AD – We were sent a box of crafts by Viking and invited to join a special Zoom lockdown crafts workshop hosted by them.

At the start of lockdown things seemed easier, we were more disciplined at home and we could happily sit down and do school work or an activity for a few hours at a time. But as spring turned into summer, our focus drifted and we are down to doing the bare minimum each day. Even our own lockdown crafts have run out of steam and at best we just sit and draw or paint. We needed an intervention. Thankfully this came from stationers Viking who invited us to join them for a zoom crafting session with Jane a pro crafter at Tea & Crafting.

A few days before the session we received a big box full of everything we would need and excitement started to build. We were going to make chocolate bubble wrap bars, a toilet roll fire breathing dragon and moving feet packing tape. It was a serious job to stop my boy scoffing the chocolate ahead of time, but I managed to hide most of it before he spotted it!

We joined a large number of other craft-eager families for the Saturday morning lockdown crafts session. It was scheduled to be an hour long, which is a good length of time to keep kids’ attention. Alongside all the craft kit we needed, Viking had kindly sent some cleaning products and hand sanitiser to help us keep our crafting area clean, especially as we were going to be using food.

We began by making the chocolate bubble wrap, which was probably our favourite thing we made, I think we will be looking at doing this with other textures, because it really is so effective!

Chocolate Bubble Wrap

1. As we’ll be touching food products you should wash your hands with soap – or use some hand sanitiser.
2. Clean your working area thoroughly.
3. Cut a small piece of bubble wrap about A4 size and just give it a quick wash and dry it.
4. Crumble about 3-4 chocolate bars into a small bowl using your fingers.
5. Wash your hands so they’re not sticky and covered in chocolate.
6. Melt the chocolate in the microwave at 30 second increments. Ensure you stir after each 30 second blast, so you can evenly distribute the heat and help it melt quicker. This took me about 90 seconds, but yours may take more or less time.
7. Pour the melted chocolate onto the bubble wrap and then spread it over evenly with a spatula or knife, making sure it’s not too thinly spread.
8. Pop it into the fridge for about 30 minutes to set.
9. Whilst the chocolate is setting clean your working area again wiping away any spilt chocolate etc.
10. After it’s set, peel back the bubble wrap from the chocolate and be amazed at your homemade chocolate bubble wrap.

The chocolate bubble wrap really looked like honeycomb or something, we sprinkled it with some decorations, then broke it into chunks and ate it.

Fire Breathing Dragon

1. Clean your working area and wash your hands or use some hand sanitiser before starting.
2. Take a sheet of A4 paper. Measure how high your toilet roll tube is and then cut a strip of paper along the long side of the A4 using that measurement.
3. Spread glue over your toilet roll holder and then glue your paper to the toilet roll tube and cut where the paper overlaps. Trim off any edges that overlap the opening if needed.
4. Add eyes and a nose to your dragon’s body, do this by using a Sharpie to draw the eyes and then draw a little square under your eye. This square will fold back and be glued down so that the dragon eyes stay upright. Do the same for the nose and glue the eyes and nose down.
5. Cut tissue paper into strips no longer than about 10cm in length and about a finger’s width. Glue the strips to the top (this would be where the dragon eyes and nose are placed) and bottom of the inside of the toilet roll tube. There’s no need to add tissue paper to the sides of the toilet roll, at this point it’s fine if the tissue paper overlaps.
6. Hold your dragon at an angle in front of you and breathe into the toilet roll tube – you’ll see the tissue paper fire breath come to life!

As you can see, we used white tissue paper, so the boy said it was an ice dragon. Use red, orange or yellow tissue paper to make it look more like fire!

Parcel Tape Feet

1. Cut a straw in half and tape it (using the parcel tape) to the inside of the parcel tape roll; making sure the straws stick out of the edge of the tape on opposite sides (i.e. left and right) and that they are placed on opposite ends (i.e. top and bottom) inside the parcel tape roll.  You only need a finger’s width of straw coming out of the tube so trim off any excess.
2. Remove the cotton wool from the cotton buds on both ends. If you’re using a kebab stick, there’s no need to trim at all.
3. Take a sheet of A4 paper and fold it half. Then trace around your child’s foot or get siblings to help each other to do this. Cut two little feet out of the paper.
4. Place your feet (ensuring it’s a left and right foot side by side); and tape the cotton bud to the inside of each foot (using image as a guide).
5. Slot the cotton buds into the straw, roll the parcel tape and watch your feet walk!

The activities were great fun to do. The session overran by half an hour; but my son was really engaged, and I really enjoyed having someone else lead our craft activities. The chance to do something different together was one we’ve not really had during lockdown. I think Zoom lockdown crafts are a fantastic idea. We would love to do something like this again, perhaps with friends over the summer holidays.

If you’re interested in more craft activities, you can find all of my crafts here.