Hopscotch Mat

Along with the wall art I made for the kids for their birthdays last spring, I also made these cute hopscotch mats. I found the idea and directions here. I purchased a drop cloth from Canadian Tire, and ended up making 2 of these mats, plus some other creations I will post about later. Definitely a good use of the $10 for at least 4 gifts. I had a lot of felt handy in my crafting stash, so it was easy enough to put together.

This was a 10 o'clock at night project that needed to get finished the next morning, so needless to say, it wasn't perfect, but the kids did enjoy it. If I were to make it again, I would however put some sort of stickier surface on the bag of the mat, as my brother has since informed me that it is quite difficult to play on hardwood floors.

Shadowed Cat

I was super impressed with how this picture turned out. I cut out all the pieces of for Big N to put on the orange piece of paper, and she did all the gluing. I *might* have moved a few things while the glue was still wet (if you look carefully you can see the white globs of glue), but I think we did a pretty good job for an accountant and a two year old.

Halloween Crafts

We've been doing a lot of Halloween crafts for the past few weeks.

Here we did hand print spiders for Big N while Little N made footprint ghosts (which we mailed to a family member before we remembered to take a picture).

We made construction paper candy corn that Big N added a little more fun to since she wasn't a big fan of how our craft looked. Although thinking about it now, it's probably because she has absolutely no clue what candy corn is, oh well, no need to introduce more candy now.

Crinkle Cat

Using Martha Stewart for inspiration Big N and I made this crinkly cat one day during craft hour while Little N was sleeping. Big N is getting so independent in her art. She can now fold the paper herself and do ALL the gluing, she tries really hard to use the scissors herself and can so far cut a triangle. What a huge change from a year ago when it was really just me doing things and her watching. Anyways, we're going to hang this from the ceiling for Halloween but, it was just much to wet with glue at this point to take it anywhere.

World Word Art

If you remember back in March when two of my niece's and one nephew were celebrating their birthdays we made them a zebra, an elephant, and a monkey to hang in their respective rooms. So of course, now that we are celebrating the first birthday of my other niece she needed something to put in her room too. When I asked her parents they said she was really into word world these days, or at least smiles when it's on. So, we went with a word world theme and made the duck for her to put up.

At first I attempted to just use white glue to outline the duck and then had planned to paint everything on colour so it was just a subtle picture, but that didn't turn out well at all, so I ended up painting the whole thing.


Now, we just need all the kids to get healthy so we can actually deliver our present to little B.

The Princess and the Dragon

Big N has recently decided that she doesn't like dragons, so R had the idea that the two N's should play the princess and the dragon. Of course with Little N being the dragon, I'm not sure if the thought was to get Big N to like dragons because her little brother was one, or that she should just beat up dragons, but either way, the kids had fun putting together their princess and dragon hats. As you can see Big N did all the gluing on her hat all by herself, which meant it took an extra couple hours for the hat to actually be dry. Big N was definitely more interested in wearing her hat than Little N, but he did enjoy playing with the fire mouth on his dragon.
Big N is just starting to get into the make believe stage, so I think in the coming year we'll have a lot of fun pretending.

Fall Wreath

Since I return to work November 1st, I needed a fall wreath that could easily change into a winter wreath without too much effort. I have a very large feeling that we'll be especially busy from November till Christmas with work starting, then an exam on December 1st, then Christmas parties galore. So, that's my reason for this haphazardly thrown together wreath.

It's an argyle yarn wreath, with the blocks out of both felt and foam pieces I had lying around the house. I didn't want to glue them on because I want to use the yarn again for the holiday wreath, so they are attached with painters tape, and the yarn around them is also just stuck in place at the beginning and end. This was the easiest way for Big N to help out too, hence why the blocks are everywhere.

It's not the prettiest thing ever, but it'll do the trick to put us in the fall spirit, and I don't think the trick or treaters will be judging me based on my door wreath. And if they are, one less candy for them! :-)

Haunted House

I came across a really cool blog post about how to paint a haunted house that looked super simple. However, the day we decided to make haunted houses I didn't have the patience to get out the paint. So, we did a similar house with construction paper. Big N picked where all the windows should go. Then we glued a yellow piece of paper behind our black house. It was super simple and Big N thought it was great.

Wall of Fame - September

I'm behind again, but here's how the September wall turned out, not great, but a heck of a lot better than August.

Paper Pumpkin

I came across this blog post at Sweet Bee Buzzings and took the author's advice and made this craft with the kids. I followed her directions pretty closely, so check out her blog for the tutorial, but it was quick, easy and the kids were amazed with the result of our construction paper and pipecleaner pumpkin.

Apple Art

I needed an activity to keep the kids entertained for a few more minutes one evening while we were waiting for R to get home from work since he was stuck in traffic. So, we cut out apples from construction paper and glued them in our construction paper baskets. We pretended they were falling from our tree.

It was a quick activity, but at least something to get the kids from loosing their schmidt before dinner.

Painted Paper Bag Pumpkins

We did it! We officially started decorating for Halloween. Up to now I've never really been a big Halloween fan, but having two little kids, one of whom was born three days prior to the big day, it gets me a little more excited for the event.

We filled paper bags with crumbled paper, got out the orange paint and went to town. If I were doing this craft without a toddler, I probably wouldn't have stuffed prior to painting, but I needed Big N to be interested, so the stuffing part got her away from the computer (side note, my 2.5 year old knows how to run Netflix on the iPhone, the PS3, and the computer now, all in all we're doomed for getting her to stay away from the television). After the paint was dry, we cut out faces with construction paper and glued them on. Big N was super excited to see her pumpkin all finished, I don't think she quite understood what we were doing until the face went on. Little N thought they were pretty cute too, and was very excited to get his hands in the paint (I'm not sure the carpet appreciated our adventure, but oh well).

Leaf Tree

While we were deciding what route to go with our September wall this month (I might have been getting a little over zealous and thinking pumpkins), we decided to make a tree. I cut branches out of construction paper and then the kids and I went to the backyard to find leaves. We found all sorts of types of leaves, and I being the great mother I am, could only identify the maple leaves, so I made up names for the rest, hoping that my two year old will not remember the names I created and tell all her friends.

The plan was to trace the leaves and then place them on our tree, but it seems that all the leaves we gathered were much too big for our tree, so we created our own leaves. I'm constantly amazed at how fast Big N is growing, she's now able to glue all the leaves on wherever she wants them to grow.

I think our tree looks pretty cute, and Big N had a great time putting it all together. Little N had a great time trying to eat construction paper. All in all a good craft for everyone.

Water Bottle Bracelets

We've been drinking a ton of plastic bottled water, bad for the environment yes, but it gets us drinking water, so it's a plus for us. So, looking at all these bottles in the recycling bin, I wanted to see if there was something the kids and I could put together for craft time one day. I came across a blog post somewhere along the line that used plastic water bottles as bracelets, so off we went to give it a try.

We cut rings out of our plastic water bottles, the one for my wrist had to have a cut down it in order to get it to fit. Then we covered the entire bracelets in paper mache. The plan was to paint the bracelets and add some funky stuff to them, however, we haven't gotten that far yet, and have since moved on to different crafts.

Rolled Paper Frame

One day while aimlessly searching blogland, I came across this post for a rolled paper frame art. We had both paper and cardboard handy, so off we went to roll some paper. We followed the directions pretty closely, so go on over to check them out.

We spray painted the entire frame and background black, and then added a little metallic silver paint to the rolled paper.
But now we had this pretty frame with absolutely nothing to put in it. We started looking around the playroom for something we could put in it, and came across a pretty picture of a frog R had coloured with Big N one day after work. We Mod Podged the crap out of it, and came up with this stunning array.
Mod Podge and I aren't the best of friend, so I ended up using some white glue on the back to make sure the little froggie stayed put. Now we just have to find a place to put this little man. He's pretty cute. I think he might get to stay.

The $4.50 headboard

Whether this is considered a headboard or wall art, I'll never know. But, are you ready for the reveal of what this beautiful piece is made from?
It's $1.25 piece of poster board, covered in a $1 pillow case all from Dollarama. The centre is an 8x10 canvas art piece that Big N painted for me, there's actually a lot of dimension in the piece, but it doesn't really photograph very well. There you have it ladies and gentlemen, a budget basic redo.

Magazine Organizer

For my niece's birthday this year, I got her a magazine subscription, and the last I heard, she loved it! So, hopefully that's still the case. Now, the best part of this birthday gift was that if you bought two subscriptions you got a third free. What's the you say, spend an extra $10 and get magazines for myself too? Why, of course, I'll take it!

And now, I find myself anxiously awaiting my Today's Parent and Moneysense subscriptions, heck, I am an accountant by trade. P.S. Both these magazines rock!

But, onto the real point, I have absolutely no where to put my magazines beside the bookshelf in the spare bedroom, and that's a little out of the way when I'm looking for something to do to pass the time during the day.

So, Big N and I got to work making a nice magazine holder.

We took a Bran Flake box, since it was about the right size, and cut off the top and cut down the sides. We added some scrapbook paper to the back and sides to cover the box itself. And just like that, we had a cute little magazine organizer.

As I was putting away endless amounts of colouring books today, I thought one of these little boxes would work great for them too, so perhaps tomorrow we will make another. A few things I learned along the way for the next round:

1. If your box is very graphic, you may want to take it outside and add a coat of spray paint first, if you look carefully you can see the coupons available on the back of the box.

2. The glue did tend to pucker a little bit, so I would probably water it down a little more than I did this time.

3. Work at not having any excess, since as you can see above a little piece of my box is missing scrap book paper, and that is because I only had one sheet of that same pattern. If I were to make it so it didn't hardly overlap with the black binding, it probably could have covered just a little bit more.

Coffee Filter Flowers

We needed some more decorations to make Granny's birthday a spectacular event, so we thought making her a beautiful brooch would be wonderful, until we discovered we don't own a safety pin. We came across this site outlining how to create coffee filter flowers, so we got to work putting coffee filters into bowls of water and food colouring. We had three different coloured bowls and Big N loved adding the coffee filters to the water. We left the filters in the bowls for various amounts of time, and then left them to dry on paper towels and newspaper on the floor.
We made flower shapes by taping the center of the flowers. Although we used all different colours, most of our flowers ended up pinkish, seems that was Big N's favourite bowl. We couldn't find anything to use for stems so we used our paper bowl from yesterday and made a beautiful centerpiece.
I'm sure Granny absolutely loved her decorations, because really, who else could love something as wonderful as this but a grandmother?!?

Paper Bowl

After trolling through blog land one day, I ran across a tutorial for a paper bowl, it looked fancy and beautiful. I realized the bowl was nothing more than a little paper mache, so off we went to the backyard with a bowl, some cut up newspaper, and watered down glue.

The key to the bowl not getting covered in glue is to cover the outside in Pam, then apply saran wrap, then apply more Pam. When you start adding the paper and the glue, it won't stick to the bowl and it'll be easy to remove your shape holder.

Turn the bowl upside down, dip the paper in the glue mixture (2 parts glue to 1 part water) and start sticking it to the outside of the bowl. We continued this until we were thoroughly covered in glue. After drying for a couple days (since we needed to add some more paper and glue since our original technique of just brushing on the glue didn't hold well enough), we had a beautiful paper bowl.

We originally thought we would paint the bowl and add some fancy things to it, but we ran out of time. Check back tomorrow to see what we ended up putting in this BEAUTIFUL bowl.

Pasta Jewelry

The day I asked for suggestions on what to do another friend had said that just the other day her daughters had painted pasta and made little gardens out of the shapes. That sounded cute, until I looked in the cupboard and found out we only had penne and spaghetti. Now, spaghetti doesn't lead itself to too many crafts that I'm aware of, but maybe I should google it before I say that. But, I thought the penne could make could necklaces. So, Big N and I set off to paint some pasta. After the paint had thoroughly dried, we thread ribbon threw it and made some beautiful necklaces and bracelets. Since Big N is on a princess kick right now, she thought her jewelry was fantastic.