Manos a la Obra: Mini-Altar Construction

Hi everybody, my name is Sheridan and today I’m going to show you how to actually construct your mini altar using the craft kit that you picked up at the library. If you weren’t able to pick up one of the craft kits all you need is a box about this size maybe even a little bigger if you’d like, a tiny box, and this one we actually cut in half so just a small box we cut it in half lengthwise so that it could work for us. We also are going to use five sheets of black construction paper, but if you have black wrapping paper or even paint, you could also paint the boxes. Tempra or acrylic would work you just want to make sure to not paint them with a lot of paint because then the cardboard will get kind of soggy. You’re also going to need some tape, a glue stick, a pencil to just mark the construction paper, and some scissors.

Okay so let’s 00:58 - go ahead and get started, we’re going to do the little box second so I’ll put that off to the side. I’ve got my instructions for here for how to assemble this thing so what we’re going to do is: because this box is a little bit too tall for our liking, and they’re actually adjustable if you look inside the box you’re going to see that there’s markings. We’re going to cut down to the first marking. Okay you may need an adult’s help with this you can either use scissors or an x-acto blade if you have one lying around but be sure to get an adult’s help so that you don’t cut yourself by accident. Okay so I’m gonna cut down to the first line inside the box on all four sides.

So that’s one side, this is 01:44 - two sides, we’re gonna do three sides and the last side. It can be kind of tough to get your scissors all the way to the very end of the cut. So now I’ve got cuts on all four sides to the very first line on the inside of the box, okay. This this construction might take a little while, and that’s okay! You know you can do the first few steps and then take a break, have a sandwich, come back later, pause the video, rewind it even if you need to, that’s all just fine because it’s going to take a little bit and it might even take the whole family. And that’s great because you are all spending time together, hanging out, talking, building your mini altar, and it’s a good time! Okay now that we’ve cut these four sides and made these four cuts, we’re gonna fold the flaps on the inside.

And the four cuts actually 02:40 - allowed us to fold the flap even further down than we could before, and that’s going to be good because we don’t want our altar to be too tall right we want it to be kind of squat. So that’s one flap I’m gonna fold in the other side, so now we have two flaps folded in here, I’m gonna fold in one flap from this side and here. I’m actually gonna secure this flap with some tape so that that is nice and secure. So I’m gonna put a piece of tape there in the middle, and another little piece of tape on the other side here. And now that’s pretty much taped down, and now we’re gonna fold this fourth flap all the way down, and we’re gonna secure that with some tape as well so that it doesn’t lift up.

03:31 - Okay, so now we have the very base for our mini-altar, we have actually constructed one previously, and as you can see, this box is this one. So we’re building the bottom of the mini-altar. And now we have to wrap this bad boy with black construction paper. Now this is kind of a technique that I developed yesterday. So we’re going to take one sheet of our construction paper and our pencil and we’re actually just going to measure the sides of the mini-altar to be able to wrap them appropriately. Okay so I’m going to take this side I’m going to lay it down here.

04:10 - Actually what I’m going to take the long side of the box, I’m going to lay it down here, and I’m going to measure it. You can see that it’s about half the width of the construction paper, right? If we cut it in half like this, it’s going to be about half the width and it’s going to leave a little bit of overhang which is what we want. So let’s cut this construction paper in half looks, like I need a little more tape here too. So I’m going to fold this construction piece of paper in half, and it doesn’t have to be super super exact, but the more exact you are the nicer it’ll look in the end. Folded it in half and then I’m going to cut it down the middle.

04:55 - And this is what we’re going to use to wrap the sides of the box. So now I have two pieces of black construction paper that I’m going to use for the sides of the box the first thing we want to do is kind of measure them to be flush with the very bottom of the box which we can either leave like this or we can fold them in to be taped as well, but we’re going to leave it like that. And as you can see the black construction paper is hanging off the sides a tiny bit, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to fold one side over like that and kind of crease it. I’m going to use a little bit of tape to secure that side to the box. And then just to get a nice– make sure that this paper sticks, I’m going to actually put some glue stick here before I tape the other side.

So just a little 05:45 - bit of glue stick, you don’t need a ton you just kind of want the black paper to stick to the box. So as you can see I did a little bit of glue stick and we’ll bring it over, and we’ll kind of run our fingers along the side of that to make sure that it kind of sticks, and we’ll secure this other end of the black construction paper to the box with a little tape. So we’ve done one side of the box, five more to go. Now that we’ve got this side done, we’re gonna do the same to this other side. So just like I did before I’m gonna flip it on the side I’m going to take this black construction paper, I’m going to lay it down so that it’s nice and flush with the end of the box.

I’m going to make sure that there’s a little bit of overhang on both sides, 06:29 - crease, and then put a little tiny bit of tape on that side to secure it to the box. I’m going to flip this off, put a tiny bit of glue stick along the side of the box to help the black construction paper stick to the box, just like that, I’m gonna flip the black construction paper back over, run my fingers along this to make sure that it sticks. And now I’ve got this overhang which I’m going to crease a tiny bit as well and tape to the box. If at any point during the video I’m going a little too fast, feel free to pause the video to catch up or even rewind it just to make sure that you’re doing everything okay! So as you can see here now I’ve got the box wrapped on the long side and the long side. And I’ve got a little tiny bit of overhang here which we’re going to use later to actually close everything up.

Okay, so now what we need to do is wrap the short side of the box, and the 07:36 - other short side of the box, so we’ll need another sheet of black construction paper. And what we’re going to do here, is we are going to measure so that we actually have a little bit of overhang as well to match the overhang from here. So as you can see, I don’t have the box all the way up to the very top of the construction paper I’ve moved it back a little bit so that the overhang with this construction paper is flush with this one. And then what I’m going to do with my pencil is I’m going to draw a line that will let me know where I need to cut this construction paper. So the line that I see is about here. And then since we’re going to make two of these anyway, now that I’ve folded it where I drew the line, I’m just going to cut along that line created by the construction paper.

08:31 - So now we have a piece of black construction paper that is equal on both sides because of the line that we drew and it’s going to serve us for both sides of the box and we’ll just cut that down the middle just like this. So this third piece we’ll put aside, we may use it later. And now we have two pieces of black construction paper for the short side of the box. And then we’re going to do the same process all over again. So what we’re going to do here, is we are actually going to put a little bit of glue stick along the black construction paper and the side of the box.

09:13 - And the other black construction paper on the other side, you don’t need a ton a ton of it you just want it to be able to stick. We’re gonna take this short construction piece of paper and make it so that it sticks to the box, run our fingers along it so that it sticks to the construction paper and the box. And now we have one of the short sides of the box also wrapped in black construction paper. We’ll do the same thing with this side, so a little more glue stick here a little more glue stick on the box, and a little more glue stick on the other black construction paper, and short side of construction paper, we’ll put that there make sure it’s flush with the bottom. And you want to run your fingers along it to make sure that it really really sticks.

10:04 - So now we have our box both long ends are wrapped both short ends are wrapped and we have this nice overhang here that’s going to allow us to fold in. Okay, so this is kind of if you’ve ever wrapped a present for the holidays or for somebody’s birthday you’ll kind of know the technique. What we’re going to do first is we are going to fold in the short side so you’ll see that i’m going to take this overhang and kind of fold it down and crease it a little bit here, and then you want to crease this side as well the long side, and the other long side, and then you’re going to tape this down. So I need a little piece of tape I’ll put a piece of tape here to make sure it stays down, and another piece of tape on the other side to make sure that that stays down, and now we have this side done. Now we’re going to do this side, so we’ll take this, we’ll fold this down we’ll crease it a little bit along the edge.

We’ll crease the long side and the other long side, and we’ll tape it down. So now we’ve got both short sides folded into the inside and we have these little flappies. And we’re going to fold these flaps down as well and tape them. So there goes the long flap, we’ll crease along the edge of the box to get a nice edge there and tape this bad boy down. And same with the other side, so we’ll fold this down, crease that edge, and add some tape.

11:53 - Whew! It’s a marathon, huh! Okay so we have the sides of our box completely wrapped in black construction paper and now we need to do the top portion. So what we’re going to do is take another piece of black construction paper, lay it down nice and flat, and we’re going to sort of measure our box. So I flipped it and I’m going to put it all the way to the edge, as you can see the edge of the black instruction paper is here, I’m pushing the box all the way to the edge. And then what I’m going to do is I’m going to draw with my pencil a line along the other side of the box so that we get a piece of black construction paper that’s going to fit on top of the box. So it looks like my pencil line is about here and I’m going to do a quick fold and then I’m going to cut off the extra black paper.

12:53 - Like I said, if you need a little break, if you need a drink, some candy, pause the video, take care of yourself, and then come back. So now I’ve got this big piece of black construction paper, that’s going to go on top of our box. What we’re going to do here, is we’re actually going to use the glue stick to run along the top of our box, just like that, you don’t need a ton a ton, but you just want something to be able to stick. And then you want some glue stick along the sides of the black construction paper which we wrapped earlier. And also, a little bit of glue stick on the corners so that your corners are nice and neat.

13:37 - And then what you’re going to do is here, you have to work kind of quickly because it’s a lot of area to cover. Just kind of place that on top, make sure that the sides line up and then press it down with your fingers so that it sticks to the box and the rest of the construction paper. And after what seems like forever, we have the base for our altar. So we can put that aside or you can keep working and try to make it a little neater, you know however you feel, but that’s going to be the base. So we’ll put that aside, and now we’re going to work on the top.

So if you have a small box what we did is we actually cut it 14:14 - in half, so all the other flaps went to another dia de los muertos kit. And what we’re going to do here is we’re actually going to assemble this box. So we’re going to fold down one flap, the side flap, the top flap, and the back flap. And so now, we have a little half box. This you want to secure with some tape as well, so I’m going to put some tape here along the middle. Tape that down, tape along the other side tape that down.

And I think for this one I’m also going to cut off 14:44 - a long strip of tape and tape it along the seam. So now we have a nice box taped down secured, and the inside is actually empty. And that’s okay! This is the little box that we’re going to put on top of our altar and it’s gonna form this little piece here. Okay so we still have two sheets of black construction paper left and we’re gonna use those to do this. It’s gonna be about the same technique, so once again we’re going to take a sheet of black construction paper and we’re going to measure.

You want to make sure that you measure with a little bit of overhang 15:20 - to be able to fold it down later. As you can see, the edge of my box is here so I’m going to cut or I’m going to draw a line there with my pencil I’m going to fold where the line is and then just like before, I’m going to cut off this excess because we’re not going to need it. Along the edge of the paper that we folded over, put that to the side. Now we have two equal pieces of black construction paper and I’ll cut down the fold that I made that is right in the middle of those. So now we have two pieces for the sides, it’s the same technique.

16:02 - So this time I’m going to show you how to do it with the table using you to help you, okay? What I’m going to do here is I’m going to keep the piece of black construction paper on the table and put some glue stick on it right in the middle of it. You don’t want to go all the way up to the edge, because you’re going to have that hanging off. Then I’m going to take the box, I’m going to put that in the middle, and I’m going to run my fingers along the inside of the box to make sure that it sticks, and try to get it as flush to the edge as possible. So now that I know that that’s stuck, now I’m going to take my tape, fold these down, and tape them to the box. And so now just like before, we have this little overhang, right? So we’re gonna do the same thing for this other side.

17:10 - Glue stick, box, press down on the inside of the box to make sure that it sticks, flip over, tape, fold and crease, tape it to the side, fold and crease, and tape it to the side. If you come up with your own way of wrapping these boxes with five pieces of construction paper, feel free to do that! This is just what I came up with to use as little paper as possible for each of the kits. So now we have two sides of the box, what we’re going to do here, actually, is we’re going to fold these little overhang flappies. We’re going to fold them down just like this, and we’re going to crease the paper that we have like that. So as you can see, I’ll do it again. I have these overhangs. I folded them down and then I creased them to make little diagonals on the corners and now what I’m going to do, is I’m going to take this flap that I just made and fold that down, crease along the edge, and I’m going to tape this down. Okay so I’ll show you once more.

I’ll take these little corners, fold them down, and then as you 18:34 - can see, it starts to fold the paper, and so I’m just going to pinch that a little bit to form a diagonal fold, and then fold that down. Kind of the same way that you would wrap a present. and then I’m going to tape that down. Okay so we’re in the last little bit! Here, we’ve got the sides of this wrapped up and now we need to cover this entire area down the middle of the box. Which is perfect because that’s going to be our last piece of construction paper. I’ve got here six pieces, but we only gave you five in the kits, so I’ll put that off to the side.

19:08 - Next up, what we’re going to do is we’re going to take this and we’re going to measure it so that we have a piece here that is going to be flush all the way to the edge of the box. So as you can see, I’ve got the edge of the box and this piece, and this piece, so that’s pretty good actually, right? We just need to cut off a tiny bit, but on this side we need to cut off this entire strip. So I’m going to measure here from the side of the box and now this pencil line is going to guide me to folding this over. So I used the pencil line to measure the box and then I folded it all the way down the length of the paper and now we’re just going to cut this off and put that off to the side. And then what we’re going to do here is we’re going to put some glue stick here to be able to stick it to the box.

20:15 - So I’m going to lay down some glue stick, you want to work kind of fast because it’s a lot of area and you don’t want it to dry out before you get a chance to stick it. You really just need some glue stick in the middle and then we will do this. Press down on the inside of the box to make sure that it sticks, and now you have these two flappies right, that you’re going to fold up and onto the sides of the box. Once again I’m going to do a little bit of glue stick, and I’m going to do some glue stick on the side here with the black paper, some glue stick in the middle of the box there, and on the other side too. And then I’m going to take this, and I’m going to fold it up and make sure that it sticks by running my fingers through.

20:59 - And at this point, as you can see, I’ve got a little tiny bit of black paper along the edge of the box that’s hanging off, you can either cut it off if you want, if you put enough glue stick on here so that it’s stuck, or you can fold it over just like that and put a little bit of tape. I feel like that makes it a little more secure but if you don’t want to deal with that you can just cut it. So that’s that side of the box, and once again on the other side we’re going to put some glue stick there, along the inside of the middle there, and all on the black thing, and fold this bad boy up make sure that it sticks. And then here, I really don’t have that much black paper so that I’m just going to trim off, you just want to take your scissors and carefully run them along the edge of the paper to trim it off. Alright so we have our base for our altar, we have the top of the altar, and now we need to put them on top of each other.

So there’s a couple of ways you can do this, you can either center 22:09 - it along the long side of the box and toward the back so you have a nice little ring around here. That’s what we did with this altar and that gave us room to put stuff around the edge. If you want a longer, deeper altar, you can rotate this and take this all the way back here, and then you have a little bit more room in the front here. Or if your altar is going to be in the middle of a table and people are going to walk around it, you can actually put this box right in the center of the altar and then you have surfaces along the four sides. It’s really up to you and what works for you and your family, but I’m going to show you how to stick the little box onto the top, okay.

22:42 - So what we’re going to do here is we’re going to need to take our little box and you’re going to put two pieces of tape on one side, so I’m going to cut off some tape here. I’m going to tape it to this side just like that, and I just need two. It’s gonna hang off a little bit and that’s okay, that’s what you want. I’m gonna take this other one, I’m gonna put it on the other side. So now I’ve got a little box with two pieces of tape hanging off the box, they’re stuck to the inside here. And then what I’m going to do is I’m going to decide where I want my little box to be. For me, I’m going to put it on the edge, so I’m going to take this tape hold it back with my fingers and I’m going to make sure that this edge of the box is lined up where I want it to be. Once I have that, I can take the little tape flap that’s hanging off and tape it to the black construction paper of the box underneath. So as you can see, I’ve got sort of like a little hinge of tape, it’s stuck there and then now I just need to close this and boom! It’s altar time! So now, in our next video, now that you’ve constructed your altar, after like 45 minutes, Evelyn is going to show you how to decorate it, okay? So stick around we’ll do the decoration part, and then after that we’re actually going to have a little calaca part where we’re going to show you how to make skulls out of the clay that is uh in your kit, so, see you then! .