Tag Archives: craft project

Luxury Loft

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It’s warm breezes and beautiful views in your custom story time tree fort! Shimmy up the ladder, try the rope swing, or just chill out on your plant-covered patio. Imagine it…then create it!

We read Secret Tree Fort by Brianne Farley (Candlewick, 2016). When two sisters are sent outside the house, big sister immediately starts reading, much to the chagrin of little sister, who wants to play. Irritated, little sister begins describing her secret tree fort that the big sister will NEVER get to see. As her descriptions become more and more grand (rope ladder, snack basket, water-balloon launcher, and underwater whale watching room), big sister believes her less and less. Called out, little sister finally admits it’s not real. But sweet big sister offers to help her build it, and they happily sit down together to draw up plans.

We loved the idea of drawing plans and then building, so we started our hands-on project by inviting kids to draw their tree forts…

And then we offered all the supplies to build it. Behold, cat fort!

Our supplies included toilet paper and paper towel tubes, craft sticks, wooden coffee stirrers, wooden beads, construction paper, fabric flowers, green tissue paper, and twine. We use brown craft boxes, paper cups, and some boxes left over from a 2023 gingerbread architecture program!

The results were amazing! From an elevated village:

To a preserve built to feed one young architect’s stuffed giraffe collection:

To this towering skyscraper of a fort in bold yellow with impeccable landscaping!

One quick hint: The forts absolutely depend on having a solid base. We recommend using cake circles, cake pads, or corrugated cardboard rectangles to keep everything firmly grounded. And hot glue. LOTS of hot glue!

Barbarians? We Got ‘Em!

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It’s time to get loud, proud, raucous, and rowdy…the barbarians have arrived at story time!

We read Great, Now We’ve Got Barbarians! Written by Jason Carter Eaton, and illustrated by Mark Fearing (Candlewick Press, 2016). When a young man refuses to follow his mom’s orders to clean his room, he doesn’t just get pests…he gets barbarians! Soon they’re chomping cheese curls, infesting the garage, stealing pillows to make forts, and having crumb wars. Exasperated and desperate, the boy finally cleans his room. Thankfully, the barbarians skulk away. Things are peaceful again…until the boy lets the bathtub overflow one night and…oh no! PIRATES!

This story time project is a fantastic example of how we upcycle materials and reuse items from other programs. With the exception of the helmet, this entire project was sourced from previously used materials! Let’s take a look…

The barbarian costume basically consist of a helmet, tunic, belt, and sword. The helmet instructions can be found in this post. The tunics were cut from the white fabric photo backdrop we used at our thrift store costumes challenge. You can see it here, right behind Veruca Salt…

veruca-salt-costume

The brown and gold belts for the barbarian costumes were cut from yet another photo backdrop, this time from our Great Catsby event!

Two children standing in front of a decorative art deco curtain while an adult takes their photo.

The tunics were topped of with “fur” (i.e. brown felt that found its way to our library from a campus theater production). We used some metallic markers, metallic dot stickers, plastic jewels, and masking tape to fancy everything up. As you can see, we had some seriously awesome barbarian duds!

But the runaway favorite of the entire ensemble were the swords. The foam shafts are retired archival foam spine support strips from the Special Collections reading room. We pushed the foam into toilet paper tube hilts and decorated them lavishly.

Then we screamed and had sword fights for over 20 minutes. It was right before the holidays, so it was an absolutely perfect high energy, low mess story time!

Pop’s Top 10: Literary Gowns

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Remember when this dress premiered on the Eras Tour? We do! The custom Vivienne Westwood gown is filled with the lyrics from Track 10 of Tay’s 2024 album, The Tortured Poets Department. It inspired us to seek out more artists and designers who took literary fashion to the next level. So today we present Pop’s Top 10 literary gowns!

#1 GONNA BE GOLDEN

Created by Ryan Jude Novelline, the artist stitched together the colorful illustrations from discarded Little Golden Books, and fashioned a bodice from the spines. If you’d like to read an interview about his amazing creation, please follow this link.

#2 BOOK WITCH

From Reddit

Posted on Reddit, the detailing on this dress is off the charts! Plus, the hat! The HAT.

#3 SUPER SEUSS

Created by Rebecca Humes, the Seuss-specific shredded tutu and bouncy book characters on springs is delightfully whimsical!

#4 DISNEY DANCER

Another dress by Rebecca Humes. But this one was created from Disney books and features a skirt composed of thousands of chain links. WOW!

#5 POTTER PROM

Hailey Skoch rustled her way to her Arkansas senior prom in a dress made from multiple volumes of Harry Potter books! You can read more about her process here.

#6 FANTASTIC FAIRY

Winner of cutest, most adorable wings and folded tutu is this phenomenal book fairy!

#7 VOLUMINOUS VOLUMES

This distinct dress with a colonial flare was created by White Knight Cosplay. And just look at that teacup broach!

#8 FAIRY TALE FASHIONISTA

A stack of unwanted volumes transformed into a fairy tale worthy dress by Helen Hobden, who also entered it in a contest judged by Maisie Williams! Read more about her adventure here.

#9 BOUND TO IMPRESS

French designer Silvie Facon created this flowing masterpiece from old leather spines that had separated from books. It took 250 hours! More more extensive photos, plus more dresses, please follow this link.

#10 SHORT STORY

Silvie Facon also created this sassy little folded dress, again by only using books that were beyond repair. For more details, please see this link.

Feeling inspired but also maybe a tad overwhelmed by the sheer volume of talent? No worries! You can craft this simple origami newsprint dress by following the instructions here.

Pssst! We also made a Cinderella dress out of highly unusual materials! See that here.