Disney Pixar’s Animated movie comes out today: Inside Out. I had a chance to catch an early screening of it, and loved it. The movie takes place largely in the head of a young girl. She is growing up, and her family moves across the country. The emotions in her head: Happiness, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust help her cope with everything that comes her way… in every way they can. Inside Out does a great job of tackling emotions and memories. One of the concepts is that memories are captured onto large marble-like spheres. At the end of each day, most of these spheres are sent off to long-term storage. The spheres are different colors, depending on the emotion surrounding them. Happy memories are yellow, sad ones are blue, angry ones are red, fearful ones are purple, and ones associated with disgust are green.
I created these fun memory spheres as a craft project to do with my kiddos. I can cut out a “sphere” (they’re not really spheres – trying to cut a true sphere out of paper would be much more difficult!), and have my children draw on the different pentagon-shaped-sides. Then I can put the ball together, and they can have a “memory” of a day to put on a shelf. I can cut a white memory sphere so they can color each side based on the image they draw, or cut a whole ball one solid color, so they can express a single emotion in one place.
I used my Sizzix eclips2 to cut out the shapes. The eclips2 has a scoring feature – it does a true score on all the folds instead of a dashed line! If you have access to an eclips2, use it! If not, I’ve added the SVG file with dashed lines so you can use whatever cutting machine you have available. If you don’t have a cutting machine, there is also a PDF so you can cut out your sphere by hand (or allow your kiddos to cut their own).
You’ll need scrapbook paper or cardstock, a hot glue gun (I find that a low-temp gun works best for paper projects), and a long stick to help push everything together. I used the end of a skinny paintbrush.
Here are the cut files:
Sizzix eclips2 cut file
SVG cut file
PDF printable to cut by hand
Once you have cut out your shapes, fold on all the score lines.
Add a line of glue to one flap, then adhere to the opposite side.
Secure the sides together, making two halves.
Then secure the two halves together.
All done!
Make more to represent all the emotions!
Enjoy making these memory spheres all summer long to capture memories with your kids – trips, vacations, or just days hanging around the house. I hope that most of them are happy yellow… but a few other emotions mixed in isn’t a bad thing, either!
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