Chinese paper yo yo's ... ...

That's right folks it's my turn :-)

My wife has been writing various blog posts about our Chinese new years crafts, you can check them out here (opens in new window) the kids have been enjoying it loads, especially running around with their goldfish kites, which I have to say are weathering quite well, despite the vigorous usage.

So to compliment my wife's posts we have made some Chinese paper yoyo's.

Here they are -

Pink ones.

Spotty ones.

And orange, this was a prototype.

These are really easy to make and quick, you can make a couple in 10 minutes, and all you need is some dowel, or thin sticks (straighter the better) some paper, you can use wrapping paper,wall paper, or you can stick some strips of a4 together if you don't have rolls of paper lying about.

First get some supplies - 

This is about all you need.

To make the yoyo you will need a strip of paper about 20cm wide and a meter long, any colourful paper will do, if you don't have any long pieces folder a couple of sheets of a4 paper will do, fold them in half and then cut them into 2 strips, and stick them together in a line with sticky tape (this is how I made the orange yoyo)

The sticks were out of the garden cupboard, just little garden canes really, but anything stick like would do, some lengths of garden cane about half a meter long would be ideal.

Time to commence construction -

Sticky tape is quick and works well.

Take some sticky tape and place 2 or 3 strips onto the paper so the sticky side is pointing up, this is for attaching your stick of choice. Once that's done take you stick and place it onto the tape and roll it up, the tape should stick to it and start to roll with the stick.

Some extra tape here will help it stay together.

Keep rolling until the end of the paper.

You need to keep rolling the paper as tightly as you can, once you reach the end of the paper hold it for about a minute, or slightly longer to make sure the curl stays in the paper.

Holding... ... has it been a minute yet ?

You could just place a book on it to hold it down.

If the end starts to un-ravel you can always roll the end the other way to help keep it together.

Like so - 

Use another stick to help roll the paper.

And you should end up with something that looks like the first lot of pictures. The way they work is quite simple, the paper works kind of like a spring as you flick it about.

When they are extended they should look like this - 

See spring like :-)

This one had already been played with.

They should spring back by themselves, you might need to roll them up tightly now and then to keep them nice and springy.

If you don't have any coloured paper you could always decorate some plain white a4 before making it into strips, get the kids to draw Chinese related things on the paper ? like dragons maybe.

Thanks for reading.