I instantly clicked the link and found myself absorbed by the amazing little creations on the website, there were so many different designs. Not all of the designs are free, and I think they change which ones are free, since the cat one was no longer free when I went to the website, but they did have free downloads for each chinese zodiac animal!! 

LOVELY LINKS!! : https://www.toxicpaperfactory.com/singleillustration.php?pid=44

To which I was instantly like “what is my chinese zodiac!!?!”- I was with my mom at the time, so naturally I looked up hers (horse- cool, majestic), then my sisters (snake -also really cool and my sister loves snakes), then my dads (tiger- WOW awesome these are so cool), then mine (year of the…… goat…. – yeah okay). I did look it up later, and apparently it is the year of either the goat OR the sheep, depending on which translation you go by, it could be either- and I was much happier to think that I was the year of the sheep, a cute fluffy sheep :), so from this point forth I will refer to my zodiac animal as the year of the sheep… not that I’m jealous….  

Anyways, it really doesn’t matter because each of these little paper creatures is unbelievably cute, no matter what chinese year you are born into. So I downloaded the horse, sheep, snake and tiger and set out to make a little chinese zodiac family!

They are simple printable downloads, I printed them on white cardstock from my regular colour printer (which decided to whimp out on my little sheep and it is a bit more albino than it is supposed to be…) . Then you cut them out and glue it all together, I used regular white glue with a fine applicator, but it was also helpful to use a toothpick to spread the glue at some of the trickier and finer points. They do have a little video tutorial on the site that shows generally how they go together. I wouldn’t say that these were super simple paper crafts but SO worth it- I mean how cute are these?

Our happy chinese zodiac family (snake sister, tiger dad, sheep me, horse mom)

also- please ignore my sister, her laptop and the two empty glasses of red wine in the background

 (this is how I craft)

I’m so impressed with these little guys and they have so many more amazing design downloads that you can buy- I’m looking into a couple of them, but you can also donate, which I will definitely do- since I was so impressed with the result of these! and I may or may not be planning to make a complete set of the zodiac animals… 🙂

Now that my shelf has been made infinitely cuter by the presence of these little guys, I’m off to do some more sewing- with a promise to post really soon! 

xo erin