My tweens and teens are in love with emojis. Half of their devices’ memory is specialized emoji, whether it’s additional faces and gestures or specialized characters devoted to their favorite fandoms and movies. There are times when I will get messages from them entirely in emoji, and I actually enjoy figuing out the puzzle of what they’re trying to convey. I much rather like the faces, gestures, and animals rather than the pigeonized grammar that I’ve been shown gets accepted in school- u for you, h8 for hate, etc.
Some of the most popular crafts I’ve done with tweens have been emoji crafts. They love making them and using them to express themselves whether subtling in public or having something hanging around in their rooms.
Mark Montano on his Youtube Channel has a brilliant DIY video on how to make emoji patches (well, any fabric into patches really):
I used these with my tweens and they LOVED them. I made the emoji ones ahead of time as they needed special processing (printing on transfer paper and ironing onto fabric) and I wanted control of what emojis were printed, but other than that I let them go. They had a blast creating their own patches for backbacks, shoes, and jeans. Knowing my audience, I also added in special emojis that represented Minecraft and other fandoms that they were into. I asked for quilting and other scraps of fabrics from library staff and patrons, and we had a variety of patterns that worked out really well.
A friend of mine pointed me to these awesome coaster crafts using heat beads and patterns for emojis. Found over on The Crafty Swedes/ Pysselbolaget they had a fun time creating their faces. My teens always had fun with heat bead creations, and I can only imagine what they would have done had we saw these!
I am completely in love with these coin purses from See Kate Sew. While these are patterns for heart faces, there’s no reason why you couldn’t create a variety of faces and expressions. The images are showing professional sewn purses, I’ve done similar ones with my teens and tweens where we’ve stitched the craft together by hand. The trick is to make sure things are glued down and tacked securely beforehand, and you use small stitches.
My tween and teen girls favorite things to make are hair decorations and they adored making these. We adapted ours from a different source, but I’ve found a great tutorial by Shauna Wightman on DIY that details emoji hair clips specifically. No sewing required, just a hot glue gun and scissors. There is no end to the variety that they could make, save for the amount of felt you have on hand and the time of the program.
Have you done emoji crafts with your tweens and teens? Share them!