As suspected, Miss G is enjoying her 6-in-1 shape stamp so much that we decided to make another homemade stamp, this time focusing on the letters of her name.
Category Archives: get crafty
SPARKLY Sidewalk Chalk Paint
I’m not going to lie… We’ve been here in Kuwait for less than two weeks and I’m already going a little crazy. The trouble is, as of now, we don’t have a vehicle. Not because we don’t want one – we’ll be purchasing something as soon as possible – but because we need things like bank accounts and civil identifications before buying, and those things take time to acquire {lots and lots of time}. In a place like Vancouver, you can easily do without. Public transit is easy, as is walking or biking. Sidewalks are plentiful and things like parks and community centres and playgrounds and coffee shops are most often a short distance away. Here, not so much. It’s amazing how much you miss having sidewalks when they’re no longer around… In all fairness, we do have a Starbucks and a small playground within walking distance, but with the current state of our budding neighbourhood, they’re a {very hot} 30 minute walk through deep sand, trash, and construction sites away. Taxiing would be our other option. They’re inexpensive and plentiful, but in a country that doesn’t really do car seats, me lugging our 26 pound seat downstairs, installing it while attempting to supervise Miss G nearby, then lugging it around at our destination isn’t really feasible. And so, we stay at the apartments, making the most of our days inside or down in the courtyard and common play areas for now. It’s a great practice in patience for an always-on-the-go gal like me and it’s definitely pushing me to be creative in coming up with fun and engaging activities using minimal supplies.
Today as we rooted through a box of craft supplies we brought from Canada, Gracen enthusiastically retrieved a 6-pack of glitter pouches and asked if we could use them to make something. Though I’m normally up for a mess in the name of good fun, I didn’t particularly feel like having an apartment full of glitter today (the fact that we don’t yet own a dustpan may have something to do with it), so I quickly thought of something we could do with it outdoors – add it to our go-to homemade sidewalk chalk paint! The recipe is one of our very favourites because of its simplicity and the fact that you really only need two kitchen ingredients and some water to make it, and adding glitter could only make it better, right?
Taking Advantage of the Heat with Ice Painting
Last night as I was tidying the kitchen before heading off to bed, I came across our silicon mini muffin pan and randomly decided to fill it with water and gel food colouring instead of putting it away (totally normal, right?) Don’t ask how this all came about… An idea came to me, and I just ran with it (I blame jet lag and ridiculously early wake ups – we’re talking 2 or 3 a.m. right now).
A Homemade Shape Stamp
When you move overseas and take only things that can come along with you on the airplane, there are many things that just don’t make the cut. In the case of Miss G, we brought her clothes and shoes as would be expected, plus 2 rubbermaid bins packed full of good quality wooden toys and puzzles, a couple of games, craft supplies that aren’t readily available in Kuwait, her very favourite dress-up items and puppets, and as many soft covered books as would fit. One thing that didn’t make the cut however, was her awesome collection of wooden stamps. They’re bulky, heavy, and many are season specific, so they had to stay.
Simple Summer Fun: Seashell Painting
While cleaning out our vehicle yesterday, I realized that we still had a big stash of beach shells we’d collected a couple months hiding in our hatch (you know you’re a parent when…) We’d originally collected them with the intent of painting them, so that’s just what we did.
Bubble Painting
Yesterday Miss G and I finally got around to something that’s been on my mental activity list forever now… Bubble painting! Now if you cruise Pinterest, you’ll see that bubble painting is all over the internet and everyone seems to do it a little bit differently. Variations include all different sorts of bubble solutions, wands, and methods, so we just made up our own.
Simple Straw Bead Necklaces
As the chaos continues, so do the super simple, created-on-a-whim activities for Miss G. Because the days are passing by so quickly and we still have a ridiculous amount of stuff to be done before the big move, I’ve basically been throwing together activities with whatever is nearby at the moment, and hoping that they’ll keep Gracen happily engaged for a good long time so that Brad and I can throw some more stuff into boxes (sad, but true).
Today, as I was sorting through our big catchall closet, I came across the bubble tea straws we used for Grae’s beloved bubble tea shop we did recently. I knew I had seen yarn on a shelf somewhere, so I created a really basic beading station for the little lady to enjoy.
Using some big scissors, I chopped up the straws to form beads. They leapt up from my scissors as they were cut and Gracen thought it was quite funny. Her job was to collect all of the beads and pop them into this bowl.
Because the straws are so large, Brad created a cardboard stopper at the end of a piece of yarn instead of a giant knot. This can be done as he did it (by feeding the yarn through a small hole and knotting it on the other side), or it can be done by wrapping the yarn through a couple of slits made in the cardboard square.
Though we actually have several large, unsharp sewing needles from Grae’s ‘sewing kit‘, I had seen this creative alternative on Happy Hooligans, and decided to give it a shot.
Grae started beading right away. The beauty of this activity is that not only is it simple and fun, but it also is great for fine motor skill development and hand-eye coordination. Plus it lends itself very easily to patterning if your child decides to take it that way (Miss G did not).
Grae worked on this project for a good long time and finally finished off a giant, brightly-coloured necklace that she was very proud of.
I realize that not everyone keeps bubble tea straws on hand, but this same activity would work great with regular small straws (just use a dull knitting needle instead of the straw needle, or put a bit of masking tape on the needle end of the yarn), or better yet – if you’re a Slurpee-loving family, wash out those big Slurpee straws and repurpose them for this project.
♥
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Gracen-Made Gifts: Ombre Beaded Necklaces
With another ‘goodbye play date’ happening this morning, Miss G and I decided that it would be fun to make something special to take along for each of her little playmates. Grae suggested necklaces, which I thought was a brilliant idea. We made a quick stop at the store, picked up some unfinished wooden beads and some hemp cord (both available at craft stores and dollar stores) and our project was underway!
First up, was painting the wooden beads… While painting all of the sides of round beads can be quite a challenge for little ones, this is my favourite {and easy} way to help set them up for success. All you need is a smallish box of some sort (a fruit crate or shoebox works well) and a few bamboo skewers. Then just make a few slits down both sides of the box, slide the beads onto the skewers, and place the skewers into the slits. With this handy little contraption, your little one won’t have to worry about holding the beads and they’ll easily be able to spin the beads while painting.
For this project, Grae chose one colour from my acrylic paint stash (the pink one) and in order to create an ombre effect I had in mind, I grabbed the white one. Besides only needing one paint colour plus white {or black}, the beauty of an ombre project is that you only really need one mixing bowl and one paintbrush.
Starting with our original colour and our largest beads, Grae began painting. The process was really quick and easy and she enjoyed it a lot. I did follow behind her with a dry brush just to spread out a few globs of paint here and there, but she was able to get really good coverage all on her own. We slowly made our way through the medium and small beads, adding a little bit of white to our paint with each batch.
As Grae finished painting each skewer of beads, I removed them from the box and placed them on a {very old and well-used} baking dish to dry. This was our completed collection of beads, which was more than enough to make 5 necklaces.
Acrylic paint dries really quickly, so we were able to string our necklaces not too long after painting the beads. For each necklace, we used about 60 centimetres of white hemp cord, 1 large dark pink bead, 2 medium ones, and 6 smaller ones (2 per shade of pink).
Because we normally use a knotted string when beading, this project was a little different for Miss G. This time we used the cord without a knot, started with the biggest, darkest bead in the middle, and added the outside beads in pairs, one on each side. It was a great informal ‘lesson’ on symmetry and Grae picked up the concept right away.
Here’s the order we went with… The largest, darkest bead in the middle fading to the lightest, smallest beads on the outer edges.
Once Grae was done the beading, I looped the cord in a circle, overlapping the ends about 12 centimetres or so and made a quick, single knot on each side to create an adjustable necklace. I trimmed the excess cord a little bit, and our necklace was complete!
Isn’t it pretty?
I love this project for so many reasons – it’s quick, easy, inexpensive, and looks beautiful too! Doesn’t get much better than that, does it?
I think it’s safe to say that Grae loves it too… ☺
♥
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Cork Sail Boats {With Sparkly Sails}
Oh my goodness. Miss G and I had so much fun with this little project this afternoon. The best part is that it was completely impromptu. She wanted ‘to craft’ as she always says, and when digging through our craft supply drawer, came across a little bag of corks we scored at our last trip to Urban Source. I had boat building in mind ever since we picked them out, and when I suggested it to her, she was fully game. Together, we did a little Pinterest search, and Grae selected the images from these three posts for inspiration.
With an idea in mind, it was time to gather up some materials. The corks were a given, the elastics would hold the actual boat together, the toothpicks or dowels would hold up our sails (we went with the mini dowels in the end), and the nail would help us poke our holes. The last thing we needed was something to make our sails out of… We thought of patterned scrapbook paper, but knew that would eventually just get wet. We also thought of the plastic sheets we used to make our window clings, but Grae wasn’t overly excited about the colours we had left. Then we thought of foam sheets – being waterproof and super lightweight, they’d be perfect. And even more perfect? Finding sparkly ones! Gracen was sold.
To get started, Gracen lined up 3 corks and held them together while I secured them with 2 thick elastic bands – one on each side.
Then, using our nail and “our big, big muscles” in the words of Grae, we created a little hole in the very centre of the cork wharf.
Together we pushed our mini wooden dowel down into the hole (a food pick or bamboo skewer could work too).
Using another mini dowel for reference, sketched a quick sail outline on the back of our sparkly foam.
Because our foam was of the adhesive variety, we made our sail double-sided, but this would be unnecessary if we had just regular foam sheets.
After making a couple of teeny little slits in our sail, one at the top and one at the bottom, we slid it onto our dowel post.
The finishing touch was adding a little flag above our sail. To do this, Gracen selected a roll of washi tape and folded a piece in half around the top of our dowel. Then I cut it to form a flag shape.
With our first boat complete, it was time for the big moment – to see whether or not it would float. It did!
And this little lady was very pleased about that.
We made one more boat, and the play begun immediately. Bobbing, blowing, and swooshing ensued throughout the afternoon and I’m sure it’ll continue for the next several days.
And while the boats have been fun in a bowl of water, I have a couple of other ideas to make them even more fun to play with. Now where to find more corks…
♥
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Painted Name Rocks
Back in early spring while hanging out down by the river, we stumbled upon a new-to-us rock beach area begging to be explored. While Miss G enjoyed throwing rocks into the water, I sort of randomly began filling my pockets with particularly smooth, nicely-shaped stones with some sort of craft project in mind (crazy mom alert!) Though at the time I thought we’d use them to create rock bugs or monsters or something of that sort, with Miss G’s recent name fascination, a new project took shape.
It started the other day when Gracen wanted to make something and I really wanted the two of us to get outside and get some fresh air. We pulled out our rocks, some acrylic paints, a couple of foam brushes, and set up a little workspace in the backyard. Grae painted her rock collection all sorts of bright colours, while I painted mine with a couple of coats of plain white.
Once dry, I typed Grae’s name into a word-processing doc, selected a font that is similar to the way I’d like her to print her name (in this case Illuminate – see some of my favourite fonts here), and copy and pasted it using different font sizes just to be sure I had one that would work (in this case the top name, in font size 100 fit my rocks perfectly).
Next, I carefully cut the letters out.
Because my rocks were not collected with a specific project in mind, they were all a little bit differently shaped and sized, so I just took my letter cutouts and matched each one up with a stone as best as I could.
Then, using a regular children’s glue stick, I stuck the paper letters directly onto the painted rocks.
Using acrylic paints again (we went for rainbow colours, because well, we love rainbow!), I painted the rocks. I made sure to use a dabbing motion near / on top of the letters, just to be sure that I wouldn’t get paint underneath them and they wouldn’t move around. Two coats of coloured paint gave really nice coverage and the white paint underneath really allowed the colours to pop.
My original plan was to actually soak the paper letters off in warm water once the paint was dry, but to my surprise, they peeled off very easily. As you can see, the letters certainly weren’t perfect at this point. I also had not yet painted the bottoms of the rocks yet {mostly because I wasn’t sure if this method would be a success}, so I made sure to do that carefully, but next time I’d do it before removing the paper letters.
Next up, I used a flat-tipped brush and some white acrylic to just touch up the letters here and there. This certainly isn’t necessary (Grae thought the rocks were perfect as is), but it was really easy and did make the edges look a lot cleaner.
Lastly, once the white touch up paint was dry, I gave the rocks a once over with Mod Podge to protect the paint from chips and scuffs. I like Mod Podge a lot because it’s water-based and non-toxic, but you could use a spray-on finisher if that’s what you prefer.
Here’s the end result… Bright and colourful and great for both playing with and learning with.
Gracen was so anxious to get her hands on them once they were done, she could barely contain her excitement.
Just for fun, I set them in a tray of sand (mixed up of course) and the little lady immediately began spelling her name.
They’ve been such a hit that I’ve already agreed to make more for both of her middle names, and I have a feeling that I’ll get coaxed into making some for her last name too… Times like these make me wonder why we gave our child a name with 26 letters – hah!
For all kinds of other fun ways to create with rocks, visit my friend Sam’s rock craft page here. She’s the rock craft QUEEN and her projects are always gorgeous!
♥
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Toddler-Sized Popsicle Stick Bangles
This is a little project Miss G and I have been working on ever since we went shopping for an event I was attending and Grae fell in love with some brightly-coloured bangles. Though it was a bit of a process, these wooden popsicle stick bracelets are really easy, fun, and inexpensive to make and my little accessory lover is very pleased with the results.
To start off, we soaked some wooden popsicle sticks in a covered mason jar of water for a full 24 hours.
Then, I gently bent them into ‘C’ shapes in order to fit them in tea light holders. One thing I noticed during this step is that there seemed to be a way that the sticks naturally wanted to be bent… Working with that made the job a lot easier. The one I tried to bend against the natural direction actually ended up snapping.
We could have left our popsicle sticks in the tea light holders to dry as is, but since they weren’t perfectly fitted to the edges of the containers, we filled them up with water and let them sit another 24 hours before draining them and letting them dry out.
After drying a full day, the bracelets held their shapes nicely.
When we popped them out of the tea light holders, they looked like this. Certainly not perfect, but a cuff shape nonetheless.
At this point, the bracelets looked really tiny, but they fit G (who will be 3 in just a couple of months) perfectly. The good thing is that you can always make the opening a little larger with a gentle bend.
These could be decorated a multitude of ways, but we opted for a tissue paper colour transfer for watercolour sort of look. In order to do that, we got out a few things… Water in a small spray bottle, some tissue squares, a toilet paper roll (which was quickly replaced with a chunk of a branch similar in size), and the bracelets themselves of course.
We started off by putting the bracelets around the paper roll just to make them easier to work on.
Then Miss G gave them a light misting of water to make them ‘sticky’…
And covered the entire stick in tissue paper squares, adding a spritz or two of water along the way if needed.
Then, when she was happy with her coverage, she sprayed the whole thing down once again, allowing the tissue paper to cling tightly to the wooden bangle.
My part of the job was carefully removing the bracelets covered in tissue from the paper roll / branch. Once removed, I carefully wrapped the excess tissue around the backside of the bracelet. One thing I did not anticipate is that the small amount of water sprayed onto the bracelets actually starting causing them to lose their shape.
So back into the tea light holders to dry it was.
After another day’s drying time, Gracen peeled away the dried tissue paper to reveal beautiful watercolour-eque designs.
I did contemplate using black Sharpies to add stripes, dots, and other designs, but I think these are perfect just as they are. ☺
For a slightly more involved but GORGEOUS popsicle bracelet project, check out these awesome DIY washi tape wooden bracelets by Mama Miss.
♥
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Sidewalk Chalk Paint on Paper
One of our favourite things to do on sunny spring and summer days is to cover our sidewalks in bright colours and patterns using homemade sidewalk chalk paint. The paint, which dries with a chalk-looking finish, is vibrant, easy to apply, and washes off with a couple of rains. Perfect, right? Almost! The only {petty} problems are that it’s best used during the warmer, drier months of the year, and the beautiful sidewalk art created cannot be saved in Miss G’s scrapbooks (duh!)
With both of those things in mind, today we did some experimenting with using the paint on paper! I wasn’t sure how it was going to work, but I’m happy to report that it worked wonderfully!
First off, after making many batches of sidewalk chalk paint, here is our easy peasy, minimally-messy method of making it. The key component? A blender! First off, it prevents the inevitable cornstarch poof that comes with whisking it, and secondly, I find that after a good long spin in the blender, the cornstarch doesn’t separate from the water nearly as quickly as when we hand mix it.
With our paints ready, we headed outside with a stack of black construction paper. I’m sure other papers would work wonderfully too, but I was kind of going for the old-school blackboard look. Now… I’m not going to lie. When we first started using the paints on the paper, I thought our experiment was going to be a total flop. So much so, in fact, that we ditched the paper and used our entire batch of paint on our front sidewalk instead. Going on, the paint looked like slightly muddled water… Not quite the look I was hoping for!
It wasn’t until every last drop of our paint was gone and we were beginning to clean up that we noticed how beautiful the paintings we’d banished over to the side were now that they were dry.
Instead of looking wet and barely there like this…
Once dry, they were bright, chalky, and vibrant like this! Cool, right?
With that, it was back into the kitchen to whip up another batch of paint. Together, we painted many more pieces, this time watching the transformation as they dried.
The other kind of cool thing we learned is that once your piece is dry…
You can use your fingernail or the edge of a popsicle stick to scratch off designs and patterns! Fun, right?
How did our afternoon of painting end? Hah! Like this! Miss G was done, dinnertime was nearing, and we still had some paint leftover, so out it went onto the sidewalk. Of course, which two year old can resist walking through regular puddles, let alone rainbow-coloured ones?!
Well, and because feet were okay, hands must be okay too, no?
♥
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Rainy Day Splatter Painting
While living in a city that gets as much rain as Vancouver does can be a little deflating some days, I know that we’ll miss it dearly once we’re back in the sandy desert. So instead of letting the past week of rain keep us indoors today, we decided to get out and enjoy it. After a morning walk and a long play at the park before lunch, we decided to head back outside this afternoon. We brought along with us a baking sheet, some liquid food colouring (the neon kind), and some white construction paper to do an easy and fun art activity… Rain splatter painting!
To get started, Gracen laid a piece of construction paper down on the baking sheet and fully enjoyed dropping splots of food colouring all over it.
Once she had the food colouring exactly how she wanted it, we simply let the rain do its job. At this point, it was raining quite hard, so the splatter effect happened quickly. Grae loved watching the colours pop up off the page and land back down on the page in little dots. At some point during the process, she’d say “This one is done!” and we’d pop it inside the house to dry and grab another sheet of paper to splatter.
The end result is beautiful, splotchy, watercolour-esque paintings, just like this one. Fun, right?
♥
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Paper Roll Shape Stamps
Every once and a while, I seem to go through a paper roll collecting stage. I have no idea why, because I truly never have anything planned for them, but it happens none the less. When I noticed a little collection of them today during nap time, I decided we’d put them to use this afternoon.
Though we really haven’t done a whole lot of paper tube crafts, I remembered how much Miss G enjoyed the heart stamping activity we did last fall. Not wanting to do the exact same thing again, I decided to create several different shapes to switch things up a little bit. To start off, I gently cut the tubes in half.
Next, came shaping them. The good news is that it wasn’t difficult. For the triangle, square, and rectangle, I basically made the required number of corners by folding the tubes, then played with the shapes a little bit until I was happy with them. You can see exactly how to form the heart shape here, and the circle, well, you just leave it as is {obviously}.
At this point, Gracen was still asleep and I just couldn’t wait test them out. So I didn’t. ☺
When my little lady woke up, she quickly discovered the stamping station I’d set out for her, and she was thrilled.
She stamped away testing out each shape thoroughly…
Her personal favourite? My impromptu bow tie stamp dipped in purple paint (of course).
Depending on the paper used for this project, your little one(s) could create a new piece of art for the wall, a piece of wrap for a gift, or a greeting card for someone special.
♥
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Footprint Butterfly Flower Pot
A few weeks ago, Gracen’s {great} aunt sent me this photo of a footprint butterfly flower pot and asked if Miss G could make her one. After some serious detective work, I believe that the photo was originally shared on Carol’s Classic Gifts and Decor’s Facebook page, but I could be wrong (please correct me if I am!) Though there were no instructions attached, the project looked pretty straight forward, we went for it.
{this post includes affiliate links}
Here’s what we used… A clay pot large enough to fit Grae’s growing feet on the side, some acrylic paint, a few old foam paintbrushes, a black Sharpie (though black paint and a fine brush or a paint pen would be great also), and lastly, a matte spray-on clear coat.
Because of the potentially {very} messy nature of this project, we opted to do it outside with the garden hose and a pile of old rags nearby (and I’m thankful we did…things got MESSY despite my precautionary steps). To get started, I applied a thick layer of paint to Grae’s foot. In our case, we used purple and green (Auntie Judy’s favourite colours) with a little bit of white in the middle, but you could obviously use any colours you like. One thing I would say is that if you want the colours to mix together where they meet, you should probably help them along with your paintbrush while on the foot. I expected the mixing to sort of naturally happen when Grae’s foot was pressed down on the pot, but it didn’t (not a lot, at least).
We carefully pressed one foot onto the pot, washed it off, then painted the other foot and pressed it on so that the two straight edges were in the middle (with a small space between them) and the two arched edges were pointing outwards.
After giving the footprints a few minutes to dry, I used the Sharpie to draw a very simple butterfly body and antennae in the centre.
Then we flipped the pot over and wrote a little message so that Auntie Judy will remember who made the pot and when it was created years down the road.
As a final step, I gave the butterfly part of the pot a light spray of matte sealant, just to make it a little more durable. Ten minutes later it was dry and we had an adorable personalized gift that was both easy and inexpensive to make.
If you love making personalized gifts, be sure to check out our ‘I love you’ pillowcase, our hand-shaped ring dish, our clay handprint keepsakes, and our paper strip handprint keepsake.
♥
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