It’s Crafty Tuesday and I’ve got another 15 minute project for you today. A great one for the kids. Or how about making one to send to a friend? They’re a hugely important part of Danish preparations for Easter – secret snowdrop letters! 🙂
You’ll need:
- white and coloured paper
- glue or a gluestick
- a pair of scissors
Choose a coloured piece of paper for your paper ‘doily’. Fold it in half, then in half again. Draw a rough shape and cut out. If you’ve never done this kind of thing before, keep it simple! The Danes are world-famous for their intricate papercutting. Hans Christian Andersen (you know, the one who wrote all those fairytales) was an expert. I’ve only lived here for 10 years, so I’m still learning…
Open up up the paper and you should have something that looks like this.
Stick it on to a plain white piece of paper. I used a gluestick. And it’s fine if it isn’t perfectly stuck down all over – it just gives it an even better 3d effect 😉
Then you write a little poem on it.
Henne bag ved havens hæk, fandt jeg denne vintergæk.
Hej, min hvide lille ven, nu er turen din igen.
Du skal gå til min ven, hviske så kan kan forstå,
han må gætte prikke små, for et påskeæg at få!
. . .
But if your family and friends aren’t Danish, you’ll probably want one in English, right? Here you are:
Snowdrop, snowdrop, snowdrop fine,
Omen true of hope divine,
From the heart of winter bring
Thy delightful hope of spring.
Guess my name I humbly beg.
Your reward: An Easter-Egg.
Let these puzzling dots proclaim
Every letter in my name
. . .
As you can see, you don’t sign your name. You draw a large dot for every letter of your name. If the person who receives the letter guesses who it comes from, you have to give them an Easter egg. But if they can’t guess, they have to give you an Easter egg 🙂 So disguise your handwriting and be creative…I put in three dots for M.U.M.! 😉
The final touch is to pick a snowdrop from your garden (or draw one if you can’t find any near you!), add it to the letter and send to a friend.
Good luck!
Hope you have a terrific . . . . . . .! 🙂
Hope you have a terrific ……. too! My ……. is going well so far so good! These secret letters are cute! I love codes and code-busting. You could probably make a version where you have to fold it a certain way and the holes reveal the letters that are part of your secret message, whereas all the other letters hidden would be disregarded. I will see if I can do it to show you what I mean.
Know exactly what you mean! Tee hee, I desperately wanted to be a detective/secret agent/spy when I was a child, so have a LOT of experience in that department! 🙂
Enjoy your (bento) lunch! xo
There you go, I have done it! It is on my blog! Toddler helped, so the cutting went a bit wonky, but he had fun colouring in the leftover bits of paper. Then he coloured his leg in… gotta go and bath him now!
Here is the link Doily secret agent crafty thing
Looked and loved it! Made one for DS10 – he's a secret agent too! ;D