camp crafts: God's Eye

We just got back from our annual family camping trip. It's always a good time playing at the river, hiking, roasting marshmallows story telling and crafting with the kids. This year Alivia taught a couple crafts: lanyards and God's Eyes. The God's Eye was a really fun camping craft because they got to search for sticks in the campground. Her little cousin Ella looks up to big cousin Alivia and they are so cute together.

alphabet cupcake toppers

Free downloadable PDF for an alphabet party

I used these as cupcake toppers by cutting out the circles with a circle punch and gluing to a toothpick.


alphabet cupcake topper

honest abe

Today my daughter did a biography report on Abraham Lincoln. She got a huge laugh out of the class when she walked up in the hat and beard. They all loved the really tall hat! The top hat project was inspired by Sue Astroth's book, Super-Simple Creative Costumes. I used fast2fuse heavyweight and black felt. I wanted to make sure that it fit Alivia's head perfectly so that it wouldn't fall off during her speech. I measured her head and found a paper plate that had just about the right circumference so I just trimmed a little off and it was perfect. The beard is stuffed fleece and tied around her head with embroidery thread. Alivia asked if she could be Abraham Lincoln for Halloween. 
Score . . . one costume down 2 to go.

magical splatter paint butterflies

For mother's day I woke up to an amazing orchid display. My husband saw it and thought of me because of the hand-painted butterflies. Of course I looked at it and was amazed but then immediately thought of an art project that I did with my daughter's 3rd grade class. They were learning about Jackson Pollock and had the opportunity to try out splatter painting. It was really fun but wouldn't it be magical to decorate the classroom with butterflies cut out of their splatter paints. Maybe I'll suggest it for my son's class when he's in 3rd grade.

accordion book craft

Sitting on my desk is a READY-TO-GO accordion book.

Last year I purchased 25 Accordion Blank Board Books, as a donation to my daughter’s preschool classroom. I gave them to the teacher and asked “Do you think you could use these for something?”

I didn’t give her any suggestions on what she could possibly do, just to see what she might come up with. I was surprised, along with the rest of the parents, at the end of the year “graduation” with a gift from the teachers, an accordion photo album, highlighting big events throughout the school year. There are photos of Livi with Santa, at the pumpkin patch, a class photo of all the children in their Halloween costumes, the fire station field trip (a photo of Livi and a firefighter spraying the fire hose, priceless), the St. Jude’s Trike-a-Thon, and they even had the kids do handprint turkeys. It is such a nice remembrance of my daughter Livi’s preschool year.

The best part of it was something that was completely unplanned by the teachers. When you fold the accordion in, you can see at the same time a photo of your child from the first day of school along side of a photo of your child at the end of the year, both photos include your child’s height. Almost every child grew 2 inches and they all transformed from toddlers at the beginning of the year, into young children ready for kindergarten at the end of the year. It is so amazing to see this change in a single school year!

sock puppet fun!

This is a really fun rainy day activity and you probably already have all the supplies you need. Get out your scraps of fabric, felt, yarn leftovers, sequence, buttons and any other fun accessories.

We used socks, felt, yarn, googly eyes, fabric, beads, chenille sticks and adhered with fabritac.

The cape for Super Hudson is just a piece of felt turned over a piece of yarn and glued down. The mask is a rectangle piece of felt with a piece of chenille stick wrapped around a googly eye.

The hair for both puppets was made in the same way. Tie a piece of yarn into a hoop. Then take pieces of yarn and tie them around that piece at whatever length you want them to be. You can always trim after you glue it down.

We thought of all kinds of ideas for the puppets we could make like: bugs, flowers, clowns, dogs, cats, dinosaurs. We even thought about making puppets to re-enact a story like Little Red Riding Hood or Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In the end, my children (being a typical boy-boy and little princess) chose to make a super hero and a princess, not surprisingly.

tea party

The birthday girl 

My Toddler is now a young girl; she just turned 6 years old. Alivia wanted to have a tea party for her birthday so I found a cute little bistro, New Englund’s Bistro and Tea Room in here in Concord, CA. The tea party started off with a presentation about tea etiquette and what a “lump of sugar”  is. The girls enjoyed tea, lemonade, finger sandwiches, cupcakes, a story about a tea party and feeling all grown up in their pretty tea dresses.

The invitation to the birthday party was an adorable tea pot. I used a pattern from Unforgettable Invitations by Melissa Giles. My daughter chose several different papers and embellishments and helped with the assembly.

Here is a downloadable PDF pattern: teapotpattern for the tea pot, including a shopping guide for 12 invitations that I added.  The best part about this book is that there are so many different ideas, but your paper and embellishment choices and maybe combining some of her different ideas make your cards unique. It really will spark your imagination.

Tea Pot Invitation

from Unforgettable Invitations by Melissa Giles

MATERIALS

• Patterned Paper: 6 letter size sheets


• Solid Color Card Stock: 9 letter size sheets


• Vellum Paper: 3 sheets letter size


• Envelopes to fit 7˝ x 7˝ tea pot: 12


• Adhesive Glue Roller Applicator


• Scissors


• X-Acto Blade to cut tea pot inside handle


• decorative embellishments

INVITATION LAYOUT

Layout your invitation in your layout program. You can fit 4 per letter size paper.
The size of the invitation is 3˝x 3¾˝. The text area is approximately 2¾˝ x 3˝

1. Draw a box 3˝w x 3¾˝ h
   tip:  The box lines should be faint so that you can see them just enough to cut, but won’t be too noticeable if some of the line shows after cutting.


2. Start your text about ½˝ from the top to leave room for the lid which will cover that area
   Hint:  Leave space on the sides, you don’t want to accidentally cut any text off.


3. Once you have your invitation just right, Copy and Paste so that you have 4 invitations on your page.


4. Print on vellum paper

CUTTING

1. Cut 4 templates:
   
   
   
   • tea pot front (cut along the dotted line)
   
   
   • teapot back (do not cut along the dotted line)
   
   
   • lid
   
   
   • invitation back
   
   
   
   (You won’t be making a template for the invitation front piece because you printed it directly on the vellum.)
   Tip: Use an X-Acto blade to cut the inside of the tea pot handle


2. Trace templates on to back side of paper.
   
   
   
   • 2 tea pot fronts and 2 tea pot lids per patterned paper
   
   
   • 2 tea pot backs per solid paper
   
   
   • 4 invitation backs per solid paper
   
   
   • 4 invitation fronts per vellum paper
   
   
   
    


3. Cut all pieces.

ASSEMBLY

INVITATION

1. One line of glue on top  of  vellum invitation front, line up and attach to invitation back


2. Glue lid to invitation back placing over the invitation front

TEA POT

Glue only edges of front to the back leaving space in the center for the invitation to slide in and out.

FINISHING

Slide invitation into the tea pot and leave as is or finish with a pretty embellishment.

Scrappy Pumpkin Tee Shirt project

My friend designed this project for her daughter's girl scout troupe. I think it is such a great project.



 



• TAP® Transfer Artist Paper
• Plain tee shirt – white or light color
• Scraps of pretty patterned papers
• Black marker, pencil
• White paper, white card stock
• Glue stick, scissors, Exacto® blade
• All-in-one inkjet printer/copier
• Firm ironing surface and iron

1. Use a black marker to draw a thick outline of a pumpkin with 4 segments on white cardstock


2. Copy the pumpkin on to white paper to make a master copy


3. Use an Exacto blade to trim out the inside of each section of the pumpkin on cardstock to create a stencil


4. Use the stencil to mark and cut out scrap papers to fit inside each section – use a different patterned paper for each section to make it scrappy, and don’t forget the stem!


5. Glue each of your trimmed scraps onto your master copy


6. Load a sheet of TAP into your inkjet printer and copy your scrappy pumpkin on to the TAP, following package instructions


7. Trim your pumpkin out of the TAP sheet and place it image-side-down on to your tee shirt


8. Press the image on to your shirt with your iron, following the TAP package instructions


9. If desired, you can also print out some Halloween words on to TAP to go with your pumpkin – just be sure to reverse the words on your computer before printing them out

This post was originally posted on C&T Publishing's blog:

http://www.ctpubblog.com/2010/10/08/scrappy-pumpkin-tee-shirt/

Halloween Fun for kids

Happy Halloween!

Free downloadable PDFs of Halloween songs, poems, jokes and a maze.

halloween fun 1

halloween fun 2