Chinese New Year - Red Envelopes

Another craft in early preparation of the coming Chinese new year on February 3rd, this time we have made the lucky red envelopes (Hong Bao) that are usually given to children for the new year celebrations filled with a lucky amount of coins. There are many beautiful examples of these envelopes, but in the interest of crafting with small children I have kept this simple.

The above photograph shows the small red envelopes in various stages of being cut out, folded and glued, a very simple packet shape. Next I printed off some  Chinese words for my son to practise writing, we chose the word Fu which means luck.

Now I would like to point out that we do not normally speak or write Chinese so if our writing is incorrect or says something offensive I would like to apologise in advance as we only intend to learn something of the celebration and the culture. I'm sure my husbands parents will inform me, if this is not correctly written as they both speak and write Chinese very well.

These are the finished envelopes, we had some trouble getting the writing to show up using a metallic pen, gold paint would be more ideal, so we have used a glue pen and gold glitter. Closer to the New year these will be filled with a lucky amount of coins, probably 8, and given to the children.