Picture it: you want to do a fun, bonding activity with your teens but nothing, aside from chores and activities that don’t involve the family, comes to mind. There are many fun, interesting things you can do with your teen, including crafts. Here are some great apple crafts that you can do with teens.
Apple Doll
* Materials Needed:
- 1 large apple, firm with no bruises
- small paring knife
- lemon juice
- 6 pipe cleaners
- fabric scraps cut into 1″ wide strips
- masking tape
- 2 straight pins or whole cloves for the eyes
- fabric scraps cut large enough to make doll clothes
- glue
* Directions:
- Peel the apple, leaving the stem and a circle of peel around the stem.
- Choose the best side of the apple for the face.
- Once you have chosen the best side of your apple, carve a mouth, nose and eyes into the apple. If you are creative and handy with a knife, you can also carve a chin, cheeks and ears. Make the cuts fairly deep, being careful not to cut through the apple.
- To prevent the apple from browning, pour some lemon juice into a bowl and soak your apple for one hour.
- Create the doll’s body by bending pipe cleaners together.
- Twist one pipe cleaner into a circle wide enough to fit snugly around the apple.
- Cut another pipe cleaner in two to make the arms and attach the arms to the top of the circle.
- Twist two pipe cleaners to make legs and attach them to the bottom of the circle.
- Cut a 1″ piece of pipe cleaner to make the neck and attach it to the top of the circle.
- Wrap 1″ wide fabric strips around the pipe cleaners to make a padded body.
- Wrap masking tape over the fabric; don’t wrap the neck.
- To finish the doll simply give it eyes and hair and dress it using fabric scraps.
- Tie a string onto your apple and hang it in a nice warm, dry place for about 15 to 30 days depending on how long it takes your apple to dry.
- Once the apple has finished drying, gently push it into the pipe cleaner circle.
Apple Printed Potholders
* Materials Needed:
- Apples – sliced in half, seeds removed
- 9 x 9 inch muslin squares or any other 100% cotton fabric
- 9 x 9 inch piece of batting
- Fabric paint
- Small brushes or paper plate
- Newspapers
- Iron
- Embroidery hoop
- Embroidery needle
- Quilting thread
- Bias binding
* Directions:
- Lay out the newspapers on your work surface to protect your work surface.
- Make sure that your pieces of fabric are wrinkle-free. Lightly iron any wrinkles in the material.
- Pour the paint onto the paper plates so that you can actually paint your apples.
- Dip the apple into the paint, cut side down, until the entire half of the apple is coated with paint.
- Press the apple half onto the 9 x 9 inch piece of fabric, or muslin, to leave a print of the apple.
- Use various colors and put as many apple prints as you like on the fabric, keeping in mind that most 9 x 9 fabric pieces will hold about 9 apple impressions.
- Allow the apple prints to dry completely.
- With a paint brush, paint brown apple seeds onto the dried paint apples so that it looks like the apples have seeds.
- Allow the rest of the paint to dry.
- After the paint has dried, lay the fabric face down on paper towels.
- Set your iron to the cotton setting and lightly iron the fabric to set your design.
- To create your pot holder, put a piece of 9 x 9 fabric face down, put a piece of batting the same size atop it and finally add the apple printed fabric pieces, face up, making sure the batting is between the two fabric layers.
- Baste the edges together.
- Now place the fabric into the quilting hoop and sew around each apple print, stitching through all 3 layers.
- Finish your potholder by sewing bias tape around all the edges.