consuming option LOL that would have been incredibly fun for my 12 year old self. Fine, I would love to have the time to make these now. Instructions here. It is very well explained- step by step, with pictures! You basically draw a triangle inside several circles, fold, and glue all the flaps together.



You can make simpler versions by using less circles:


It is certainly time consuming to cut circle by circle, especially if you need them to be exactly the same size, so I see why crafters will often get a punch. Having said that, I probably won't because I've been trying to simplify, so anything I don't absolutely need I want out of my house. Plus, I'm not necessarily interested in perfect circles and half the fun is watching poor little Miss E try to cut the shape. Haha!   

Hope you have fun!!