Easy Craft for Kids - The Rain Stick

Rain sticks are a great, easy and cheap kid's craft project.

You'll need to gather together the following for a basic rain stick;

Cardboard tube
Scrapbook paper or wrapping paper.
Sticky tape
Scissors
a piece of cardboard
rice or dried lentils



Start by cutting two strips of cardboard and two discs of card roughly the same size as the ends of your tube. The strips need to fit inside your cardboard tube, mine are about an inch wide. Concertina the strips of cardboard.



Place one card circle over the end of the tube and tape it firmly in place.




Turn the tube over and push the two strips of card into the tube and pour in the rice or lentils (the bigger the grains the bigger the "rain")




Place the other card circle over the open end and tape in place to close the tube.




Then cover the entire tube with pretty paper.




Fold the paper in over the ends and tape in place. Mine came up a little short. That's what I get for being too lazy to cut the tube down to fit the paper.




I had some craft foam stickers so I covered up the raggedy ends.




And that's you finished. Except we all know I'm all about the embellishments. While Toots busied herself covering the rain stick in balloon stickers, I made a little pompom wrist strap.

I threaded felt pompoms on to a length of embroidery thread using all six strands and then tied the two ends together.

I then threaded the ends of embroidery thread under a fold in the paper at one end of the tube and taped over it, adding a few feather to hold everything in place and covered up any little tears in the paper.

Then you're finished. And hopefully you have a happy child into the bargain.

If you want (or need, don't worry you're in understanding company) a great craft fix head over to Make and Tell Monday at The 6 o'clock Stitch.