It’s Christmas Craft Day on Gazette665. We’re continuing with projects related to short stories in With Gladness: A Christmas Story Collection. The first craft of December 3, 2016, features decorations mentioned in the California Rancho story.Five-year-old Margarite laughed at Barbara’s distracted attempts to finish the long paper chains to hang around the windows. (From “A Light In The Window” in With Gladness, page 41)

Paper chains are a super-easy (and old-fashioned) project. My mom taught us kids to make them as a way to count down to Christmas day. Yes, a five year can make them with a little supervision!

Adults – don’t roll your eyes at this as “just a kid’s craft”! Try a detailed or patterned variation. I’ll tell you a secret: I had a bunch of misprinted books. What do you do with those? Well, I started cutting up the pages and the hours ticked away toward midnight while the paper chains stretched down our long hallway. (Yes, I had a reason for making them: decorations for my booksigning booth at a historical event this weekend.)

What You’ll Need:

Paper – construction paper, scrapbooking paper, copies of sheet music or book pages (this is a great way to use up colored or decorative paper)

Ruler

Pencil

Scissors – decorative pattern scissors, if you want

Hole punchers (optional)

Stapler

Begin by measuring, marking, and cutting the paper into strips. It’s not scientific. I cut strips that were 1 ¼ inches by 8 ½ inches.

Optional: use decorative hole punches to add character to plain paper strips.

Take a strip of paper and wrap it into a ring. Staple the ends together to hold it in place.

Loop the next strip of paper through the first ring and staple. (See the photos, if the written directions aren’t quite clear.)

Continue until the chain is the desired length…or until you run out of paper. Seriously, this is sooo simple and fun!

As you can see, I got a little carried away:

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