Watercolor Painted Paper Fans

I've recently been looking into making more Chinese New Year crafts together as a way to celebrate the upcoming holiday.   With my current infatuation with  watercolor crafts, we recently made these watercolor painted paper fans together.

Watercolor Painted Paper Fans

This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support!

Our Favorite Chinese New Year Books

Prior to making the craft, we had already been reading books explaining the holiday.  Here are some of our favorites!

• The Runaway Wok
• Bringing In the New Year
• My First Chinese New Year
• Lion Dancer: Ernie Wan's Chinese New Year
• Celebrating Chinese New Year

Is it just me or are watercolor crafts like the best?  The colors are always so vibrant and it's easy to make lovely, colorful art (and it doesn't require much clean up or prep too- score!) We've recently been going through some transitions over here when I gave birth to my second son.  He's been such a gift to our family, but navigating transitions (even good ones) have never been my strong point.  Luckily, painting and crafting make me feel happy... so I really enjoyed making these beautiful fans!

Materials Needed:

Ok, all you need for this craft are:

• Paper (We use drawing paper for the watercolors, but you can just use plain old computer paper too if you decide to go another route.)
• Other drawing tools (Markers, Crayons, these cool twistable crayons, Sharpies)
• Stapler
• Tape

Let's Make Some Watercolor Painted Paper Fans

You could go 3 routes when making these fans.

Option 1:  You could just draw/paint whatever comes to mind....

I made this design by drawing a bunch of dots randomly on the page with Sharpie marker and then connecting them with lines to make triangles.  I find geometric shapes to be quite modern and aesthetically pleasing, don't you?  Then, I just painted all the shapes in.

Option 2:  Plan a specific Design- Think in halves!

Or, you could try to make a specific design on the fan.  We'll be folding these fans in half, so imagine the paper divided in half and draw two different designs on each half.

I also wanted to make a dragon fan for Chinese New year, so I drew this pattern out.   (You can download it over here Chinese New Year Dragon Printable Fan ).  

When it's folded it makes a completed dragon fan.  My son really liked this one, so he spent most of the time coloring it in... and then telling me that he didn't want to turn it into a fan.  Oh well!

Once you've finished your design, accordion fold it.

Then, fold it in half.

Staple yourself a handle and tape the two sides together.

Spread your fan out and admire your completed design!

Oh! Here's what the stripey design looked like folded.

I went a bit crazy with painting and made several.  Aren't they pretty?

Option 3:  Fold first, then paint!

And... if you want to, you could also just fold up a bunch of these first and then paint them.  That's another option too!  (The stripey fan on the lower right corner was painted that way.)

Another cute fan craft:

Now if you liked making this paper fan craft, you should also check out my folding popsicle stick fans.  They're a bit more work, but they also are a bit cooler because you can open and close them!

Hope you have a fun time making these with your kiddos.

Let's Keep in Contact!

You can always find more fun ideas on my Pinterest, Facebook, or Instagram accounts!

Happy making!