tissue paper snow-flakes

Mother Nature isn’t providing us with much snow this year, and any that we’ve had doesn’t last long, so we’ve had to make some snow-flakes of our own.

This is a super-simple craft that looks really pretty, and only calls for a couple of materials: some white cardboard (about the weight of a cereal box) and some blue and white tissue paper.

The pics are fairly self-explanatory, but I’ll just quickly tell you what we did.

I printed a snowflake template from an online colouring page.  Cut that out, and trace it onto your cardboard.

Now cut out your cardboard snowflake.

Drizzle some glue on your cardboard.

Crumple squares of tissue paper (I cut mine in approx. 3 or 4 inch squares).

Stick your tissue paper all over your snowflake.

So simple!  Isn’t it pretty?

cheerio bird feeders

Hey all!  Are you participating in Toddler Approved’s 100 Acts of Kindness Project this month?

We’re having fun here, thinking up small ways of bringing kindness to those around us.  Today, we thought it would be nice to extend some love to our feathered friends.

I found this idea over at a blog that I just discovered, called Tried and True.  It’s an awesome blog, and I wish I could provide the link, but as I was browsing over there, I kept getting the message that the blog appeared to contain a virus which could contaminate my computer, so to be safe I’m not directing you there.  I did leave a comment so the blog’s owner would know about it, and I’m hoping she gets it resolved because I’d spend more time over there, and borrow more of her ideas.

Anyway, this is the super idea that I borrowed for today’s activity.  Let me just say that this little project is AWESOME.  Let’s get to it.

You’ll need 3 pipe-cleaners, and a couple of handfuls of Cheerios.  We had THREE different boxes of Cheerios in our cupboard: original, chocolate and multi-grain.  That’s a bit crazy, I know, but don’t the varying shades look wonderful?

The Hooligans threaded cheerios on to all 3 pipe cleaners.  I thought they might grow tired of it after a while because it’s fairly challenging for two 2 year olds (the baby didn’t participate except to eat, scatter, tip and throw cheerios for the entire time we were crafting.  I’m not kidding when I say she probably stepped on or sat on (and tipped) the tray about 10 times.  She was in her glory.  All you can eat Cheerio buffet.  What toddler wouldn’t be?

Anyway, back to the 2′s.  I’d expected them to tire of the activity after they’d covered one pipe-cleaner.  Wrong!  They LOVED it.  It probably took them a good 40 minutes to completely cover their pipe-cleaners, and they totally stuck with it, munching away while they worked, and holding their pipe-cleaner up every few minutes to show me their progress.  

When you’ve finished threading, you’re ready to move to the next step.  Leaving a bit of space at each end of the pipe-cleaners, twist the ends of 2 pipe-cleaners together to form a circle.  Twist the ends of the 3rd around the gaps in the circle.  I think this will serve as a perch for the birds to sit on.

We used raffia to form the hanger.

How awesome is this?

As a bonus act of kindness, we took one next-door.  We have a bird-watching neighbour, so we hung it in the bush just outside of his kitchen window!  Happy Birding, Neighbour!

And Bon Appetite, my feathered friends!

stamped snowflakes

If you’ve been poking around my blog, you might have guessed that I’m a pretty happy gal when we have a holiday to base our crafts around.  Sadly, our Christmas crafting has come to an end, but fear not, we’ll find things to craft about.  For now, we’re going to focus on our winter theme, although the weather kind of makes it hard to believe that it even is winter.  This is what the thermometer on the deck looked like at 11 o’clock this morning.  Crazy, I know.

Yesterday we started our stamped snowflake project.  I had this piece of padding from an old bike helmet.  I’d been hanging on to it because I loved the shape of it.  I knew I’d find a purpose for it if I waited long enough. 

Sure enough, it occurred to me yesterday that it would make a fine snowflake.  Unfortunately any acrylic paints that I had in an icy-blue colour had long dried up (that’s the downside to acrylics – they harden up over time).  Fortunately, Andrew’s bedroom is blue, so I grabbed the can of paint that I’d used for his room in a couple of years ago.  Having such a large amount of paint to work with was great because I was able to pour a lot into our tray for stamping.

Stamp away, Hooligans!

Once we’d had our fill of stamping, we left them to dry by the fire.

Today, I punched some holes in them and we headed outside with some paintbrushes, glue and bag of artificial snow, and we finished them up!  

And while the Hooligans napped, I strung them together with some white yarn.  Aren’t they pretty?LookLooking for another snowflake craft?  Have a peek at our beautiful tissue paper snowflakes!  They’re so easy to make!  Our popsicle stick snowflake ornaments are pretty sweet too!

popsicle-stick snowflakes

Ok!  Super-duper easy craft here.  I came across it last week over at Dilly-Dali Art.  Aleacia has been a real source of inspiration for me this week!  Her Christmas Tree Star gave me the idea for our tin-foil trees, and I have to admit I have been a totally shameless copy-cat with her snowflakes.   

No need for a real tutorial here.  The pictures pretty much say it all.  I’ll just give you some brief details.

We started by painting up some popsicle sticks.

We’ve been using my acrylic craft paints for a lot of our crafting up until now, but they’re not washable, so I picked up some Crayola Paints the other day.

While the sticks were drying, we worked on our other craft du jour: our plastic icicles.  You can see them here.

Once the sticks were dry, I quickly stuck them together using a glue gun.  You could use kids’ glue but I wasn’t sure how long they would hold up that way.

We used A toothbrush dipped in white paint, and scrubbed across a piece of screen to “speckle” the snowflakes.  This didn’t work quite as well as I’d hoped so we ended up using a plastic fork to run the toothbrush across.  Much better. 

Attach your string or thread for hanging, and you’re done!  Super easy, and super cute!

plastic icicles

There are so many Christmas craft ideas floating around out there in our little corner of the blog-o-sphere right now!!  As Christmas creeps closer, it gets harder and harder to decide what to make, and what to leave for next year.  I want to make ‘em all!!

In hind-sight, I could have left these until after Christmas, when we’ll still be making “winter crafts” without the “holiday” focus.  I kinda fell in love with these though, when I saw them over at Adventures at Home.  I actually thought they were REAL icicles at first glance. Anyway, I was too excited to wait until after Christmas to make some!

The weather today was absolutely incredible for this time of year!  By 10:30am, the thermometer on our deck read 10 degrees!!  The kids were bundled up because they’re in the habit of wearing all their winter gear, but I became too warm with my coat on, and was actually walking around like THIS when we were crafting:

this was taken in the reflection of my sliding glass door

Ok, on to the icicles.   For the prep: Use an exacto-knife to cut irregular, jaggedy shapes out of a plastic dish detergent bottle.  For a couple of the icicles, I used a plastic package that held raspberries.  Add a couple of tbsp of white sugar to a jar (which you have a lid for).  Punch a hole in the top of each icicle.  Now you’re ready to roll.

Paint the icicles with some glue.  I used clear glue because, HELLO, see the price tag? TWENTY-NINE CENTS! I picked up 8 bottles of this stuff at Michael’s the other day.  They were marked down for clearance!!  

You don’t have to completely cover the icicle with glue.  Just a bit here and there is fine.  

Now pop your icicle in to the jar (the mason jar and its 2-piece lid was an exercise itself),   tighten the lid and……. shakey-shakey-shake it, shake it all you can…  (that’s the song that the Hooligans and I always sing when we have to shake anything.  It might be a song that I made up, so don’t feel bad if you don’t know the tune).

And that’s all there is to it.  Thread some ribbon or string through the hole, and you’re ready to hang it on your tree.  These might be better suited to hanging outside because of the sugar factor (said the glitter-phobe).

I love ‘em!  Thanks, Adventures at Home!

snowmen ornaments

We woke up to a light (and I mean really light) dusting of snow this morning.  It had disappeared by mid-morning, but it put me in the mood for some winter crafting.

I hadn’t planned this at all, but it all pulled together easily enough.  The materials are things that you likely have around the house.

We started by painting some toilet paper tubes with white paint.  We used acrylic, but any paint will do.

They dried very quickly in the breeze and the sunshine.

Before we continued, I stapled some rafia to the top of the tube so it could be used as a tree ornament.

Next wrap a strip of scrap fabric around the top of the tube (my scraps came from a fleece blanket and a couple of tee shirts).  We went around the tube first with glue, but after wrapping the strip around, I stapled it, to make sure it stayed in place. 

Another strip of scrap fabric (again, glue around the tube first) makes a cute scarf.

We used black beans for the eyes, and some orange craft foam for the noses.

Glue a few buttons down the belly, and stand back and you’re done!

We placed ours by the fire to dry the glue quickly.   We always dry our projects by the fire, but nothing we’ve ever made looks as cute as these guys do standing in front of the flames!!  I couldn’t resist taking a picture. 

Aren’t they so sweet?