Please join me on the MAM blog today! I’m sharing a super fun and silly project that’s great to do today or even with the whole family while you’re waiting on the real turkey to cook on Thursday!
You can try to make just one… But once the salad spinner is out… Good luck with just one!
I’ll bet you’ll end up with a ‘rafter‘ (a little Turkey Day trivia for ya) of turkeys! Make as many as you want for your Thanksgiving table! How many will you make???
I can’t believe that Halloween is almost here! Ahhhh! We started decorating a few weeks ago, but just got the finishing touches done today! How about you? Still working on it? Here’s a fun little craft to do to give to your favorite trick or treaters!
We just happened to have a bunch of lollipops that we didn’t know what to do with and decided to dress them up for Halloween! I can’t wait to show you how easy they are!
The materials we used are felt, embroidery thread and needles, scissors, googly eyes and glue and, of course, lollipops! And an erasable or disappearing pen is optional.
First we made the patterns, but you can skip that step and download our patterns here. Our patterns are for a 2″ lollipop. We traced pretty close the pop and then secondly, we made the pattern about a quarter inch larger than the pop.
Secondly, we cut! First the pattern. Then the felt. Cut out the shapes, two of each for each pop. And if you want eye holes, this is the time to cut them out.
Next, the fun part! Well, this is debatable… I think my son’s favorite would be the next step. But the sewing part is mine! If you’re making these with little ones, two things. First, be careful with the needles. The bigger the needles, the easier it is for the little fingers to use without being poked. And secondly, you can mark the spots to put the needle along the edge of the puppet pieces. I used a Frixion pen and the dots can be ironed out.
The favorite part for the kiddos! Adding the googly eyes! Just glue them on!
And lastly, insert the lollipop!
And a spooky lollipop ghost puppet is what you have! My son went a bit overboard with the googly eyes, huh!?!?! He was loving it!
We made a bat, a pumpkin and several ghosts!
I think the bat is my favorite! Which is your favorite? What other fun spooky lollipop puppet can you think of?
Shared with these Link Parties!
Boooooooooo! Today I wanted to share a project we did for Halloween! We made a Ghostly Garland!
We started to doing this project with the idea of making large ghosts, but as we were going along the idea popped up to make little ones for a garland! So we finished up are big ones and moved on to the garland!
One thing to keep in mind, if you live anywhere with moisture (like the PNW) you will want to keep these guys inside. I learned the hard way by putting our big ghosts outside and the starch didn’t hold up against Mother Nature’s moisture!
First we gathered our materials: shear fabric, wax paper, scissors, balloons, tape, starch, ribbon (or a thin rope or bakers twine)
For the little ones you’ll want to raid your recycling! We used a varaiety of sizes of recycled items. So barely blow up your balloons nad tape them to the tops of your recycled items. Set these pieces around on top of a piece of wax paper.
Next you’ll need to cut your fabric. Fold the fabric in half and then in half again. Cut a curved edge along the not folded over edges. Make the folded sides about the same as the height of your balloon and recycled item. For these you don’t want the fabric to touch the table.
The third step is to soak the fabric in the startch.
Fourth, drape the fabric over the balloons. And leave them here until the starch dries. I set them up on wax paper, so as it drips, you can also clean it up to save the for the next ghost! The little garland ghosts fabric shouldn’t touch the paper below, remember!
I don’t know what happened to my picture for step 4, so even those these are the big ones, you can see how we draped the fabric over the balloon! (In this picture I forgot the wax paper and my ghosts stuck to it.)
For Step 5, once all the ghosts are dry, draw on the eyes!
Next you’ll want to poke a hole in the side of the ghosts head and pull the bakers twine through all the ghosts.
And lastly, Hang the garland up! Yea!
A little secret is that we made these last year, so in the picture, the kiddo looks so little! But so happy! We had a great time putting this together and hope you do too!
Since it’s Halloween and all, I thought another Monster project was in order!
This one is another one of my Kid Designed, Momma Made projects. My son has a friend who loves to draw! And he loves to draw monsters! Maybe I should say LOVES to draw MONSTERS! Then it was his birthday and we debated and debated what to get him. Finally we (the kiddo and I) decided to make him a monster from one of his drawings.
I asked his mom to send me a picture of one of his favorite monster drawings and this is what she sent!
And this is what I made! It took me a while to really think about how I was going to get all the pieces to come together. But I finally got it!
One of our trips to the fabric store I found this remnant of this fur. It was perfect! The right color and the right size! I cut out the body pieces first. For the yellow circles on his back I used buttons. I don’t know if this was the best option or not. I debate if I should have used a felt or not. But I like the change in texture… And then I did an applique stitch for the blue lines on his back.
I loved the toe details in the drawing, so I knew I couldn’t leave that out! I made the body, the tail and the legs and sew-ed all those pieces together.
Then I made the antlers! I tired to do them a couple of different ways. I sewed fabric together, but then couldn’t really stuff it very well since the pieces were pretty small. So I threw that away… Finally I realized I just happened to have felt, and in the perfect color, I might add…. And I had pipe cleaners! I cut out the antlers, situated all the pipe cleaners and pinned. Then I just sewed around the edge. Lovely!
The face was pretty simple, a little applique here and a little reverse applique for the mouth.
My son loved him and was super excited to give him to his buddy! I always get a little nervous when we give kids handmade gifts. Sometimes it’s hard to complete with all the fancy toys they are also getting. But when Ardin opened this one, he jumped up and down and even let out a little squeal! While he was showing it to his mom he was so excited and said, ‘Mom!! Mom!! It’s the monster I drew! The monster in my room!’ To see his face light up and for him to recognize right away where the design came from….. Awesome!
I have a little problem with magazines! I kinda hoard them… And then end up with piles of them around the house. Luckily, the house isn’t laid out as a magazine stack maze, quite yet… But every now and then I zoom through the piles. I saw this glue project in one of my Better Homes and Gardens magazines (but I can’t find it online) not too long ago! It looked like a perfect summer time project to do with the kiddo!
We thought we’d make the shirts, but weren’t sure what designs to make. We decided to use some of my son’s drawings to copy on the shirts.
So we got our t-shirts, glue (excuse my sad looking bottle of glue! The lid broke and it was the only bottle of glue we had! I used plain ‘ole Elmer’s washable glue), cardboard to put inside the shirt, fabric paint and paintbrushes!
And off we went to start gluing. If you try this, keep in mind the glue will probably run together…
It started off not running, but after a while, some parts of the glue ran into each other.
We got it going and then realized we needed to wait for the glue to dry… hmmm… We walked the dog… We cleaned the house… We ate dinner… Then we couldn’t wait any longer and got to painting even though the glue wasn’t completely dry, but it was pretty dry around the edges!
We watered down the fabric paint until it was almost like watercolors. Not sure if we needed to water it down as much as we did. When we went back to do a second coat, it ran a little past the glue.
Since they were watered down, the paints blended pretty cool!
Then we played the waiting game again…. The paints say to wait 72 hours before washing! 72 hours??? Do you know how long 72 hours is to a 4 year old? It’s like 100 years! After the kiddo asked, every hour, has it been 72 hours yet, we decided to pick one shirt as our washing guinea pig. And of course, the kiddo chose mine, not his, to use to see if it worked! And it worked!
And then we washed the kiddos shirt!
make a gif
Now my son wasn’t quite as happy with his shirt as I was with mine. So our lesson learned was to not use a very complicated design.
Originally, my son’s drawing was off a monster on a skateboard. But he decided his shirt need a little more and we got out the fabric markers and he added more to the glue design to look more like his picture. And of course, what monster doesn’t love lightening? So lightening was added!
What would your design be? do you think we copied our designs pretty well? I think they look pretty much like the original design drawings!
Shared with these Link Parties!
Amidst all the sewing this week, my son and I took some time out to be crafty! We are making Valentine’s!
Quilt inspired Valentine’s that is!
I was totally inspired by S.O.T.A.K. Handmade’s pixelated heart pillow. When I first saw it I thought I’d make a few for Valentine’s gifts, but then realized I might not make it in time…. So instead of sewing it, we decided to glue it!
Consider your self warned though…. If you use my printable you must cut a bunch of 1/4 inch squares. You may think, oh, these are small. Easy! Right? Easy yes, quick no! It took me much longer to cut out all the squares than I thought it would. But once you get them cut…. Fun times! My son decided to take a shower while I finished cutting the little squares and I was still cutting when he got back. I heard him (’cause he’s really loud! Are all 4 year olds this loud???) telling his Dad that he had to get back upstairs to make his Valentine. When he came back he was like, ‘WHAT???? you’re STILL cutting???’ Yes, dear….. I’m still cutting out little bitty, teeny, tiny squares!
But once the cutting was done, we were on our way to some super cool Valentine’s!
As we were starting, I was about to correct my son, yes, he’s 4, and get him to get all the little 1/4 inch squares of paper to align perfect in the grid. Then I breathed, because I can get a little OCD when it comes to details like this, and let him go! And I love how his turned out! Even if it doesn’t fit in the teeny tiny grid! HA!
hhhh
And of course, he loved his role of acting SUPER excited to get mail! I also added a little heart glued to the outside of the envelope. You know I’m a sucker for the wrap around address labels or something, at least, added to the envelope too. So this year, instead of the address label, I’m adding the ‘coordinating’ heart on the outside!
Ready for the printable? I have a few versions!
If I scared you about cutting all those little pieces, you can download the card with it already colored in. With the grid, here. I think the grid gives it a little more of a quilt-y feel.
Or you can download the already colored in version without the grid, here.
And if you are a little on the OCD side like me, and are super excited about cutting all the little pieces, you can download the grid with the ‘gluing guidelines’, here!
Enjoy and Have a great Valentine’s Day!
We are loving making these sun catchers from melted beads! I saw this project the other day on The Artful Parent and got really excited! Have you tried it yet???
The directions tell you to cook the beads in the oven on 400 degrees for about 25 to 30 minutes. Those directions were updated to use a gas grill outside or a toaster over outside because of the smell of the melting beads. So I was excited about the project, but also a bit nervous about the project.
I don’t have a toaster or a gas grill, so we had to resort to the oven. But I do have an oven vent and doors and windows that open… So we decided to try it out inside in the oven. And luckily, and to my surprise, the smell wasn’t bad at all! It did smell a little, but honestly, not nearly as bad as my curry dish I cooked later that day. GROSS!!! I’m sure the melting plastic is worse for you to sniff than the curry, but it didn’t feel that way to me that day!!!!
We decided to make a wind chime with the big one. we had this froggy wind chime that we’ve had for quite some time and had fun with, but it’s been broken for a while, so we decided to repurpose it into our own wind chime! And I used my Dremel to drill holes in the melted bead sun catchers. I tried to do it with a toothpick as soon as I got it out of the oven, but that didn’t work for me.
And for the little ones, we painted a wooden dowel with our ice cube paints and tied them on the stick in groups of three! These are going to make cute little gifts!
I see these again in our near future! Think Olympics…. hmmmmm…..
Shared with these Link Parties!
Disclaimer: I am not a scientist and I didn’t come up with this project. I have never used a gas oven or a grille! I have only made these as I described above and don’t really know what other temperatures or times. Please be safe and do not cook around children! Please see blog disclaimer below!
Did y’all have an awesome 4th of July?? We did for sure! And part of that fun was thanks to Pinterest. We filled up the kiddie wading pool like we usually do during the summer, but we also tried out a couple of pinterest fun ideas I’d found.
The first one that was a ton of fun was the Water Blob! Ends up I’d pinned this twice… So obviously I’d been wanting to try it out! The first pin was from Go Kid Yourself and the second from Clumsy Crafter. Both tutorials were the same, duct tape a really large sheet of plastic sheeting together with a the hose sticking inside and turn on the water! Super easy! And great fun! I used 4 mil plastic sheeting, not the super thin stuff you find on the painting aisle of Lowes. This stuff was on another aisle, but kinda by itself…
And yes, it leaked. Especially the corners. Just keep the duct tape handy. Once you see a squirter, just add more duct tape. At first I was trying to fix every leak I saw. But I ended up only hitting the big ones. And the leaks just added more fun! When they jumped on it, there was more splash!
We added food coloring and gummy worms and fish. the first day I filled it up so that it was about 3 inches thick. the next day some of the water had evaporated out and some had leaked, so it needed to be refilled. I kinda forgot I had the water running and it ended up being closer to 6 inches thick and, man, it was soooo much MORE fun!!! So go for thick!
Then we made Ice Cube Paints! Ok, here’s the scary thing…. I don’t think I made this up… I thought I’d seen it on pinterest, but I can’t find it again… I should be too young for senior moments like this… Right??? (This is where you nod nad say Yes, Louise, You’re too young to be having ‘senior moments’) So, I’m not linking to the inspiration ’cause I can’t find it, not because I’m trying to call this my own idea. But at this point, I don’t even remember, maybe it just came to me…. Who knows at this point!
Anyway, the important thing is that we made them and had fun with them!
We just added food coloring to an ice-cube tray and very carefully added the water. I then covered the tray with aluminum foil and added the sticks (cake pop sticks in our case). Freeze, remove and paint! Then freeze again!
Perfect summer fun for the 4th of July!
How exciting! This project is such a great idea. A few months ago, I saw the salad spinner art idea on The Artful Parent’s blog. I was super excited about it then. Almost ran right out to buy a salad spinner. But I didn’t have my Bed Bath and Beyond coupons (and I don’t go there without one) so I just told all my friends about the idea. One of them mentioned that the spinner shown had a flat bottom and the newer ones are roundier, so an older one would work best. Great observation, Jayde!
Then when I didn’t buy one instantaneously, I kinda forgot about it… That is until yesterday… We were on the search for a baseball bat for kiddo and went to Goodwill. I did a quick scan of the house wares and I found the one and only salad spinner. And it was the old flat bottom kind! Perfect! (And kinda dirty looking. My sweet husband didn’t say anything until I mentioned it was for an art project! Then he sighed a deep sigh of relief! He didn’t want a salad out of that spinner.)
We had a great time making spinny art or circle paintings as my son calls them! The 2.5 year old doesn’t really understand the ‘Don’t squeeze too hard’ idea, so we ended up with some thick globs of paint! But hey, that’s ok! My son loved spinning the spinner and opening it to see what had happened.
My favorite part was when he opened the lid, was super excited about the painting and then decided to add more paint. For some reason it hadn’t dawned on me to add more paint once we had already spun one… And he picked out the paint colors for each one. I’m pretty impressed….
My son usually wakes up and asks, ‘Where’s Daddy?’ and then ‘Can I watch TV?’ But this morning the conversation went a little bit differently… ‘Where’s Daddy?’ and then ‘Can we make more circle paintings?’ Then he said, ‘I know! We’ll make one circle painting, eat muffins, go to school, come home and make more circle paintings!’ Ahhh…. So excited that he loves making art!
Did you have any family art projects this weekend???
Since this project cost less than 5 buckaroos, I've linked it to the CSI weekly project link party!
