Booky Advent Calendar Day 22 - "Christmas Paper Play" and "Paper Play" by Lydia Crook (Ivy Press)

 Nothing says "Christmas" like a fantastic set of 'makes' and these two fantastic books should inspire you to get out your colouring pencils, scissors and glue sticks and get cracking with some truly brilliant "Paper Play"...
Lydia Crook, arch-meister of folding and cutting has put together a fabulous pair of books for Ivy Press that should inspire you to get creative.

"Christmas Paper Play" and the slightly less festive (but still brilliant) "Paper Play" have helped us soak up many a rainy wet weekend as we work through each book getting to work with some fabulous projects.

In "Christmas Paper Play" you can make everything from a fabulous tree-topping angel to a festive crown to wear while scoffing your christmas dinner. We've already reviewed this gorgeous book so take a look at what we previously wrote back in August...

"Paper Play" is also fantastic and once again packed with wonderfully diverse makes that are functional and fun. Everything from paper planes to finger puppets can be made from the projects in this book.

We had a lot of fun making a paper town for our puppets to live in too. The books are printed on really good quality thick paper so your constructions won't be too flimsy, and also it's the sort of paper that can take just about any colouring media you throw at it too. Pencils, felt-tips or paints can all be used to polish up your creations.

One thing we would really have liked with both of these - as hard as it is to practically dismember a book in order to build the various projects in both, it's made a lot harder by the book being fairly tough and hard wearing - and quite difficult to detach individual pages from. We've seen other paper make books where pages are scored or perforated so they can be pulled out easily. It's a very very minor point simply because the quality of the paper and the sheer number of fantastic inspirational projects does outweigh the slightly irksome task of getting your scissors in as close as possible to the page margins to avoid ruining any of the templates (you could, of course, just trace pages onto other paper or card to avoid wrecking the book at all!)

Some projects from the "Christmas Paper Play" book.

As mentioned earlier, we had so much fun making projects from both books, packed as they are with brilliant ideas. Perfect stocking fillers for your little ones if they love making things.

Two of our favourite projects from "Paper Play" - the finger puppets are awesome!

Charlotte's favourite bit: Making a tiny little town and populating it with all sorts of crazy creatures

Daddy's favourite bit: Brilliant quality books with good stiff paper for excellent makes.

(Kindly sent to us for review by Ivy Press)

"Paper Play" and "Christmas Paper Play"

Written and Illustrated by Lydia Crook

Published by Ivy Press

Publication Date: August 2015