Flower-Vase Label for the Virgin Mary: A Free Blessed Mother Printable Craft

Looking for a simple but sweet Blessed Mother craft for May? Here's a quick-and-easy craft: a Mama Mary label to color and cut, and use to decorate a Mason-jar vase.

A photo posted by Vee (@paper_dali) on May 6, 2016 at 10:44pm PDT

First, download the printable here. (Make sure your printer settings doesn't include margins and that the page orientation is horizontal.)

Then color it up however you want. (I colored the background of Mary's alcove yellow... then realized the yellow crown didn't pop, so I changed the background to orange. Remember you can always fix "mistakes" in art and that those "mistakes" can even give your work a unique look.) You can use the little crown pattern to create one for Mary and glue it on.

 Cut out the label, wrap it around a Mason jar (which will serve as a flower vase), and glue it on or tape it. (I taped because I've a deep and abiding love for Scotch tape.)

Then just add a little water to the vase and some fresh flowers then place it wherever you like! We've placed ours on the dining room table as a reminder to say the Hail Mary during our meal prayers in May.

Have a blessed and lovely Marian month!

xo
Vee

Free Saint Pope John Paul II Printable Triptych

Excited about tomorrow's feast day of Saint Pope John Paul II? (Say YES!)

To celebrate this hugely popular pope-now-saint, I created a Saint Pope John Paul II tripych (a fancy word for three-panel painting) craft activity.

Want to put yours together for the Saint JP2 feast day? It's easy-peasy.

You'll need my favorite tools for a crafting project:

• Markers and colored pencils
• Childproof scissors (because I'm a scissors amateur)
• A glue stick
• Manila folder (because card stock is spendy)

1. Download and print the free Saint Pope John Paul II triptych printable

Super-important: Make sure your printer settings are "landscape mode" and "fit to printable area." If you don't, you end up with a mini triptych.

2. Cut out the printable along the dark outer line

3. Color with your favorite markers, colored pencils, drawing pens, etc.

4. Add doodles, squiggles, and whatever you'd like to make it extra-special

5. Glue to the manila folder (or card stock)

6. Cut out the tripytch again and the fold the outside panels towards the middle like so:

7. Decorate the outside panels, then place your beautiful work of art in a thoughtful spot

A photo posted by Vee Jarski (@paper_dali) on Oct 21, 2015 at 4:15pm PDT

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Hope you had fun making your own Saint John Paul II triptych! If you do use it, feel free to share pics of your work. If you're on Instagram, use the hashtag #paperdali or tag me (I'm @paper_dali), so I can see your triptych.

xo
Vee

Blessed Junipero Serra's Canonization Day [Free Coloring Page]

In just a few short hours, Pope Francis will celebrate the canonization of Blessed Junipero Serra.

To mark this day, I doodled a free Junipero Serra coloring page for you:

You can click or tap on the image to get to the free download page.

Peace be with you,
Vee

Free Thanksgiving Printables

We're very excited about the upcoming Thanksgiving feast here at Casa Paper Dali.

 In between texts flying about who is bringing what and figuring out where to seat nine kids and their parents, I started making some fun decorations for the dining room. I turned to my beloved construction paper, Sharpies and low-cost laminating system (i.e., packing tape) to create some leaf borders in the room.

Then, I thought I'd share them with you. Here's a free printable of leaf shapes. (The image is smaller than the actual page, so be sure to download it.)

You can use the leaf page as:

• a coloring page at the table
• a pattern to cut out and trace on construction paper
• a placemat (once you've laminated it)
• a front-door welcome sign

Once I started drawing something for Thanksgiving, I couldn't stop myself, so I made another fun free Thanksgiving printable sheet.

Ideas for how to use those drawings are on the sheet.

If you've any ideas to share, feel free to leave (oh! no pun intended!) in the combox.

xo
Vee

Free Paper Dolls and Printables for you, from me

Not only do I love drawing and crafting, I also love sharing my treasures.  At Paper Dali, you can download the following items for free. Just please remember that these are all for personal, non-commercial use and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Why are they free?
I'm slightly obsessed with classic literature and history, especially Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, the American Revolution and the U.S. Civil War. When I couldn't find free online historical paper dolls and coloring pages for my children, I decided to make my own.

The inspiration for creating paper dolls came from my daughter. Her love of paper dolls proved contagious. My daughter often makes suggestions for new dolls and tests them out to make sure the clothes and accessories work with the dolls. She also has a keen eye for details and goes through the site for quality control. She may be only nine years old, but she's a taskmaster.

My children regularly print out the dolls and play with everything that I post, letting me know what works---or does not. Without their sweet encouragement and ideas, the free dolls at Paper Dali would not exist nor continue to grow.

If you have any ideas or comments about Paper Dali, feel free to drop me an email at mypaperdali[at]gmail.com or leave a comment.