Parenting Times: Homemade Chinese New Year Decorations from Angpow paper

Monday, January 25, 2010

Homemade Chinese New Year Decorations from Angpow paper

As a child, I loved Chinese New Year. Now, as a parent, I want to make Chinese New Year as memorable and happy for my kids as I can.

The kids love crafting and they love being involved. So, we start off by making them excited about the coming New Year by doing some Chinese New Year related craft. We make DIY Chinese New Year Decorations out of angpow paper.

We spent an afternoon making homemade angpow decorations. DIY Angpow lanterns can be very beautiful. The ones here are really amazing and gorgeous. I also loved the ones hung up by fellow blogger Julian last year. Oops, I think it was two years ago, judging from the date of his post. :)

I was too lazy to post up step by step instructions, but I can point you to one or two sites which has good step by step pictorial instructions for the angpow handicrafts.

We made our angpow fish following the instructions from this site. My girl suggested that we string them up by stapling them together because she had seen her teacher do it at school. When we were done, we counted that we had 33 angpow fish in all. Chinese like this number. When spoken in Chinese, it sounds like "rise and prosper". Hehe.

Oh, and here is my very first 12 angpows lantern. Its cool isn't it? My girl doesn't think so though. She said it was ugly. Hahaha. I followed the instructions from here. Halfway through, it looks like a hat. The kids had a fine time walking around in the angpow hat and were disappointed when their hat turned into a lantern. Haha.

We also made some simple 6 angpows lanterns. At first I forgot how to make them and they turned out looking like boxes. The kids fought over who should keep the angpow box. lol. Later on, memory kicked in (I had turned them inside out at first) and eventually, even the girl can make them. It is very simple to make.

We also made these simple cut outs angpow lanterns. These are even simpler to make. I have posted the instructions to these in my earlier post: Paper Lantern Craft for Lantern Festival. Just improvise with angpow paper instead.

Finally, here are some angpows we clipped together for hanging onto plants.

We made them from all the angpow papers we had saved from last year. We got so many varied types from friends and relatives. We also collected quite a few from banks, supermarkets, fast food stores etc etc. We haven't collected any this year yet though but I think the retailers and banks should be giving them from about now since it is only 3 weeks more to Chinese New Year.