Rosettes of encouragement
My daughter is still too young for these but I thought that when the time came they would be a great way to help encourage her. The nice thing about making them is that you can write anything on them to suit the occasion. (I see “great pooper!” on one when potty training time comes along, hehe)
These also would be great for parties as place cards (minus the ribbon) or as rewards or even decoration.
1. Cut a 7/8″ strip from the 11″ side of a piece of paper.

2. Fold the paper accordion style. Make each fold about 3/4″

3. Overlap and glue or tape the ends together to form a circle. I used double sided tape. The circle won’t lie flat and the next step will fix it.

4. Cut out two circles – one 1 3/4″ in diameter, one 1 7/8″ in diameter.
5. Glue the larger circle to the back side. Place something on top to flatten (I used the rubber cement glue bottle). Wait for the glue to dry.

6. Write a message on the smaller circle before gluing it to the front. Place something on top to flatten. Wait for glue to dry.
7. For the ribbons, cut out two strips of paper 3.5″ long and 1/5″ wide. Glue to the backside. Cut the ends to form an upside-down V.

8. Adhere a pin or string to the back for wearing.


As a knitter I have tons of patterns that hope to make someday printed and organized into 3-ring binders (this was the days before
One of the firsts websites I came across was
If your child is like mine, he receives many gifts that–I’ll be honest with you–don’t get a lot of mileage. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the thought and the gift itself, but at the end of the day, he loses interest in it. And then it takes up space and starts to collect dust. (Hmmm, I hope I didn’t just talk Isaac out of some presents come Christmas time!).