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!

painting with coloured ice

Check it out!!  We painted with coloured ice today!  I saw lots of posts about this over the the summer, and now I know why it was such a popular activity!  You have to try it.  It’s so awesome!I

The ages of the kids here today ranged from 1 to 5, and they all loved doing this.  The colours are vibrant, the “paint” slides across the page beautifully, and the results are really pretty!  They look like watercolour paintings.

This is super-easy to prepare.  I used what I’m assuming is an egg holder (or possibly an egg mold), to make my coloured ice, but you can use ice cube trays, paper cups, popsicle molds etc.  You can even paint with real popsicles, but I’m thinking the sticky-factor might be a  bit of a put-off, especially if you’re planning on keeping your little one’s art-work.  Not to mention pricey (and wasteful).

So here’s what we did:

I found the lovely pink egg holder at a thrift shop a couple of weeks ago.  It looks like the yellow one that we take camping, except this one has holes on top, so maybe it is actually an egg mold of some sort.  Regardless, when I saw those holes in the top, I knew exactly what I’d be using this baby for.

I filled the “eggs” to the halfway point, and then added some food colouring (I used the gel kind for cake decorating, which made for beautifully vibrant ice-eggs), snapped the case shut, and finished filling the eggs through the hole on top.  There was a bit of leaking, as the case didn’t shut quite right, but I secured the two halves together with the caps of a couple of pens (I know, Einstein or what?).

I dropped the popsicle sticks through the holes, and placed the case in the freezer (and totally forgot about it until today).

I popped the whole thing into a bucket of warmish water for a couple of seconds so the ice-eggs would come out easily. I couldn’t belive THE COLOURS when I opened it up.  Hello, my pretties!

One of the Hooligans’ Gramma’s brings us loads of thin white cardboard (a little thicker than Bristol Board) so that’s what we used as our canvases.   You could paint on anything really, but I suspect regular paper would get a fairly soggy if your ice was melting quickly (which ours was today, as it was a super hot afternoon).

Isn’t it pretty?  I was so excited!  This was way better than I ever imagined it would be!  The colours were gorgeous.  My advice would be to quit while you’re ahead though, because some of the paintings became really wet with all the melting, and the colours kind of blurred together, which was pretty, but not quite as interesting as the lines and squiggles that were so clear at the beginning.

This actually used up very little of the ice-eggs, so I popped them all back in the case and put them back in the freezer.  We’ll be able to do this several more times, before they run out.  Ok, seriously?  I can’t WAIT to do this again tomorrow!

Big hit!  So easy, so beautiful!  Give it a try, and let us know how it works out for you!Want to see some other nifty things we’ve done with ice?  Check here, here and here!

Drop Box

With the last week of summer holidays wrapping up, I really should be organizing school supplies, and pulling my house back together after doing a bare minimum of house-work these past 2 months.  I’m reluctant to give up the slow, lazy pace of my days though, so I’ll likely be scrambling to do it all Monday.

So…instead of cleaning, and organizing, I took on another awesome project. The other day, Play at Home Mom shared pictures of their fab drop box, and I was inspired to make one of my own.

I started with a good sized box, some Sharpies, a paper cutting knife, and a few objects for dropping.  I would think of more “drop-ables” as I worked away.

I started by cutting holes for the foam shapes, and outlining with the sharpies.  That area will be fun for a little match and drop area.  Then I grabbed a handful of paint chip samples, and cut slits in the box, and outlined the slots with 8 different colours.  The paint chips are various shades of each colour, so the Hooligans will have to decide which colour family each paint chip belongs to.

Next, I drew upper and lower case letters on “popsicle” craft sticks, and made a small drop slot for each one.  On the backs of the sticks, I drew coloured circles, squares and triangles, for the little ones who don’t yet know their letters.

I picked out several coloured blocks from our block bucket, and drew corresponding shaped and coloured holes for those to be dropped through.

And the final activity was numbers.  A few dominoes and numbered holes will encourage counting and matching.

When I was finished, I cut 2 holes to sink a couple of containers into.  The box wasn’t big enough for any more than 2.  It would have been nice to be able to fit all 4 containers across the top, but c’est la vie.  When you’re ready to pack it away, you can store the containers and drop-ables inside the box.

Doesn’t it look inviting?  I had a lot of fun working on it.  I always find this kind of thing therapeutic, and kind of lose myself in the process, so it was a relaxing way to spend the afternoon.

I think this is going to be very popular with my little friends!  I can’t wait for them to see it next week.

If you’d like more ideas for creating easy activities from recycled materials, here are a few more treasures we’ve made from our trash!

Christmas crafts

Last year, we set out to make a different tree ornament every day in the month leading up to Christmas. By the time the holidays rolled around, the Hooligans had made enough ornaments that parents were joking that their trees were starting to lean over under the weight of them all.  We had a ton of fun making them and they’re all beautiful enough to be displayed with pride.  Sadly, there were pictures that are somehow missing in action, but here are some that will hopefully inspire.

simple enough for even the littlest fingers, thread beads onto a metallic pipe-cleaner, and bend into a Chrstmas tree

Cut 2 mittens from felt. Glue a cotton ball to the cuffs. Decorate with buttons and join mitts with a piece of wool.

Paper Mache Gingerbread houses made from juice/milk cartons and colourful foam bits.

Gingerbread Man - I don't think this needs explaining.

I Spy Ornament: My very favourite! Fill a plastic ornament (I got these at Michael's) with artificial snow and tiny objects (lego, paperclips, beads, buttons), and attach an I Spy List. So pretty and so fun for little ones.

Poinsettias: wrap a toilet roll with red paper and then cut into 5 pieces about 1 inch thick. Flatten them out to get petal shape. Glue tissue paper to tops and let dry. Hot glue petals together and top with a button.together at center. Glue some artificial leaves to the back. We added glitter glue to the petals as well.

Snowman sticks: I had a foam snowman craft kit so we used the hats, noses and scarves from that, and glued them onto popsicle sticks that we'd painted white. Add some eyes and some buttons and you're done.

Candy house: Cut house and roof from cardboard and cover with cardstock. Decorate with colourful buttons, ribbon and foam bits.

Cut cardboard stars and wrap with wool, securing with hot glue.

These were the biggest hit of the season last Christmas. I made a set for each Hooligan. Every set had the same cast of characters (Mary Joseph, Baby Jesus in a manger, Wiseman, Angel and Shepherd), but I used different fabrics for each set so everyone's was unique. Cut toilet roll tubes in varying heights. I covered the face portion with cardstock and the body with scraps of fabric. Decorate with beads, buttons, wool, jewels etc. The manger was a toilet tube cut in half long ways and filled with straw coloured wool. The stable is a shoebox decorated with scrapbook paper. When the kids are finished playing, the characters are kept in the box. These were a ton of fun to make, but stock up on hot glue sticks...I used a LOT!

These were the absolute cutest! Toilet paper tubes covered in quilt batting. Cut hat and scarf from fleece (cinch hat with rubber band and fringe the top). Googly eyes, a felt nose and rosy cheeks.

A few other crafts that we made can be seen here: but I didn’t keep pictures of were:

Star of David: paint 6 popsicle sticks white and glue into a star shape.  Once dry, glue sparkly gems on.

Easy Icicles: Have kids thread beads onto a pipecleaner.  Bend the top end to form a hook or loop.

Button Wreath: Cut a small wreath out of cardboard and have kids paint it red or green.  Glue buttons all around and add a bow.

As I sit here writing this, it’s a warm summer day – kind of hard to get my head around Christmas!