One of the things I do is to organise a lot of crafts and activities for our Children's Workshops - either at the Children's Home or with our Sponsorship Children. Over the years, I have accumulated 2 cupboards full of craft materials, much of which has been donated, some left over from other workshops. It is laughingly called "Belinda's Paradise" (by others, not me!).
However, not all donations are helpful... In fact, the above craft for
our last night at the Children's Home was made possible because of a silly donation we got... About 10 years ago we got a HUGE donation of stupid transformer cardboard-flatpack-push-out-and-put-together toys that were really hard to put together. Like REALLY hard. They were supposed to be simple, but they were fiddly and even adults had a hard time putting them together let alone children. Here is a pic of one of our volunteers trying to put one together, to give you an idea:
After trying to figure out what to do with them for many years, and always having to find space for them... I realised the best thing we could do would be to take out the middle "support" cardboard in the flatpack and recycle the rest - I mean after 10 years of having them, and giving as many as we could away, we still had 100s of the things... so we took the cardboard out and kept it aside. It is mottled grey and slightly shiny on on side, and cream on the other, so they are definitely useful to use for crafts!
The foam figures I got in 2015 at a Women's Conference. It was left on the "free to take" swap table so I took them! We have used them many times over the years. They are the gift that keeps on giving.
So, all that to say, I have realised that I do LOVE to figure out a craft that we can do with the resources we already have... and this one is a good example! Foam stuck on mottled grey cardboard Slippers and Masks... that will fit in with the Cinderalla theme!! And the kids LOVED it!
It is not easy making sure my "Paradise" stays organised... so in September, before we started our workshops, I had Haley my teammate, and Sasha, one of our volunteers, come and help me make sure everything was organised. Here we are working hard:
And here is one of the cupboards when we were almost done... (and even the plastic boxes were a donation along the way!) We do have to buy some things for the workshops, but we mostly get our inspiration and material from here:
I hope you enjoyed this little behind the scenes look at how things come about for all our Children's Workshops... as you can see: organisation is KEY!
