paper mache bowls (for Mother’s Day)

Oh boy!  I am SO excited to share this with you!  

I got it in my head last week that we would make paper mache bowls for the Hooligans to give as Mother’s Day gifts, but never in my wildest dreams did I think they would turn out this well!

This was really easy.  Truly it was!  It just requires a bit of time because the paper mache has to dry completely before you can paint it, so we worked in steps and stages over a couple of days to make these.

Here’s how we did it:

I dug a few bowls out of our camping gear, and covered them with plastic wrap (tape your plastic wrap in place to secure).  I’ve also heard you can cover your bowls with petroleum jelly.  You’ll want to do one or the other so your paper mache form will pop right off your bowl without sticking.

I mixed up a “paper mache paste” using about a cup of flour and some water.  Just add enough water, and whisk smooth until you have something that resembles thin pancake batter or wallpaper paste.  I added a couple of tsps of salt to prevent mold from growing.

You can use cut up strips of construction paper or newspaper or paper bags.  We used paper bags.

Dip your strips into the paste, run the strip through your fingers to remove excess paste, and mould the strip to the bowl.  Continue until your bowl is covered.

I set the bowls upside down over some jars, and set them by the fire for 24 hours.  They were fairly fragile when they were dry so we added another 2 layers of strips of the paper pieces, and let them dry for another day or two.  Pop them off the bowls, and clean up your edges with some scissors if necessary.

Now the real fun begins!  Today the Hooligans painted them up.  They chose a colour for the outside, and a different colour for the inside of their bowls.  I left their colour choices completely up to them.  We used acrylic craft paint.  A blast with the hairdryer had them dry in no time.  

Then they decorated them with their choices of accent colours.  Another blast with the hairdryer and they were ready for a coat of sealant.  I brushed a coat of clear craft sealant over the inside and the outside of the bowls, and they dried quickly.

And just LOOK at them!  Aren’t they gorgeous?!

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you amazing moms out there!  Have a wonderful day!

butterfly magnets

Another cold and gloomy day here!   It seems odd to be doing Spring crafts, and then bundling up with hats and mitts and winter coats for play, but that’s what we did today.

This is a simple little craft.  I got my inspiration here, and we put our own little spin on it.

I set out four dishes with water that I tinted with food colouring.  Each Hooligan got a piece of paper-towel and a paintbrush, and went to town tapping and dabbing until the paper towel was coloured.

It’s a neat activity as they learn about water absorption and colour mixing.

Then they each painted a clothes peg (clipping it to a piece of cardboard makes it easier for little fingers to paint).

We set our stuff by the fire to dry while we had snack, but you could speed up the process with a blow-dryer.

Once dry, cinch the paper towel in the middle, clip it with the clothes-peg, and glue on a couple of googly eyes.

I cut a fridge magnet into strips, and we glued a strip onto the back of each clothes-peg.

That’s it!  Easy-peasy, and super-cute.

 

rockin’ robin

Just a quick little craft here.

If you follow us on facebook, you’ve likely heard our exciting news!  Mama robin has nested on our deck, and her babies hatched yesterday!  Two of them hatched in the morning, and I was absolutely blessed with perfect timing last evening when I went out to check on them.  I climbed up on the bench, held the camera high over my head, aiming it into the nest and snapped a picture.  I never know what I’m going to get because the nest is so high.  I can’t see into it.  I just hold the camera up and shoot.  I was absolutely over the moon when I hopped down and looked at the picture and discovered that I’d captured this shot: Baby #3 emerging from it’s egg!

If you haven’t seen the other pictures yet, please pop over to my Happy Hooligans facebook page, and check out the album titled “our baby robins”.  I will update the album daily as we watch the babies grow and develop.

This afternoon, we had a few extra minutes before home-time so we made the following little craft in honour of our babies.

Cut a circle out of brown cardstock or a cereal box.  Fold your circle in half and press along the crease.

Glue crumpled pieces of red or orange tissue paper on to the robin’s tummy.  Add an eye, and a yellow triangle beak.

Cut a few tail feathers, and you’re done!  

Now, when you set your robin on a flat surface, and give it a little tap, it will “rock”.

If we’d had more time, we would have made some smaller robins to go along with this Mama.  Maybe tomorrow.

Easter egg garland (painting with golf balls)

We did another golf-ball painting project last week.  We love this activity.  It’s super-simple, and it never fails to impress!

First you’ll want to find a cardboard box that will be deep enough to contain your golf-balls as they zing and bounce around.  Handles are a bonus.

Cut your cardboard or paper to fit the box, and have the kiddos squirt, drizzle, or dab your paint onto their “canvas”.

Pop that into the box, and start shakin’!

Oooooh, and Aaaaaah over your masterpiece.  Isn’t it purdy?

You’re free to turn this into whatever you’d like, but we had Easter garlands in mind, so I cut as many eggs as I could out of the paintings, and punched a couple of holes in the top of each egg.

Then the Hooligans strung them together with wool and a “sewing needle”.

Ok – super excited to share this little trick.  Somehow all of our plastic sewing needles have gone missing, so I improvised with a drinking straw.  Cut your straw to the desired length, and make a little slit in one end.  Feed your wool through the straw, and slide it into the slit to secure.  

How cool is that?!

Happy Easter!

Easter eggs with home made glue and coloured rice

You might have read my post on facebook the other night saying that I made some homemade glue.  I’ve been eager to try it out, but we haven’t had an opportunity until today.  I’m happy to say that it worked well!  You can find the recipe here!

This is how we tested our glue this morning.

We decorated “eggs”that I’d cut out of white cardboard.

I added some white latex paint (that I had leftover from when we painted our baseboards) to their paint, so we could mix up some soft pastel colours.

I had three 2 year olds this morning, and I love how each one had their own painting style, and produced an egg that didn’t look anything like anyone else’s.

I’m going to share a handy-tip here, for drying paint or glue in a hurry.  I keep an old blow-dryer in our crafting area!  It’s a super way to speed things up when you don’t want to wait for your project to dry.

When we had the paint fairly dry, the Hooligans used craft sticks to spread and blob the homemade glue all over their eggs.

Then they shook some of our coloured rice (you can find the recipe here), into the glue.

 Tap off any loose rice, and voila!

tin-foil Easter eggs

IIf you’ve been following us for while, you’ve probably seen us use this same process to make our tin-foil Christmas trees and our tin-foil hearts.

I love the tin-foil/ tissue-paper technique for it’s simplicity, and it’s oh-so-pretty results.

You’re going to need:

• medium weight cardboard (thicker than a cereal box)
• tin-foil
• 1 inch squares of tissue paper in various colours
• gems, jewels, ribbon, rick-rack etc (or whatever you have on hand) to decorate your egg
• mod podge (or slightly watered down white glue)
• glue

Cut out your cardboard eggs, and wrap them in tinfoil.  The Hooligans always love that part – wrapping and pressing and scrunching the tin-foil tight to the cardboard.

With a paintbrush, cover the surface of your egg with mod-podge.  You can make your own mod-podge by stirring a couple of drops of water into some white glue.

Press squares of tissue paper onto the mod-podge, using the paintbrush to smooth down the edges.  You can go over the tissue with a layer of mod-podge, but you don’t have to.

When the mod-podge has dried, decorate egg with your jewels, gems and ribbons.

Aren’t they pretty?If you’re looking for more simple, sweet Easter craft ideas to do with your little ones, check out our tissue paper Easter wreaths and our toilet tube chicks!

Easter wreath

This morning, we made Easter wreaths.  This is a super-simple, super cute craft that kids of all ages will enjoy making.

Cut a wreath out of light-wieght cardboard.  A cereal box would work well for this.  I traced a dinner plate for the outer circle, and a kid’s bowl for the inner circle. 

Have your little one crumple 3×3 squares of tissue paper, and glue them all over the wreath.  

We stapled a ribbon bow to the bottom and a ribbon loop to the top for hanging.  

Aren’t they pretty?

Happy Easter!

toilet tube Easter chicks

We made these sweet little Easter chicks and nests today.

I was kind of “winging it” (pardon the pun) as we went along, so some of the materials that you see on the tray got swapped out for different things as we went along.  We didn’t end up using the fabric swatches for wings.  Instead, we crumpled yellow tissue paper up, and used that to give the chicks a “fluffy” appearance.  Originally, I set out purple foam triangles for beaks because I didn’t think I had orange ones.  I ended up finding some orange foam letters, so I cut the beaks out of those instead.

Ok, here’s what we did:

I cut some toilet rolls down a bit so the chicks wouldn’t be too tall, and then the Hooligans painted the tubes with a couple of different shades of yellow paint.

When the tubes were dry, they glued on googly eyes and a beak.

Then they crumpled up squares of yellow tissue paper to make wings/feathers. And they stuffed a long, strip of tissue paper into the top of the tube.

For the nests, we used a stash of shredded brown paper that a gift came cushioned in a while back.  I held on to the paper, knowing we’d put it to good use one day.  If you have a paper shredder you could put some brown construction paper, or the panel from a brown paper bag through it.

I cut a circle out of construction paper, and the Hooligans glued a handful of the shredded paper onto the circle.  Make a little “hole” in the center, and nestle your little chick in all nice and cozy.

Aren’t they cute?Looking for more super toilet tube crafts?  Check out our toilet tube owls, snowmen, reindeer and mummies!

doodle art

The hooligans put our new AWESOME homemade paints to the test today!

We did something that I refer to as doodle-art.  With a black marker make a large, loopy doodle to cover the surface that you’re working on. 

We worked on paper today, but we’ve used white cardboard before.

Now the fun part!  Paint all of the sections different colours.  It’s amazing how well the young ones can grasp this concept.  I sat on the mat, working on my own, not instructing or directing them, and they did really well.  We’ve done a couple of other projects recently though, like our stained glass panels and our rainbow collages which followed the same basic concept – keeping colours in designated sections, so they’ve had some practice.

We kept the baby busy by giving her some construction paper, a paintbrush and a dish of water (shallow glass baking dishes work well for rinsing brushes because they don’t tip over).  The construction paper and water is a great alternative for little ones; they can see their brush strokes, and they have fun splashing the brush around, and clean up is a breeze.

You’re not limited to using paints for this either.  You could set out crayons, pencil crayons or the children could glue crumpled up squares of tissue paper into the sections of their doodle.  Here’s one that I made a couple of weeks ago using markers.

What do you think?  Don’t the new new paints look great?

And check it out!  After 3 of us completed our projects, the colours are still clean!  No muddy, mixed up mess!  I love it!!

painting rainbows

Today’s craft was a total copycat craft!   I got this idea from Make and Takes‘ painted rainbows, and we tweaked them a little to put our own spin on them.  

This is such a simple but creative way to rainbows.  Make and Takes painted on paper plates and coffee filters, but we didn’t have any of those, so we used plain white cardboard.

I traced circles on the cardboard and set out the paints that we would need to make our rainbows.

Start with a purple blob in the center of your circle, and then paint larger circles outward until you end with red, at the outer edge of your circle.

I was working with 2′s and 3′s, so understandably, their colours got mixed up and a little muddy,

so I’ll include some pics of the ones that I made myself, so you get an idea of how they’ll look if you make them with an older child.

Because little ones like to slap and smear the paint around, the whole circle painting thing was a real challenge for them, so I placed my finger on their cardboard and suggested they follow my finger around the circle with their paintbrush.  That worked quite well.

When the paint has dried, simply cut your circle in half.  Voila!  Rainbows!!

We added some cotton ball clouds and threaded ribbon through all the rainbows and turned them into colourful garlands.

What do you think?If you like rainbow art, you might also enjoy our rainbow collage post!