Alright Tinkas, here’s the thing; Christmas is a cosy time of year, and we love it. BUT! – it can be a really expensive and over-commercialized time, which can be a bit of a shame because that is not really what it is supposed to be all about.

Starting this week, here on TinkAbout It, we will give you cool ideas for how to make Christmas more merry and fun – without spending any money at all!

TinkaXmas Tip #1 – TinkaBows.
All you need is some junk mail, cardboard, scissors and a stapler – and you can make your very own TinkaBows to decorate gifts with.

Our first TinkaXmas post is something you could also use for birthday gifts. All you need is some junk mail, card, scissors and a stapler, and you can make your very own bows to decorate gifts with.

Get some junk mail (holiday themed catalogues, old magazines, newspaper) that catches your eye. The great thing is you won’t really notice what is printed on the junk mail was once your TinkaBow is made, you’ll just see patterns and colours.

Draw templates – of half the shape you want for your bows – on your cardboard. Cut out the shapes. These are your “petal” templates.
Fold a page of junk mail in half, and keep folding several times so that you can cut out lots of the shape, all at once. Remember that the straight side of the template (the right side of the cardboard petals in the picture above), and the bottom, need to be on folds – or they will not create the whole shape you want.

Assemble the three sections – one at a time, with a staple in the middle to hold each group of “petals” together.
Finally, staple all three sections together – and you are done!
If you want to make it look more “3D-ish”, just make the folds in each petal deeper by folding them a few extra times. You can make heaps of them and really have some awesome looking gifts under the tree this year.

More homemade Christmas stuff and gift ideas (to give you something to put these TinkaBows on), are on the way. Stay tuned!

As always, if you have done some tinkering you are really proud of- send us a mail about it (with pictures!) and we might include it on the blog.

- Happy Tinkering!

This entry was posted by Pennie on Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010 at 9:06 am and is filed under Activities, Craft, Recycle, Tips + Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.