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.

homemade puffy paint!

Oh, we had fun with this today!  I’ve seen lots of recipes for this online, and I’ve wanted to try it for a while.  I picked up a small bag of self-rising flour at our bulk/health food store a while back so we’d be able to give it a whirl. This recipe is super-easy to whip up, and the results were really cool. **editing to say that this is a terrific activity for your little ones.  It provides an opportunity to explore art and science with your children, but your this paint is not meant to hold up over time.  After 24 hours, our paintings have become brittle and are starting to break down.

For each colour you’ll need:

• 1 tbsp self-rising flour
• a couple drops of food colouring (I used Wilton icing gels)
• 1 tbsp salt
• little bit of water (start with 1/4 tsp)

Combine your flour and salt in a small bowl.  Add a little bit of water and stir until you get a smooth, thin paste (about the same consistency of stirred yogurt).  Add your food colouring, and mix well.

Ours sat for a bit while we walked to the school bus, and it thickened up again, so I just added a few drops of water to thin it back to the yogurt consistency.

Get some sturdy cardstock or thin cardboard, and some paintbrushes or q-tips, and get creating!

When you’re happy with your masterpiece, pop it into the microwave for 30 seconds and watch it rise!  It’s warm when you take it out, but it’s completely set.

Ta daaa…

styro-framed art

As you probably know, I love crafting, and even more, I love crafting with re-purposed items.  Creating beautiful art with your kiddos doesn’t have to cost a lot of money.

Check out some of the beautiful creations we’ve made with things that were headed to the trash – cardboard, toilet roll tubes, crumpled tissue paper, fabric scraps etc.  Today we discovered that styrofoam meat trays make a great “canvas” for creating a piece of art.  The edge of the tray kind of serves as a built-in frame.

I always have a stack of these trays on hand.  I run them through the dishwasher first to make sure they’ve been sterilized, and we use them for all kinds of things.  They make handy trays for holding supplies while you’re crafting, they’re fun to “draw” on with a craft stick or the end of a paint brush, and kids love to cut them and snap them into pieces.

Today I set out some green, yellow and blue paint, and told the Hooligans we were making Spring paintings.  I suggested that they paint the bottom half of their meat tray green, the top half blue, and to use the yellow to add a sun if they wished.

This led to some exciting discoveries when their colours mixed on the trays: “Hey, blue and yellow make green!”

Then we let the trays dry while we had our snack.  I have to share one of my newest finds with you.  I came across this item at the thrift shop.  

I paid a dollar for it.  I wasn’t sure what it was (turns out it’s a dvd holder), but I knew what I was going to use it for!  

Hello, awesome, space-saving drying rack!!

When the paint was dry, the Hooligans glued foam flowers, bugs and animals (I lucked out and found those at the thrift shop as well) onto their paintings. Here’s a little tip that makes gluing easy for little fingers.  Grab a few plastic coffee stir-sticks when you’re at a coffee shop!  I set some out with a little bowl or pot of glue, and have the kids apply the glue that way.  It’s perfect for adding small amounts of glue to a project, and  the stir-sticks wipe up easily so we can use them again.  This is simpler and less frustrating for little ones to squeeze  a glue bottle, and they don’t end up with way too much glue on their project, which tends to happen when they squeeze from the bottle.  I do realize that is a learning process in itself, and there’s great motor development in the squeezing process.  Most times we do our gluing that way, but sometimes it’s nice to take the easy route.

Did these paintings turn out beautifully? Happy Spring!

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!

rainbow collage

This was the perfect craft for a dreary winter day.  The colours were a real pick-me-up on a grey morning!

I set up bowls filled with bright paper cuttings and various colourful craft supplies (pompoms, stickers, foam pieces, bits of fabric etc).

I had drawn some rainbows on white cardboard, and used markers and some crayons to colour code the sections so the Hooligans would know where to glue their bits and pieces.

They used all the craft and paper bits to fill in the rainbows, and then painted the sky and glued on some cotton ball clouds.

Aren’t they pretty?!If you’re crazy for rainbows, check out our painted rainbows and rainbow rice!

hand hearts

Well, our Valentine’s crafting comes to an end today. 

We made one last cute craft for the kids to take home to Mom and Dad tonight.  We made these last year, and while I don’t usually do “repeat” crafts here, these are really cute, and most of the kids here today weren’t with us last year when we made them.

I poured 2 colours of paint in a tray, and we used a sponge brush to paint the Hooligans’ hands.  

Then they made prints onto cream coloured paper.

Once dry, I cut around the prints in a heart shape, and then again with some “lacy” scissors and red card stock.

It was good, messy fun, and when we were finished washing up, we had some great pink water to pour into spray bottles, and take outside!

Happy Valentine’s Day!!

 

framed button hearts

We made a cute little craft today.  Ours aren’t quite as gorgeous as the ones that were the inspiration behind them.  Check out THESE pretty little numbers !  Did you heart skip a beat like mine did?  Aren’t they over-the-top adorable?  As soon as I saw them, I started thinking about how we were going to make them with materials that I had on hand (read: I was not about to go out and buy wooden frames, and as much as I LOVE the look of the fabric background, I thought it might be easier if we stuck with paper).

So here’s our version,

coloured sticks, buttons and cardstock

and this is what we used to make ‘em.

I’d originally planned to paint popsicle sticks for the frame, but the weather was gorgeous, and we have all this new, fluffy snow, and we just wanted to get outside, and enjoy the morning, so at the last minute, to save time, I decided we’d use these skinny coloured sticks.  Not sure what they’re technically called, but I have a ton of them, and they’re already coloured, and they’re vibrantly coloured. They didn’t exactly give us the framed effect I was shooting for, but what the heck…

Now this was totally a joint effort craft.  While the Hooligans were gluing the buttons on their hearts, I was putting the frames together with the hot glue gun.

Then I hot-glued the frame to a piece of bright cardstock, and cut around the frame with some fancy-schmancy scissors.

When the Hooligans finished their button hearts, they glued those into the frames.  

So, definitely not an entirely kid-made craft, but pretty darned cute, just the same.

What are you crafting for Valentine’s Day?

Marbleized hearts with shaving cream and food colouring

I first started seeing posts about this activity last summer, and thought it looked really neat.

With Valentine’s Day approaching, I’ve been seeing this technique used to make marbleized hearts, and thought we’d give it a try today.

Ok, this is SO COOL.  It’s right up there with painting with credit cards, which is also one of my new favourite ways to paint.

It’s really simple, you’re just going to have to gather a few materials and set up before you get started.

ignore the toilet rolls - I thought we'd incorporate them somehow, but we didn't need to

You’ll need a baking sheet, shaving cream, some stir sticks of some kind, several colours of food colouring, paper (we used thin white cardboard, but regular paper is fine), and a piece of stiff cardboard for scraping.

Squirt a generous helping of shaving cream onto your baking sheet and spread it around to fill the sheet (I used my piece of stiff cardboard for spreading).

Drop several drops of each colour of food colouring onto the shaving cream.

Have the kiddos stir and swirl the colours around.  This is soooo neat.  I was reminded of those huge suckers you get a the fair or the circus.

Once you’ve swirled your colours thoroughly, lay your paper (we used thin cardboard) on top of the shaving cream, and gently press it in.

the other side of this cardboard is plain white

Lift it off and let it sit for a minute.

Then take your piece of cardboard and scrape any excess shaving cream off to reveal your gorgeous marbleized paper!

I was seriously impressed.  This is one of those things that you’ve seen all over the web, but you don’t experience the wow factor until you actually do it yourself.

My pictures don’t even do justice to how beautiful the results are.

I wasn’t really sure where we were going with it, but while our creations dried, I came up with a plan.

I cut hearts of all different sizes out of the marbleized sheets, and then cut a long thin strip out of another piece of cardboard, and the Hooligans glued their hearts to the thin strip.

Now they’re ready to tack up on a wall or in a window.

Have you tried this technique?  Do it!!  It’s so cool!  It’s a little messy, yes.  But the kids had fun mucking around in the tray when we were finished, and asked if they could wash the farm animals in the shaving cream.

Then I filled a big container up with water for them to wash up in.   That led to them wanting to play in the water, so I refilled it with clean water and added some blue food colouring,

and that’s how they passed the rest of this dreary winter morning.