Do you know what always causes shock and genuine surprise in any person? These are crafts from matches. With your own hands without glue or with it you can build houses, palaces, churches, animals, vehicles, create paintings and even dishes. This activity helps to develop manual dexterity and to unite adults and children. Therefore, we consider several master classes of simple and complex works.
Key features for working with matches
- Buy all the material. In this work, it is better to take more matches than less, since the work is painstaking and requires constant attention. For example, for a small church, about eight thousand matches are needed.
- Crafts can be glued, so children can master these works.
- From matches you can make masterpieces without glue. In this case, you need schemes and step-by-step lessons for beginners.
- Works can be flat, three-dimensional and three-dimensional.
- For craft matches, you can take whole, cut sulfur heads, break the rods.
- The work uses ordinary, multi-colored and fireplace matches.
Despite their simplicity, you can create quite complex projects from matches that are analogues of real objects. Some works require drawings, accuracy and sleight of hand. With children, it is better to start with flat objects, then go to voluminous products. If you want to immediately go to three-dimensional crafts, then practice on the houses, the technique of creating which is the basis of other works.
Simple matchstick crafts
With their own hands, six-year-old children can create flat paintings. Their essence consists in drawing plots, and then gluing elements from matches. It can be a fence, wattle fence, a house and even an image of an animal. In this case, the matches only decorate the existing plot.
A more complex picture is voluminous work. To do this, a drawing template is redrawn on a landscape sheet or Whatman paper. Choose patterns monochrome or monochrome. Similar patterns can be borrowed in cross-stitch or beadwork.
Next, with tweezers, glue the matches in an upright position. Due to the sulfur heads painted in the desired color, an original pattern is created. Matches are pre-painted with acrylic paint, and then inserted into the foam for complete drying.
Alternatively, you can lay out a solid picture of painted matches on a rubber basis. Just pierce a hole with an awl and insert matches so that only the heads are visible. On the wrong side, each row is cut with nippers. Next, the following pattern is laid out.
Craft from matches: a house
Building a foundation at home is the foundation of most masterpieces: castles, churches, a tank, mills, paintings. Therefore, we consider this process in more detail.
- Spread two matches in parallel.
- On top of them, put eight matches perpendicularly.
- Next, a perpendicular row of eight matches is laid out.
- Then build the walls of the house in a height of 7 rows. The heads of matches constantly go in a circle.
- The top row is completely stacked with eight matches, only the sulfur heads look in the opposite direction compared to the first row.
- Place six matches on top of the previous row in the perpendicular direction.
- A coin is laid out on them and tightly pressed.
- Now you need to wrap the coin on all sides with matches in each vertical row.
- Press the walls and carefully remove the coin.
- Turn the house over, then the bottom becomes the basis for the roof.
- Lay another horizontal row.
- Insert the missing matches into the corners and push them a little.
- Lay the roof perpendicular to the first layer, alternating matches with sulfur heads in opposite directions.
- It remains to insert four matches for the pipe into the roof and a couple more into the wall for the window.
Matchstick mill with glue
We will make crafts from matches with glue, which are available to older children. Draw a simple mill of four trapezoidal walls, with a triangular roof and a wheel of four “petals”. Based on the size of the matches, cut out patterns from paper.
Now measure the length of the matches according to the sample and glue them together. Clean the sulfur heads before work. For the matches to stick tightly, from the wrong side, attach additional beams that are arranged perpendicular to the match pattern.
First make a trapezoidal base. Next, put the triangle out of matches and fill it with matches. Make a wheel of four petals with a square core. For one such detail, you need to take three long matches and two short matches, creating an elongated trapezoid.
After gluing two opposite triangles to the base, one of which is with a wheel, attach a match between them. It becomes a crossbar for stingrays. Now glue the rectangular slopes and attach them to the mill.
Match wheels
These crafts from matches for children will cause a lot of delight and surprise: to make real wheels without glue! For a part of 15 vertices with one reference match, we are preparing a working tool. On a sheet of thick cardboard, draw a circle with a diameter of 8.4 cm, divide it into 15 sectors. Each of them has a vertex with an angle of 24 degrees.
Using a nail or awl, make holes in each sector and insert matches in them, with the help of which the wheel will “grow”. Spread all the matches in a circle where the sulfur heads are located one after another. To make it clear the location of the weaves, we denote the first reference matches as A, B, C, D, E, F.
- The ends of the first match lie behind circle A and C, and its middle is in a circle and is in contact with point B.
- The second match is overlapped on top of the first so that the ends are beyond points B and D, and its middle is in contact with C.
- The third match goes on top of the second match from point C, bypasses D and goes beyond F.
That is, with matches, you circle the circle in a zigzag fashion. Put the last under the first.
Features of the construction of rows at the wheel
We continue to make crafts from matches. Wheel construction schemes are described above. We spread each row in this way. Only at the end of each of them the last three matches (the first, penultimate and last) need to be squeezed down, as the part is held by friction.
- Lift the first match up.
- The penultimate one fits under the edge of the first.
- Next, the last match is inserted and pushed through.
All the details in each circle must be pressed down to create a density between matches. Lay out five circles, where at the end the last three elements are fixed in the same way. Now the support can be pulled out according to the following scheme (mentally number the reference points):
- Pull out the 13th match.
- Now carefully remove the 5th, which will be on the opposite side.
- Next is the 6th match.
- Then remove the 9th part.
- Go to the 1st match, which will be in the perpendicular direction.
- And pull out the last 2nd.
Now you can carefully pick up the wheel in your hands and not be afraid of the destruction of crafts from matches. For children, using this analogy, you can make a tank with such wheels or a cart.
Matchstick paintings
Oddly enough, but landscapes, photographs can not only be embroidered, but also constructed from matches. The bottom line is that the base is built of cubes, and then matches are pushed into them with sulfur heads up, which create a certain pattern. You can do not only monochrome plots, but also colorful pictures. Only for the last goal match heads need to be painted in the desired palette.
So, how to make these crafts from matches? The instruction is as follows:
- Create cubes, as for a house, only without a roof. Sulfur heads are located only on two adjacent sides, the other two sides should be sulfur free. You need to make as many cubes as you need for the picture. For example, you need five squares in length and 8 cubes in width, then do 35 crafts.
- Then, remove the sulfur from the remaining matches. Based on the above example, you will need 14 cubes without sulfur heads.
Mixing the base for a picture
Once all the details are ready, you can build crafts from matches with your own hands. Begin to fasten the foundation in rows. The edges are made up of cubes with heads, and the middle is made of pure squares.
- In the first cube, at the edges, insert 4 connecting matches according to the same analogy as you would a roof for a house, but do not push them in.
- Take the second cube and push on the connecting matches.
- Gently squeeze these two dice.
- Fill the joints with matches.
- Also do with the next die.
Connect all the rows first. Based on the above example, you need to make 5 rows of 8 cubes. We connect as follows:
- In the first row from the side of each cube, insert 4 connecting matches (in a row there are 32 matches).
- Put the second row on the table with the side to which you want to attach the other.
- Carefully insert the first row of matches down into the second.
- Squeeze the ranks.
- Fill the joints with matches.
Connecting matches can fly out, but they can then be inserted. As soon as the whole base is ready, take the diagram and lay out the drawing on it according to the same analogy as a regular mosaic.
A great souvenir and gift are crafts made from matches. With your own hands you can build entire temples, fortresses, palaces, paintings. And for them to serve for decades, just cover them with wood varnish. If you are just starting to create “matchstick” masterpieces, then master the technique of building a house, since many products are based on it.