Paper Fire - Paper Craft Activity

Fires are fun. They’re have a cosy warm glow, they make mesmerising patterns and they draw people in together. You can toast marshmallows over them, share stories and songs or just snuggle up in a blanket and watch the flames. This version is a paper fire for when it’s not possible to have a real one. It’s great for indoor camping adventures or as something to put in your fireplace in the Summer.

Stuff Needed:

Cardboard tubes, ideally of different sizes (for example, the tubes from the centre of toilet rolls, kitchen roll, tin foil, cling film, wrapping paper etc.).
Brown paper or paint.
Glue (if using paper).
A black or dark brown pen.
Fire-coloured paper, card or tissue paper (if you don’t have any, use white paper and draw flames in coloured pens, then cut them out). It helps to have some card, for structure.
Scissors.
Stapler (optional).

Instructions:

Cover the tubes in brown paper or paint them brown and leave them to dry. If they’re all the same length, you could cut them to different sizes to make them look more like logs.

Cardboard tubes covered with brown paper.

Using a dark coloured pen, draw marks on all the tubes to give them ‘texture’ like logs. Short lines that follow the line of the tube and are spread randomly around it look quite effective.

A few hand-drawn lines in black pen make the logs look more realistic.

Build your logs into a pile. You can leave it free-standing but it might be easier to stick the logs together where they join with a dab of glue or a piece of tape.

Put the logs aside and make the flames. If you have coloured card in yellow, orange or red, draw large flame shapes and cut them out. If you have tissue paper, cut out long strips joined at one end (like the fingers on a hand). Make the strips about 2-3cm wide.

You can cut flames from tissue paper and coloured card.

If you’ve made tissue paper flames, sandwich the tissue paper in between two card flames and fix it together. I’ve used a stapler for this but tape or glue would work too.

Finished flames - I used cardboard flames to give structure to the tissure paper ones.

Fix the flames into the log pile. The card should help the flames to stay upright. You may choose to glue or tape them in place. If staples or tape are visible you can stick a piece of brown paper over them to cover them.