Paper Crafts

Inupiaq days are coming up. In April. On the middle/high school side, this means inviting elders, setting up times with the military and dentist, thinking up service projects, and talking to elders about them sharing stories or helping us butcher an animal.

On the elementary side, it means finding the tagboard. The little kids need to do more hands-on crafts, which means preparing more hands-on crafts. The actual elementary teachers are full to capacity this week. Since we're pretty empty over here on the high school side, I agreed to help trace and cut out a few projects.

Project One:

Traditional Eskimo Sunglasses. They used to be made out of wood, and were used like all sunglasses: to block the sun. Currently, we use tagboard, and string. And of course, what good is a piece of paper without some markers, glitter, rhinestones, or paint.

However, these paper pieces don't just come that way. First, a pattern must be procured. We asked the bilingual teachers to sketch one for us, and it turned out very nicely.

After it was traced 106 times, the individual units were cut apart from each other, then trimmed to the right size. Then the eyes were cut out, and finally, two holes for the thread were punched on the edges. Of course, for an authentic look, we'd make the kids bore holes in it, but that could be tedious, especially with the kindergardeners.

Here are the ones we have done as of right now, in the four stages of done-ness.

Project Two:

Little Eskimo people. These little guys work pretty much the same way as the glasses, except that they're bigger. We can only make 9 little guys per piece of tagboard. Understandably, we don't yet have 100 of them done. Not even close. Maybe 40, and those aren't even all cut apart yet.

It's hard to see the pencil marks with this picture, but that second to the right pile is actually little paper dolls I've cut out, except for the tricky part under their arm, in their necks, and between the legs. One of the kids is willing to do it.

These little guys are going to get felt or fabric kuspuks, followed by fir trim. I'm going to guess this is more for the little kids than the bigger ones. (Bigger being 5th or 6th grade).



I was cutting today while my kids worked on their research papers. I'm only needed for clarification while they gather resources, so it worked out well for everyone. One of my girls asked if she could help, instead of working on her writing assignments. I told her that if she studied hard, stayed focused during college, and came back with a bachelors degree, then she too could cut.

Yeah, I'm not laughing either.

And for those of you who think that my life is all fairies and roses, here is my cutting injury:

And that's not a "I just pulled the scissors off" sort of mark. It's still on me, and I've taken pictures, done a job search, and written this whole post since I took the scissors off, and it's still on me. No wonder people like my mom get arthritis in their hands first.  I'm not even thirty yet, and I have caught myself rubbing the joints on my hand like I used to see my grandmother do when she was SEVENTY.

And on that note, I just realized that my other gramma's birthday is today. Which means that my parents' anniversary is also today. And I spaced until just now, at quarter after nine at night, Alaska time. There is a special room in hell for people who forget their parents' anniversary. It's right next to the one for people who leave their cell phones on during class.