Styrofoam Crafts Ideas
Styrofoam peanuts cling to clothes, carpet, your skin and any other available surface. But when the same material comes in hardened foam shapes -- cones, balls, disks and almost any other shape you could imagine -- Styrofoam becomes a versatile crafting supply. You can do almost anything to Styrofoam shapes, including painting, gluing them together, covering them with glue-on decorations or yarn and wire wrapping. The foam itself is more or less safe for small kids, but you should still supervise children and help them as necessary throughout the crafting process.
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Wrapped Ornaments
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You can turn almost any Styrofoam shape into a clever Christmas tree ornament. The smallest shapes make a good base for ornaments to hang on an Easter tree.
Double a length of yarn and glue the ends to one side of the foam shape. For round shapes, poke a hole into the foam, thread the ends of the yarn into it, then fill with glue. Once the glue dries, you can use the loop to hang your ornament.
Apply a base coat of spray or acrylic paint to the ornament, if desired, then wrap with yarn, wire or a combination of both.
Foam Hat
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Glue a foam cylinder and foam disk together. The disk should be wider than the cylinder, so the result looks like a top hat. Paint or decorate the hat according to the season or holiday. This is an especially apt Thanksgiving project. You can glue a paper "hat band" around the base of the cylinder to make a Pilgrim hat, or glue dried flowers and berries around the base of the hat, with grapes and fall foliage spilling off the top.
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Felted Crafts
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Hold wool fibers against a foam egg and "tuck" them into the foam with a punch-felting needle. Glue small black beads on for eyes, and attach a small foam triangle as a beak to create a baby chick. You can use the same general technique with foam spheres to create a snowman. Attach three foam spheres, of various sizes, together with glue and toothpicks, smallest ball on top. Loosely needle-felt white or silver wool fibers all over the balls, then add small black beads as "coal" for the eyes and mouth and a tiny foam cone or candy corn as a "carrot" nose.
Fake Painted Eggs
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Although this technique is perfect for creating Easter eggs that will never go bad, you also can use it to create ornaments or party favors. Apply spray adhesive or paint-on glue to your Styrofoam eggs or other shapes, then roll the foam in glitter or seed beads. Other options include dried flowers, kitchen spices, melted candle or crayon wax. You also can dip the foam shapes into alternating colors of acrylic paint, as if you were dying Easter eggs.
Menagerie
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Bring out child-safe scissors, white glue, acrylic paints and assorted beads and fibers so your children can create their own foam animal menagerie. Help them cut rabbit ears out of paper and glue them to the balls, or add cotton balls for fur or a tail. Toothpicks make excellent legs and can also be used to connect several foam shapes together. Beads make excellent eyes and noses, or spots for patterned "pelts."
Wedding Favors
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Create miniature wedding bouquets as accent pieces by spray painting Styrofoam cones, then gluing dried flowers on the wide end of each cone. Stack Styrofoam disks on top of each other and paint them to resemble a wedding cake. You also can create kooky placeholders by spray painting a ball, adding "googly" eyes and feet made of heavy-duty fabric reinforced with wire. Finally, poke a wire "arm" into each side of the ball and use a pair of pliers to bend the end of each wire into a "hand" to hold a small place card for each table setting.
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