Our #AmiGami craft party

Recently I was invited to host an AmiGami craft party for my children and some of their friends. AmiGami is a brand new crafting toy aimed at children aged 6+. Children can use a selection of printed papers and stickers to customise their own AmiGami creature, with a multitude of different ways that they can use the materials to let their imagination run free.

We were sent a selection of craft kits so that each child could create two animals - a Cat and a Chameleon. Each kit comes with a plastic animal base, some tools, instructions, pins which allow you to stick the paper pieces to the base, and a pack of stickers and paper pieces. There are lots of bits and pieces included with each kit, many more than you actually need, so there are hundreds of different ways that you can complete the kit.

Although the pieces are vaguely themed to the kits (for example there is a curly tail for the Chameleon and fish for the Cat) they are all interchangeable, so if you have several different sets you can mix and match. The kits are also reusable, as you can easily remove the pins and redesign your animal, and they contain everything that you need, with no glue required.

All the individual pieces first need to be pressed out from their sheets. It's easy and doesn't take long, but because we had quite a lot to do my children and I prepared it all in advance to save time on the day. The shapes and pegs got mixed up between the two different animals, but that didn't matter, it just meant that the children had more options for making their creatures. I had a go at making a Cat in advance which was a good move, as I was able to give the children a quick intro and explain what to do before leaving them to see how they got on. 

The kits are aimed at children aged 6+, but several of the guests at our party were younger. This wasn't a problem though, we found that the 6 year olds could easily be left alone to complete the craft, and even though the younger ones did need a little bit of help they still really enjoyed it and became engrossed in what they were doing. Fortunately I had also invited some crafty Mums that were happy to help them out!

To make the AmiGami animal you press pegs into the holes on the base and add the patterned cut out shapes to create the embellishments. You can use the special tool to wrap long strips of paper up into spirals, add the cut out shapes to make wings and tails, and there are plenty of sweet little stickers which you can use to decorate too. The stickers can be reused up to three times, so children don't need to worry if they make a mistake when placing them. 

Here are some of the children concentrating hard on their creations:

And here are all our finished creatures on display, they look fantastic! I loved seeing how the children used the pieces to make the craft individual to them. It was a really fun way to spend an afternoon and a great idea for play date. The craft kits retail at around £10 per animal so it's a rather expensive everyday play idea, but for a special occasion like a family gathering or birthday party they would be an ideal way to entertain a group of young children, and adults enjoy getting involved too! A kit would also make a great gift for a crafty child.

I was sent enough craft materials to host an AmiGami party for my children and a group of their friends.