Deep in a bin of secondhand Duplo I picked up yesterday, Miss G discovered a tiny little Lightening McQueen car and immediately fell in love. Though she’s not really watched any movies yet, she and Brad have watched bits and pieces of Cars on their special days together and she adores the characters. Upon discovering him, she suggested that we build him a track to drive on. She most likely had our painter’s tape roadway in mind, but when I suggested a cut and paste city with lots of roads for driving, she was more than game.
Tag Archives: arts and crafts
SPARKLY Coloured Pasta for Beading, Crafting, and Sensory Play
During a quick stop to my very favourite grocery store in all of Kuwait, Gracen and I came across ditalini pasta and both immediately saw the potential in its shape. She carefully selected a specific bag from the shelf and tossed it into our cart with gusto {and a giggle}.
Homemade Glitter Glue Paint
This summer, Gracen absolutely fell in love with a set of glittery glue paints that Grandma Charlotte had stashed away for her. They were different than regular glitter glue as you didn’t squeeze them on – they came in little pots that had brushes attached to the insides of the lids {much like nail polish does}. For several days, Grae sat in the shade of a tree and worked on painting a giant fruit box with them, delighted by how beautiful they looked when applied. So when she brought them up in conversation a few days ago, I figured we may as well try making a copy cat version since we didn’t bring them with us to Kuwait. And you know what? They turned out beautifully!
Bringing Fall to the Desert… With a Fall Tree Painting
Let’s be real here for a moment… At 43 degree this afternoon, it doesn’t feel like fall here in Kuwait in the least. So when I told Gracen that today was the very first day of fall, she glanced out the window, furrowed her brow and said, “It certainly doesn’t look like fall!’ in an almost accusatory tone. Hah! Gotta love her spunk. I told her that she was right and that the desert is tricky when it comes to seasons, but back home in Canada, fall changes are beginning to happen. We read a stack of fall-themed books which seemed to help convince her, then decided to create a fall tree in celebration.
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.
Funny Face Gracen
I saw this awesome idea on one of my favourite play blogs, Play at Home Mom LLC, long ago and loved it at first sight. At the time, Miss G wasn’t yet really into drawing, so I filed it away for sometime in the future. Now, with an almost 3 year old who adores drawing and colouring and a 30 {or so} hour trek to the other side of the planet looming near, it was one of the first things that popped into my mind when preparing for what is bound to be a somewhat challenging journey. It’s silly, fun, doesn’t require a ton of pieces, and since it’s dry erase, will be perfect for using again and again during our long plane rides.
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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Frozen SCENTED Sidewalk Chalk Popsicles
When I saw this post from Reading Confetti, I immediately fell in love. We’ve made our own sidewalk chalk paint for a long while now and I’d seen many frozen versions, but never had I seen them made in popsicle moulds before! After sharing the idea on our Facebook page and pinning it on several Pinterest boards, I made a mental note to pick up some more cornstarch the next time I was out so we could get the project under way.
Well luckily for me, not only did I remember to pick up cornstarch during our next grocery shop, but I also ran into these Duncan Hines Frosting Creations packets for the first time ever. Immediately, I knew our frozen chalk pops would be scented. A few days later, Miss G and I gathered up our materials and got to work.
Using our tried and true sidewalk chalk paint method, we mixed 2 cups of warm water with 1 cup of cornstarch in our blender for a minute or so. Then we collected our popsicle moulds, our Frosting Creation packets, some gel food colouring (liquid will work too, but the colours won’t be nearly as intense), and several popsicle sticks.
Next up, I used the popsicle sticks to scoop a small amount of gel food colouring into each popsicle mould, and Miss G selected a Frostings Creation packet to coordinate with each colour before we added a small amount (maybe 1/8th of the packet) to each slot. (If you’re making this at home and can’t find the frosting flavour packets, you could always use unsweetened Kool-Aid or Jell-O powder instead.)
With our food colouring and powdered scent ready, we filled each popsicle mould about 2/3rds full of our cornstarch/water combo and Gracen stirred them well.
Then we topped them up with a little bit more cornstarch/water and Grae gently stirred them a little more.
At that point, all that was left to do was put our plastic handles in and freeze the chalk pops overnight.
The next day, they looked like this. The colours were vibrant, the texture was smooth and creamy, and they smelled absolutely delicious.
The blue one smelled like cotton candy, the green one was mint chocolate, the red was strawberry shortcake, and the orange was orange creme… YUM. The only potentially bad news is that because they do look so real and smell so wonderfully, some munchkins may be tempted to try eating them (yuck!) That being said, because they’re made strictly of kitchen ingredients, they are technically safe to consume. So though they may taste chalky and gross, they certainly wouldn’t harm a curious little monkey who snuck a lick.
With our fun new chalk pops in hand, we headed into the backyard to test them out. The verdict? They’re really awesome!
When they’re melting and drippy, they go on much like their liquid counterpart does, only via a wand of sorts instead of a paintbrush. When they’re not melting, they go on much like regular sidewalk chalk does – dry and colourful with a little bit of pressure. When dry, the colours are super vibrant and to me, they look very much like they’ve been made with regular sidewalk chalk.
By the time our chalk pops had melted, our cement pad was fully covered in bright swirls, drawings, drips, and letters. And the great news is that it all washed away really easily without any fuss – much easier than our sidewalk chalk paint normally does for some reason.
I can’t wait to pull this activity out again in Kuwait where the temperatures soar and our courtyard is made completely of cement.
♥
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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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