Instead of preserving nature by pressing or drying leaves, you can instead use them to make an imprint in one of my favorite craft supplies: air dry clay.
Go on a nature walk with the kids and find leaves that have very pronounced veins—the more distinct the veins, the better the finished product. Roll out the air dry clay until it’s about 1/4″ thick, then use a rolling pin to press the leaves down into the clay. Peal away the leaves and use a toothpick to “cut out” the leaf. Gently rest the clay leaf inside a bowl, creating a bend, and let them dry completely (at least 24 hours). I made a very watery acrylic paint mixture to add a translucent coating to the leaves, but you can choose whatever paint finish you like. The one thing to keep in mind: if you are using water with your paint, you have to paint your strokes fast and few…when air-dry clay gets wet, guess what it does? It wants to return to malleable clay, so you have 2, maybe 3 strokes to get it fully covered.
Check out the full post that I did for Camp.com for more details!
Now that winter is over and spring cleaning is upon us, you likely have some lone gloves who lost their mate in the last sledding excursion of 2021. You have three options here…first, you can hold onto that glove, hoping that one day the other will magically reappear. Second, you might be the “out of sight, out of mind” type and you just get rid of the sad lone glove. And third, if you are like me, you’ll keep it and turn it into a fun craft.
The how-to for this recent project can be found over on Camp.com! And for other ideas of past glove monsters, check out this post from a few years back!
There are so many more fun things to celebrate than school, so why do we reserve these rah-rah pennants for school spirit? Come up with a list of things that your kids loves and make some wall signs to cheer them on! Need suggestions?
Bacon
Cake
Sleep (Maybe for the parents’ room!)
Glitter
Youtube
Ramen
Legos
Beach
Roblox
Rainbows
Check out this super cute and easy upcycled project that I did for Camp.com! They are made from materials that you likely have around the house, including cardboard! Head on over to their site for the full how-to!
Be a sweetie and give candy to your close friends and family for Valentine’s Day! This project is so easy and uses materials that you likely have around the house.
Line the cardboard tube along the bottom shorter edge of your paper, and mark the opposite end with a pencil. Move the tube across the paper and make several marks. (If you are using a paper towel tube, cut it in half first.)
Cut along this line and set other piece of paper aside for a future project.
Roll the cardboard tube with the paper and tape to seal. Set your tube aside for now.
Fold second piece of paper in half lengthwise and rest the tube in the middle. Make a pencil mark on the second piece of paper on the top and bottom of the tube, right along the crease.
Draw half hearts along the fold.
Cut out the hearts.
Fringe the top and bottom edges of the paper to the marked line. Don’t go past this line. The thinner the fringe the better!
Cut off about 1 inch of the paper on either end (You can do this before step 7 but we forgot!).
Unfold the paper.
Tape the second piece of paper around the tube, making sure to center the tube from top to bottom. You can use the marks you made in step 4 to line it up.
Now fill your tube with candy, chocolates, toys, etc! We recommend putting unwrapped candy in a plastic baggie or in plastic wrap.
Gently bend the fringed ends over the edge of the tube all the way around. Repeat on the other end.
Cut two 3″ pieces of string and tie them around the fringed ends.
Tape the ends of the string to the back of the tube to prevent them from sliding off.
Holding a fringe between your thumbnail and the pad of your middle finger, gently pull at a few strands of paper to curl.
Remember Valentine’s Day as a kid, actually in a school building? You’d spend evenings leading up crafting Valentines, deciding which people get signed “love” and which get “from.” This year, like most things, is looking a little different than norm, and Valentine’s Day is no exception. Most kids will miss out on sifting through their classroom mailboxes, anxiously anticipating the candy, toys, and treats attached to their Valentines.
Surprise the kiddos with a little something from you on February 14th this year! Here are 14 ideas for Valentine’s Days gifts for kids of all ages!
Traditional snow globes are super fun to make but they require a lot of ingredients…plus the process can be pretty messy. And what if it springs a leak? Yuck.
Instead of the traditional glittery globes, try making a dry snow globe using a plastic cup, cereal box, and tissue paper. It’s truly a parents’ dream craft.
This craft was made in conjunction with the Museum of the City of New York, an extraordinary institution that celebrates all of the diversity, excitement, and wonder that is the greatest city in the world.
Click the link to watch this video and the two other winter boredom busters that we made!
If I had a penny for every empty food container that I’ve saved for a craft project, I’d be a very rich woman. Here at Projectkid.com, we are serial (and cereal) upcyclers…both for the ecological impact on our planet and for the convenience factor (use what you have!). More than ever during this quarantined time, we’ve hoarded all the boxes, caps, lids, tubes and containers that have passed through our household. When you have a bin of these things in your house, it invites kids to inventively build three-dimensionally; they can innovate with their hands and don’t need to rely on craft kits.
When Stonyfield asked me what I could make with their quart-sized yogurt containers, my creative juices went on overdrive. Hats! Pencil cups! Drums! The tubs are sturdy and waterproof…so yes, a vase or planter would be perfect! I wanted to make vases that felt sculptural—something where you could recognize that the base is a simple quart size container but the boundaries of the basic cylinder were broken. Since duct tape is also waterproof, it was the perfect, colorful option to use on the outside.
These duct tape vases were so much fun to make. You can create people, animals, or just various abstract patterns. They make a great DIY gift idea this holiday season to make with your kids!
Cover the container with strips of duct tape, working from the top down.
Cut another strip of tape and stick a cotton ball to the back. Adhere the strip to the container, making sure that the cotton ball lands where the eye would be. Repeat for a second eye. Smooth the tape down around the eyes.
To make the eye lids, attach a piece of tape to parchment or wax paper and cut out crescent shapes. Attach to the top of the eyes.
Use a sharpie to draw the outlines, lashes, and pupils of eyes.
Cut a triangle from thin cardboard, about 2-by-2 inches and cover with duct tape. Fold in half and tape to the container as a nose, right in between the eyes. Draw on nostrils with sharpie.
To make the mouth, fold a piece of red duct tape to the center, and then to the center again from the opposite side. Cut out a top and bottom lip and use folded-over duct tape to attach just under the nose.
Now that you have the face, it’s time to add the features:
Ears: Cut two matching ears out of cardboard and cover with duct tape. Tape to either side of the head.
Short hair: Cut swoops of duct tape out and attach them along the top of the yogurt container.
Ringlets: Tear off a piece of duct tape, about 10 inches long. Lay a pipe cleaner down the center horizontally and fold tape over towards the center. Twirl the pipe cleaner/tape around a thick marker to make the ringlet and use a small piece of duct tape to tape the curl to the yogurt container.
Straight hair: To make bangs, adhere two 4-inch pieces of tape to each other. Fringe the ends and trim to the correct length. To make the hair, cut three pieces of duct tape: 6, 8 and 10 inches long. Fold each in half lengthwise. Make a loop with the shortest piece and tape ends together. Loop medium piece over the smallest loop, and the longest over the medium one. Use matching duct tape to secure to side of yogurt container. Repeat for the opposite side.
Make the body:
Peel the wrapper off of a single-serve Stonyfield Farms yogurt container and cover with duct tape.
Add details like collars, stripes or buttons to make the body.
Use a piece of folded duct tape to attach the body under the head.
There are few craft supplies I love more than a yarn pom-pom, but to make them en masse can get a little time-consuming…wrapping, trimming, shaping. When I saw that Oriental Trading had this mega pack of yarn pom-poms in great colors, I knew I just needed them near me. (You can also buy them in individual colors if you want to pick and choose.)
The DIY ornament possibilities are endless I tell you! Here are 5 different yarn pom-pom DIY Christmas ornaments that I made for Oriental Trading’s Fun 365 site. Head over there for the full how-to!
Back in August, due to the pandemic, our cousins and closest friends, Jane, Micah, and their son Harvey, (we call them frousins) moved out west to Seattle—none of us are from Brooklyn, but we were the only family that each other had here. It was also a bonus that we adored one another, travelled well together, and loved the same cocktails. After quarantining upstate for the early part of Covid, they realized how much they loved having space and the outdoors, especially for their 3-year-old son, Harvey. It was a heartbreak for all four of us, to say the least. Just one more pill to swallow from this tough time.
We always used to talk about how one day my kids, Sommer and Oliver, would babysit Harvey, teach him how to build the best train set, and show him the choice playgrounds of Brooklyn. It was especially heartbreaking for Sommer, as she had really forged a beautiful companionship with him.
For the holidays, we wanted to give him something that marked this moment of time both for him and for us, and we knew we wanted to do it in the form of a custom photo something. When I scrolled the designs that Mixbook has to offer, the ABC book by Ampersand Design Studio had me at hello. We could make an alphabet book for Harvey all about New York and our sweet three years together.
So Sommer and Oliver made lists of words…we knew that S would be for Sommer, O would be for Oliver, etc, but we had so much fun brainstorming all of the other letters of the alphabet. We finally settled on the 26 words and then went hunting through all of our photos to find the best pics (and for some we actually went on a literal walk down memory lane to shoot them).
The Mixbook software was so easy to use that Sommer was able to upload the photos and drop them into the pages. I helped her move around the layouts and letters—she felt super proud to be able to say she designed her own ABC book! The designs and colors of our template were so delightful that there wasn’t anything major for us to change. And honestly, it was screen time spent with my daughter that I wasn’t mad about! (Moms, you know what I’m talking about, right?) We got to work together and laugh at memories and awwww over all of the sweet pics.
With Mixbook.com you don’t have to be a designer to produce a beautiful product. You can customize as much as you want, or just follow the huge variety of templates that they offer for books, calendars, cards, or wall art. Order for a someone that you haven’t been able to see for this holiday! Use code PKID50 for 50% off your first book now through December 30, 2020!
When Harvey was born, it was the closest I would come to having a third child. I jumped at every chance to hold him, feed him, even change a diaper in the early days. And nothing makes me happier than Harvey learning his ABCs from this special book we made.
Normally the range of the gifts that mom might want would be vast…maybe a new piece of jewelry, a purse, bath salts are always nice, or even an edible gift. But this year, there is only one category that matters—anything that can be enjoyed in the comfort of your own home!
This year, moms in quarantine, which essentially is all moms, need any and all things that bring light, hope, comfort—basically any morsel of joy.
I put together this list with me in mind…and my best friend, and my sister, and our school principal. I’d say this mom gift guide is “one-size-fits-most.”
