something a little fun to do with the kids

I though thie was very funny when I found it on Pinterest and will defiantly be doing it with my girls
3D Grumpy cat

Will post pictures when we have completed them

Finger print apple Thank you card

It will soon be time to start thinking of saying thank you to the teachers as the children prepare to move into the next school year.

We are in that position now as one teacher prepares to return from maternity and the interim teacher prepares to leave. He has been a fantastic influence to my eldest so I wanted to create a card to say thank you.

I used WORD to create a 4cm square and WORDART to add the names of my daughter and a few other classmates. I then used a red ink pad to place one fingerprint from each child into the corresponding square. I used a brown and green pen to add a stalk and a leaf to turn each fingerprint into an apple. I mounted the squares onto silver card and then onto apple printed card. I then mounted these onto Papermania 'All Aboard' papers to make it look like the mounted fingerprints were on a pin board. Then using a sheet of 'Scrabble' paper I cut out the letters and added them to the bottom. I cut off the tops from some notice board pins and glued them onto the 'Notice Board' paper to add detail.

 

Adding the fingerprints of the child gives a personal touch to this card

Easter Cards

Well the weekend was a total washout with all the rain, creating two very board and very frustrated little girls. So some form of activity had to be organised to stop them (and me) going stir crazy!!

I have been wanting to make Easter cards for my Niece's and Nephews, but have not seen any craft packs that I liked in the shops. So I decided to look on line for free downloadable stamps that the girls would be able to colour in and attach to Easter Cards for their cousins.

I typed 'Free Easter stamps' into the Google image site. There are a plethora of sites which will allow you free access to some of their stamps.

Here are a few examples:

Easter Bunny

Little girl holding easter chicks by deariedollsdigis.blog

Cute little girl and boy bunny in basket- The Greeting farm

deariedollsdigis blog

I then needed papers to back the images onto. So again I searched on Google for 'Free Easter papers' and found this lovely little lot:
http://papercraftinspirations.themakingspot.com/blog/free-egg-citing-easter-papers-to-download-from-issue-85

I gave the girls my Promarkers (very brave thing to do) and they used them to great effect to colour in the different stamps.

Rona got a little angry as the colours kept bleeding over the line so she left the colouring to Isla and helped me choose the different papers for the different cards. We mounted some of the stamps onto tissue paper and gently ripped around the edge of the image. I cut out some of the sentiments, from the above paper collection, and Rona added the sticky pads to the stamp and the sentiment. These cards are A6 in size.

We made the next card into a gatefold card out of A4 card and added buttons to finish it off.  (Beautifully coloured in by Isla)

The next 2 cards are again A6 in size and I cut the rabbits out so the beautiful papers can be seen behind.

The card on the left is finished off with small buttons and the card on the right has 2 flowers cut from the papers above and finished off with cardcandi in the centre (buttons could be used too)

These 2 were for my nephews.

 

 

The striped backing paper on the card above was not part of the papers in the link above, I bought this separately.

I got the girls to sign the pictures they coloured in and as far as possible I tried to leave the signature on.

The girls spent about 2 hours doing these, and although I had to finish some of the cards off all the colouring and some of the arrangements were completed by the girls. These cards are easy to make and cheap, needing only a printer, paper/card, scissors, glue, and pens. It was a fun activity to keep the girls away from the tv on a dull and dreary Sunday morning. x x

Book Week ideas

The next few weeks will see schools participating in 'Book Week' and boy havnt the superstores caught on!  I must admit that in previous years (having been given plenty of notice) I have been set some challenges!

Last year my eldest wanted to be Sophie from Roald Dahl's BFG. So more inspired by the cartoon (I'm afraid) I set out trawling ebay for fleecy yellow blankets. I found a large one on ebay for a couple of pounds and ordered some cheap Harry Potter glasses too! When the fleece arrived it was perfect so I folded it in half, cut out a hole big enough for my daughters head to fit through (in the folded end) and stitched together the sides with huge stitches using black wool. I bought a cheap pair of white pumps from Primark and the look was created.

The previous year she wanted to be Aslan from the lion the witch and the wardrobe. So again I ploughed through ebay looking for low priced fake fur guillets. I found one for a good price and won the bid. Once I got it I unpicked the fur material from the lining (I could have just bought a metre of material, but it would have been very expensive and was not as good quality). I then proceeded to stitch the fur into a hood shape. I am not the best seamstress and I don't own a sewing machine, so this was all done by hand. I also bought (again from ebay) a cheap yellow tracksuit. I attached a lion mask to the front of the 'Lions Main' that I had made so it could be slipped on over the head. Using left over pieces of fur and sheering elastic I made some slip on furry hands and feet. To produce a book week aslan.

 

 

Although not fancy dress hire standard the results pleased my daughter and she was very put out by the fact that the whole school thought she was Simba from the lion King, but I was just pleased it was recognisable as a lion.

 

 

This year I have the 2 girls in school so both have to dress up. The youngest school gave plenty of notice and was very specific on the theme of Monkeys, so brown trousers, tee shirt and boots and I bought a monkey tail and ears. Very happy little Rona.

 

However, the junior school was not so organised and have given us less than a week to find 'A character from their favourite book'. Isla has just finished reading the Hobbit and wanted to be FILI the dwarf (not, Bilbo or Gandalf- but a very specific dwarf!!!!!). I trawled and trawled the internet.

 

Looking at pictures she needed a long leather coat and chain mail!!!!

 very Nice ;)

 

 

She doesn't like to make my life easy. I found a Bilbo costume

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rubies-Bilbo-Baggins-Costume/dp/B00AAB7L1K

 

This costume comes up quite big. My daughter is 8years old and the 7-8 fit her very well. However we now have the dilemma of foot wear! She did not want to wear shoes as Hobbits quite clearly 'DO NOT WEAR SHOES'. It did not matter what I said to her she needed Hobbit Feet. I refused. I had already forked out more money than intended on a costume to wear on one day (luckily I have another child who will probably wear it of a book week when she is older and my girls LOVE dressing up so It well be used). A solution was at hand. Luckily the pumps I had bought the previous year for the Sophie outfit had been too big and still fit. So I put 3 teabags into a large bowl and added boiling water. I allowed this to sit for 10 minutes then removed the teabags and added the shoes. I left these to soak in the tea for another 15 minutes and took them out. The result was a flesh coloured shoe. I placed these on greaseproof paper and put then beside the radiator to dry. Once dry I used a pen to draw on toes and nails and a light brown pen to add detail. I then used a dark brown felt tip to add 'Hairs' to the shoe and there you have a sensible pair of Hobbit feet for a day in school;

 

I do love seeing some of the creative ideas that some of the mums have during book week. For example one little girl had come to school as the peach from James and the Giant Peach. She had a large piece of peachy coloured paper over her like a sandwich board. It was cut into a circle and it had pompom insects attached to it. A fab inexpensive costume which clearly showed time spent sat at a table with the child probably discussing the book and the basic anatomy of the different insects. Kind of put me and my shop bought Hobbit out fit to shame!

Busy, Busy, Busy

I havnt been on here for so long, I almost forgot about it!
But hopefully I am back with more silly antics and a little bit of crafting too.

I have been very busy making cards and scrapbooking. The girls made their own valentines cards to send to unsuspecting boys at school (growing up too fast).

I have been making cards for the flurry of birthdays I have in January and February. Here are a few examples;

These cards were made for my nieces. I used a glue gun to fix the crayons to the card and then used a heat gun to gently melt the crayons and let the wax run.

IDEA: My children have lots and lots of broken bits of crayons in the bottom of their pencil box. Why not recycle these. Another good idea you could use is to melt the crayons in a small aluminium tray  (bend the edge of the tray to make a spout before heating). Pour the liquid wax into silicon moulds (heart shapes, cupcake shapes etc.) to create new and unusual shaped crayons or embellishment's for cards or scrapbooks. (BUT TAKE CARE AS LIQUID WAX IS VERY HOT).

boxing clever

Rona got some beautiful cards for her birthday and I always feel guilty just recycling them. This year I tried to use them constructively. I used some cardstock to create a 3D box. Rona used the images she cut out of the cards and stuck them on the box to make a 'birthday box'.

The girls really enjoyed this and I used a punch to put a rivet and some ribbon on the lid and glued a button on the front to loop the ribbon around and create a fastener.

A toy to let the imagination run wild

If you are looking for a toy to spark the imagination, whether for a child or an adult, try Rory's Story Cubes. They are amazing!

http://www.storycubes.com/

We bought some of these for my 4 year old for her birthday. They comprise of 9 dice with different images on each face. Once rolled you have to start by saying 'Once upon a time....' Then you use the images to tell your story.

You can make it as complex of as easy as you want. My youngest daughter likes to choose her images rather than having the randon rolled selection, however the eldest likes to roll them then write the story down. This can be taken as far as you like, you could set a time limit to the story so they have to fill a lenght of time thereby increasing the time they have to spend thinking or make it an association game where they can't actually say the name of the image in the story telling, they have to refer to it in a round about way.

Some of the ideas both of the girls have come up with have stunned me. My favourite so far was told by Rona (the youngest);

'Once upon a time there was an aeroplane and he left a foot print.....' If only she knew!