Arts & Crafts Archives – Page 3 of 5

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Arts & Crafts

Tue
24 ^th

Snail Crafts

Posted by Pinparent — 9 Comments

Slow & steady wins the race.

We had a fun & busy weekend. It was my husband’s weekend off so we were able to enjoy one of our rare family weekends together. We took Mai to an animal fair that was in town for a few days. Mai dressed the part to go play with the farm animals.

She ran from animal to animal & was overjoyed about all of the rides & other activities that the fair had to offer. She had a ton of fun, but wore out mommy & daddy. After a few hours we returned home. Still wired from her fun day, her energy did not wane. Unfortunately for her, mommy’s did. We played super heroes for an hour, but then my super powers started to fail. It was time to slow things down a bit. Quiet time in our house is a great time for crafts.

Egg Carton Snails

What you will need:

Empty clean egg carton

Paint

Pipe cleaners

Marker

Glue

Googly eyes

Directions:

Cut your egg carton into individual cups.

Have your child paint the cups in colors of their choice. Let dry.

With a marker, draw a spiral on the side of the egg carton cup.

Twist & bend a pipe cleaner to form a pointy tail on one end & a head with antennae of the other.

Glue the pipe cleaners in place under the cup. Add googly eyes to the antennae.

Paper Bowl Snail

What you will need:

Paper bowls

Paint

Construction paper

Pipe Cleaners

Marker

Glue

Googly eyes

Directions:

Let your child paint the bowl however they like. Let it dry.

Cut out a shape for the snail body & glue it underneath.

With a marker, draw a spiral in the middle of the bowl. Add pipe cleaners to the top of the head & googly eyes for the face.

Thank you as always for stopping by. Please follow us on Facebook as well.

Thu
19 ^th

Patchwork Craft

Posted by Pinparent — 17 Comments

My mother-in-law has a wonderful talent. She makes the most beautiful quilts. Our daughter has been lucky enough to have been the recipient of a few of her nana’s creations. For her birthday last month nana made her this eye spy quilt. I love it so much that I even made it the backdrop to my blog.

Nana’s quilt was the inspiration for our crafts tonight.

Patchwork Craft

Things you need:

Construction paper

Paint

Glitter

Glue

Optional: crayons,markers,stampers, sticker, tissue paper

Cut different colored construction paper into six 3 1/2X 3 1/2 squares. Let your child paint, stamp, glue glitter or tissue papers to the squares to make different designs. Let them decorate them however they like.

Set the squares aside & let dry.

Glue the squares down on another piece of construction paper, making sure to space them out evenly.

Draw different patterns in the spacing.

Mai did such a beautiful job with this craft. While I watched her paint, she told me “I like doing projects with my mama.” I love doing them with you too, baby girl.

Sun
15 ^th

Fingerprint Cherry Blossoms

Posted by Pinparent — 8 Comments

As many of you know my daughter Mai is named after my mother. I get questioned on her name all the time.

“That’s an unusual name.”

“How do you say it? May?”

“How did you come up with that name?”

Typically, when I am asked what her name is, it comes out in one giant run-on sentence. Inhale & go…”Her name is Mai. Like a Mai Tai, but that isn’t why I named her that. She is named after my mother. It is Vietnamese. It means cherry blossom.” Exhale. Mai must have heard this story many times because she has begun referring to herself as Cherry Blossom, Princess Cherry Blossom to be accurate.

The princess & I were snowbound again for the weekend, so took advantage of our time with some arts & crafts inspired by her lovely name.

Fingerprint Cherry Blossom

Draw a branch for your cherry blossoms with a marker or paint.

Mix a few different shades of pink.

Have your child dip their finger in the paint & press onto the branches.

Switch shades of pink & keep dabbing.

A flower as pretty as my little girl.

Sun
08 ^th

Paint Scrape Art

Posted by Pinparent — 6 Comments

One of my favorite things about my daughter is her creativity & her imagination. I love her ability to think outside of the box. Give her a box of random odds & ends and she can turn it into hours of fun. We have a container full of plastic forks & spoons that have become her most recent source of fun. A while back she traded in her paint brush for the day & attempted to paint a picture with a fork. While the fork did not quite do the job that she wanted, it did create a nice textured effect. So when Mai asked me to do a project a few days later, I thought we would pull out those forks again & create a pretty craft.

You can of course create a figure of your choosing, but for our purposes we chose a flower & peacock.
Using several different colors of construction paper, cut out different colored shapes for the petals, leaves, stem & center of your flower as shown below.

Paint over one shape each at a time.

Mai works ahead of me on the peacock, while mommy does the flower.

Before the paint dries, use your plastic fork & drag it across the paint to scrape off some of the paint & reveal the under color. Do this for all shapes & let dry.

Mai’s little hands are hard at work, scraping the paint off in various designs.

Glue your pieces into place on top of a piece of paper.

Let dry & proudly display your artwork.

For the peacock, we used the same method. We cut out different colored construction paper, 9 teardrop shapes for the feathers, 3 hook shapes for the head feathers & one the shape of an eggplant for the body. All steps were followed as above & then googly eyes & a construction paper beak & legs were added at the end.

Thank you as always for stopping by. Please follow us on Facebook as well.

Wed
04 ^th

Paper Swedish Heart Baskets

Posted by Pinparent — 14 Comments

It has been a rough winter in New England. On Monday, we had yet another storm, a big one. We added another foot of snow to last week’s accumulation.

Sufficed to say, we were snow bound & stuck home. My mother-in-law got caught up in the storm & was snowed in with us. Mai & I were making glittery paper hearts, when my mum-in-law asked me if I knew how to make a Swedish heart. I did not. She gave me a quick tutorial & weaved a lovely heart out of newspaper to practice. They were so cute & easy to make. She showed me how they formed a little pocket & I thought how cute these would be for our daughter to give out filled with little Valentine’s candies.

Paper Swedish Heart Baskets

All you need for this craft is some paper, glue & scissors.

Choose 2 different colored pieces of paper. Fold each piece in half. Cut out a shape like shown below, rounding the tops of the unfolded edge.

Overlap the shapes so that they form a heart shape.

Draw a faint line across the top edge of the overlap on each side of your heart.

Cut 1 slit 1/3 of the width of one of the shapes. Cut from the folded edge up to the line that you just drew. Cut a second slit another 1/3 of the way the same way. Do this to the other shape as well.

This should give you 3 even loops on each.

Start weaving your two hearts together. Stick the 3rd loop from the green through the first loop on the purple shape as shown below.

Pull the same purple loop through the 2nd green loop.

Work that same purple loop all the way over & insert the 1st green loop into the purple to finish off the first weave.

Push the purple shape all the way up to the top of the green shape to make room to start your next loop. Start this row the opposite way this time, pulling the next purple row through the green & then continue to alternate in this pattern until the end.

Add a couple of strips of paper to the inside of each side to make handles.

Fill the basket with some treats.

Thanks Nana for teaching me something new. These will be adorable to give to Mai & her friends.

Thank you as always for stopping by. Please follow us on Facebook as well.

Sat
31 ^st

Bongo Drums Craft

Posted by Pinparent — 6 Comments

There are days that I have a particular activity or craft in mind. I have all of our tools out and ready to go, when Mai changes the whole plan with her own ideas.

I have a set of wooden spoons that have seen better days. They were old & cracking and looking sad. My mother-in-law bought us a new set of bamboo spoons, so it was time to get rid of my old ones.

As I hate to throw out anything, I had a craft in mind for me & Mai. We were going to make spoon dolls. We had all the paint out and were about to start painting when Mai grabbed the spoons & a few containers and showed off her drumming skills.
“Drums are my favorite instrument mama? What is yours?”
“Mama’s favorite is a guitar.”
“I like drums, mama. This is my drum set.”

Far be it for me to try to argue with a toddler. I would hate to take her drum sticks away to make dolls out of them, so we will keep them as drum sticks & make her a set of drums instead.

What you will need:

Empty oat containers (any size)

Paint – Kid’s washable paints work fine or acrylics

Yarn

Construction paper or foam

Hot glue gun – ***Glue guns should be used by adults only***

Optional items – Gems, glitter, tissue paper, pom poms etc..

Directions:

Start with a clean & empty oat’s container. Peel off the label around the container.

Remove the lids & paint your containers in a color of your choosing. The drums had to be pink for our little princess. Mai was very thorough & wanted to make sure she painted the inside as well. I helped her smooth out the paint and fill in the bare spots. Let the paint dry.

Paint your spoons and let dry.

While your paint is drying, cut out some thin strips of construction paper or foam pieces.

With a glue gun, glue the yarn into a zig zag pattern up & down on each drum. (Glue gun should be used by an adult.)

Put the lids back on the containers. Wrap the pre-cut strips around the top & bottom of the drums. Use a hot glue gun to hold it in place. Use a few pieces to add to the top & bottom of your spoon handles as well.

We added a gem between the centers of our zig zags on each side. Use whatever craft materials you have available to decorate it in a design of your own choosing.

My little drummer rocked out both with her drum sticks and without. I think we have a future musician in our midst.

Thank you as always for stopping by. Please follow us on Facebook as well.

Thu
29 ^th

Valentine’s Day Rubs

Posted by Pinparent — 5 Comments

For Christmas this year, one of my dear friends bought my daughter Fashion Plates. When Mai unwrapped her gift, it was Mommy’s face that lit up not hers. I loved Fashion Plates as a girl. I felt like a young girl again. As I sat on the floor rubbing a crayon against the plates, I thought to myself this is probably something that we can do at home with our own designs.

Valentine’s Day Rubs

What you will need:

A few squares of cardboard

A hot glue gun

Crayons

Paper

Directions:

I cut a few squares out of a cardboard box. Be sure the squares are clean & even. With a glue gun draw a design. (For adult use only) Keep your designs simple & try to apply the glue as evenly and level as possible for the best effect.

For our Valentine’s themed designs, we went with a heart, an arrow & the word love. The glue should dry in a couple of minutes.

Once dry, place the squares under a piece of paper. Using the side of a crayon, rub back & forth & watch the design transfer onto the paper.

Unfortunately for me, not all of my ideas are winners with my daughter. Like the Fashion Plates, this was more entertaining for mommy than her. She made one arrow & then moved on to drawing a picture of a monster family.

It was not a total waste for Mai though. We discovered that the rubs also make a lovely paint stamper.

Thank you as always for stopping by. Please follow us on Facebook as well.

Wed
28 ^th

Pasta Love Bug Crafts

Posted by Pinparent — 18 Comments

Mon
13 ^th

Patriots “Foot”ball

Posted by Pinparent — 2 Comments

As you already know from my ‘Football Widow’s Rant’, I am not a football fan. I could care less about it. My husband loves it. He loves all sports really, but football is his favorite. From the day our daughter was born, we both hoped that we would be able to share our interests with our daughter. For me, I hoped that she would enjoy art & doing crafts with mommy. She does & I couldn’t be happier. My husband has a longer list of interests. He dreams of running marathons with her as she gets older, playing golf and taking her to sporting events. He is off to a good start as she has already run her first fun run, loves golfing with daddy & at 2 years old is already a Pats fan.

At only 7 days old, Mai watched her first game with her father. Fast forward to today where she gets excited when she sees the Patriots emblem, cries if her Pats sweatshirt is dirty and screams “Good job, Tom Brady!!” at the game while stuffing popcorn down her gullet.

Who knows if her love for football & the Patriots will continue as she gets older, but for now daddy is enjoying his little New England fan. I thought we could make a keepsake for them to look back on some day.

Mai loves foot & hand crafts. She thinks it is fun to paint her feet up. I had to help to ensure that we had the colors in the right spots.