These cute little bees are very easy to make - before you know it, you’ll have a complete hive! Here, they form part of a charming scene, complete with flowers and honeycomb, but they would make equally lovely greetings cards - simply glue some of the cut-out honeycomb shapes on to a rectangular piece of card, fold the card in half, and attach a little bee.
You’ll need:
Old book, mine measured 71⁄2 x 43⁄4in. (19 x 12cm)
Craft glue
Pencil
Ruler
Scissors
Yellow and black paper from a magazine
Letter-size (A4) sheets of tracing paper
Templates, page 116
Masking tape
Craft knife
Cutting mat
1. To make the bees, remove several pages from the old book. Stick two pages together by running glue along the short edge of one and overlapping the short edge of the other by 1⁄2in. (1cm).
2. Use a pencil to mark a point 11⁄3in. (3cm) in from the bottom-right-hand corner of your glued pages. Now mark a point 2⁄3in. (1.5cm) in from the top-right-hand corner. Draw one line from the bottom-right-hand corner to the point marked at the top, and another from the point marked 11⁄3in. (3cm) along the bottom to the point at the top. You will have made a tall triangle.
3. Use scissors to cut out the triangle and spread glue along its length. Roll the triangle up tightly, starting from the short edge. This forms the body of the bee.
4. Cut strips of yellow and black paper measuring 11⁄2 x 1⁄8in. (3.5cm x 4mm). Run glue along each strip and wind it around the body of the bee, to make a stripe. I placed three or four on each bee, leaving a little space between each one.
5. Photocopy a sample of type on to tracing paper. I found a lovely old script on a music sheet, but you can use anything you like. Trace over the wing template and use scissors to cut out the shape. Dab glue on the underside of the bee and stick the wings to the body.
6. Cut a small two-pronged shape for the antennae from a page in the old book. Stick this to the underside of the bee, at the front, so that the pronged section sticks out. Make several bees in the same way.
7. Trace out the honeycomb shape and transfer it to a page halfway through the old book. Use a craft knife and a ruler to cut out the shapes though the pages. Vary the depth you cut into the book.
8. Stick some of the cut-out shapes together to make small hexagon blocks. Stick these to the page in the book for more variation in height.
9. Trace out the flower shapes and transfer them on to a page you removed from the book. Cut these out using a craft knife and protecting your work surface with a cutting mat. Pinch the petals in half and fold them upward to make them 3-D. Cut a semicircle at the center of each flower and fold back the cut section.
10. Stick the flowers to the page opposite the honeycomb, gluing them at their centers and grouping them together.
11. To make some of the bees hover above the flowers, cut one of the pages you removed from the book into three sections. Glue the sections together in layers, then cut them into strips measuring 21⁄3 x 1⁄8in. (6cm x 4mm). Stick one end of a strip to the underside of each bee, bend the strip into a curve, and stick the opposite end down among the flowers.
This project is from Folded Book Art by Clare Youngs. To get more fab blog posts like this one - direct to your inbox - be sure to sign up to our mailing list here.