A small swarm of beetles

Beetle blueprint

 In part inspired by the marvellous Jo and her Woodcraft Folk group, the birthday party beetle craft was born. On the left, you can see my expert blueprints. The key idea in the plan was the paper fastener, allowing the beetles to open and close their wings.

As I began to plan the party, I envisioned a short talk about beetles complete with a poster to show the variety of beetles that can be found and their general coolness. I even added that poster to my ebay watch list, so excited was I.

Small swarm of beetles

However, I talked myself down from the beetle poster and concentrated on getting coloured paper plates, pipe cleaners, paper fasteners, googly eyes, stickers and a hole punch. It's just as well, really, as things at the party didn't quite go to plan. I showed them the prototype (guess which one in the photo on the right was mine) and offered help. Predictably enough, but not anticipated by me, the boys preferred to run around bashing balloons while the girls sat down to make beetles. I was a little over-stretched as the girls needed help with the hole punch but I like our little swarm of beetles.  It would have been larger but, delightfully, a couple of the girls took theirs home. Z1 was mostly happy to have our stash of pipe cleaners replenished.