Make Your Own Monday: CD Dreamcatcher

It’s Children’s Mental Health Week and we know that crafting is a great mindful activity, particularly for children and especially in these unusually stressful times. This year’s theme is Express Yourself, so why not try making your own personalised version of our fab dream catcher. Sleep is also super-important for mental health and this might just ward away bad dreams to ensure a restful night. We used an old CD as the basis for ours, but you could equally use a paper plate or circle of card with a hole cut in the middle.

You will need:
CDs
Coloured wool
Masking tape
Scissors
Beads (we used wooden ones, but plastic look just as effective)
Feathers
Sharpies (optional)

What to do:

1. Choose your first colour and thread a piece of wool through the central hole of the CD. Then, wrap it around a few times (I did fifteen), so you have ‘spokes’ of wool radiating out from the centre. Then tie on the back (the side with the writing).
2. Next take a piece of contrasting coloured wool and wrap a piece of masking tape around the end to make a rigid ‘needle’ for weaving. Then weave the second colour under and over the spokes. Keep going, pulling it tight as you go, until you want to add a third colour, then just tie this wool onto the second and repeat until you have used as many colours as you want (or got bored!), adding beads along the way if you want to.
3. Tie a piece of wool to one ‘spoke’ to make a hanging loop, then, opposite, tie on loose pieces of wool to the bottom and add feathers and beads.
4. Finally, if you’d like, draw patterns with Sharpies onto the still visible parts of the CD. Hang above your bed and bad dreams be gone!

I originally did this with a big group of children – they really enjoyed making them and there were lots of different interpretations. They’re great, because you can adjust to suit any age – little ones can just wind the wool through a few times, whereas older children can manage more elaborate weaving and they can add as much or as little in the way of decoration as they like. A great way to upcycle all those CDs hanging around in boxes. Original idea courtesy of Pink Stripey Socks’ – check out her far superior version here.