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Easy Mother’s Day Necklace

| Early Elementary, Everyday Crafts, Gifts, Holidays, Jewelry and Fashion, Mother's Day, Older Elementary, Preschool, Toddler, Tween to Teen

You can’t escape it…the homemade necklace craft is and always will be a staple for DIY gifts on Mother’s Day. We will always love the classic macaroni necklace here at Project Kid, but sometimes you want to give mom a little surprise.

This handmade bauble is a one that mom is sure to love…and no matter how young the child, this is one that will always look chic and polished. With few materials, this one can be accomplished in just a few minutes. And if you act fast, you’ll still have time to hit up Amazon Prime for the materials! If not, your local craft superstore will surely have all that you need!

Here’s what you’ll need:

mother's day heart necklace materials

Peel off heart from paper backing and stick to the wood circle. Make sure to press down firmly.

diy heart necklace for mother's day step 1

Color all around the heart with marker.

heart necklace diy project for mother's day project kid

Peel off heart sticker and discard. Thread string through the hole and knot.

watercolor heart necklace

String beads on to make a necklace.

bead and heart mothers day necklace craft for kids

If Mom is not the necklace type, you can always tie these to a keychain or make a clip for her bag.

make mom a necklace craft for mother's day

A necklace craft for mom on Mother’s Day is a win. One that mom will actually like to wear is just icing on the cake!

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Our Bathroom Renovation

| ad, Decor, DIY Home, Lighting, Styling, Wall Decor

project kid old bathroom kohler renovation

our famously ugly Brooklyn bathroom

This post and project were generously sponsored by Kohler

 

While I don’t consider myself an interior designer at all, I’m definitely a design digester. I have Pinterest boards about kitchens, bathrooms, and lighting, I pet velvet sofas like they’re kittens, and I never met a glossy, lacquered wall I didn’t love. But, even with all my oohing, ahhing, and admiration of good interior design, I have to say that to start from scratch designing a room is a bit intimidating. So when my husband and I decided that it was high time we renovate our (famously ugly) Brooklyn bathroom, I looked to the premier bathroom source: Kohler. Once I started to poke around on their site, I learned that Kohler offers real design help, including floor plans, product selections, and 3D renderings.

kohler bathroom design test

Kohler Design Style Preferences: Style Trends

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

kohler bathroom design service quiz

Kohler Design Style Preferences: Materials Palette

 

Here’s how I best describe it: Kohler Bathroom Design Service is like an online dating service, matching you up with your best bathroom. You start the process with a quiz (see screenshots above)…you are presented with photos of spaces and you just have to viscerally respond to them—sometimes it was the light, sometimes the color, sometimes the textures. It was like an interior design personality test and I loved it. We also were asked to link to our bathroom boards on Pinterest so that they could see where our eyes wandered when day-dreaming about the perfect bathroom.

pinterest board of bathroom ideas

Once the quiz was complete, we had our first of three video calls with our matchmaker, er, designer, Lynn. The first call is the “Collaborate” phase, where Lynn gathered more info about our taste, our functional needs, and our budget (some things don’t translate into the online dating analogy). As you may guess, I’m more of a Do-It-Yourselfer than a Do It With Someone-Elser so this felt so unfamiliar just unloading wants, needs, tastes, etc. But it all made sense to her…we were speaking her language.

Michael and I are not the types that just say things like “I like green” or “I don’t like brushed nickel.” We are people that describe a surface with more words than probably necessary…I tell stories about where I saw a beautiful tile pattern, when and why I was there. (Michael usually chimes in with—Amanda, Lynn doesn’t need to hear all of this!) I asked her repeatedly if we could do this with every room of my house…it felt so luxurious and helpful to have someone interpret our taste, our needs, and our space and funnel it into a plan that was dreamy and achievable.

kohler design services video chat

Video chat with Kohler Designer

The second call was the “Visualize” phase where we got a swatch-like picture of our new bathroom. Lynn had made mood boards with colors and tiles and Kohler products that were derived from our earlier conversation and the answers from our online quiz.

kohler design service 3d rendering of bathroom

3D rendering video chat of bathroom with Kohler Designer

And then the third call is when we got to meet our new bathroom…a 3D rendering of our little space, complete with new paint, tile, product finishes, fixtures and even an orchid on the vanity! There was no swiping left on this bathroom…we were amazed! And to top it off, we received a box in the mail…a beautiful package of paint samples, wood finishes, and a blown-up photo of the 3D rendering.

I think bathrooms are one of the most complex spaces to renovate smartly and that’s why Kohler Design Service’s $499 price tag is such a steal. You get expert design advice, an easy-to-visual final product with a photorealistic bathroom rendering, knowledgeable product recommendations and access to a list of Kohler Installation Partners. Plus, you get a 2% discount when you purchase the products recommended to you on the list!

Once we shared our hopes and dreams with Lynn, we decided to take the destiny of our bathroom in a slightly different direction, collecting all of her expert plumbing and fixture advice but tweaking the design ever so slightly. She set us on our color palette path of green, gold and white, but the more we looked around, the more we uncovered what direction we really wanted to go in.

We are ready to finally live happily ever after with our new bathroom…let the dating process begin! To check out the Kohler products that we selected, you can visit my bathroom idea Pinterest board! Stay tuned for the final reveal soon!

This post and project were generously sponsored by Kohler

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DIY Light Fury Costume

| ad, Animals, Early Elementary, Family Bonding, Grown-Up, Halloween, Older Elementary, Tween to Teen, Uncategorized

This post is sponsored by Universal Pictures.

Sometimes I forget when I sit down to watch an animated film with my kids that it’s not always about silly animals and pretty colors—that there are some top-shelf lessons about to be served. When we watched the first How to Train Your Dragon movie, I felt like I needed to feverishly take notes to remember all of the tidbits for explaining individuality, compassion, and courage to my kids. Now that the final chapter in the franchise, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden Worldis coming to theatres on February 22nd, I will have my pen and paper ready (or at least my notes app on)! There are all new adventures as we’re introduced to a new female dragon, Light Fury.

kid light fury dragon costume diy halloween

True to form, Oliver and Sommer came away from both of the first two How To Train Your Dragon movies with different take-aways…while Oliver cheered through the adventurous battle scenes, Sommer fell in love with Toothless and Hiccup, emulating their sweet, trusting relationship with her stuffed animals.

light fury costume diy dragon kid

To celebrate the release of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden Worldand the new dragon Light FuryI made this costume for Sommer that promises to be on high circulation in the costume bin!

how to train your dragon movie poster

 

What you’ll need:

  • White felt
  • Scrap wrapping or butcher paper
  • Pencil
  • Straight pins
  • Scissors
  • Colored chalk
  • White cord
  • Hot glue gun
  • Paint brush
  • Glitter paint
  • White headband
  • Two white hair rubber bands
  • Safety pins

 

1. Measure the distance from your child’s wrist to the middle of her back. Cut a piece of wrapping paper or butcher paper to that width, with a height of 15 inches. Draw a dragon wing and cut it out.

2. Fold a piece of felt that’s as wide as your child’s arm span and 15 inches tall in half and pin the paper wing to the felt, making sure that the center lines up with the felt’s fold. Cut through both layers of felt and unfold.

3. Using your colored chalk, lightly draw lines from the top center of each wing down to the bottom points of the wing’s tips.

4. Hot-glue cord on top of the chalk lines and fold excess around to the back and glue to secure.

5. Paint felt with glitter paint and let dry.

6. Hot glue white hair ties to the end points of the wings; these will slip over child’s wrists.

7. Cut templates from wrapping paper to create a headpiece for Light Fury as shown. Pin templates to a piece of folded white felt and cut out two large and two small.

8. Fold white felt pieces over the headband and hot-glue to secure.

Once the wings are on wrists, use safety pins to attach the top middle edge to your child’s white shirt.

light fury how to train a dragon costume diy halloween

Wear this beautiful costume to theaters when How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World  opens in theaters February 22! Get your tickets now http://unvrs.al/DragonsTix.

 


More about the movie:

From DreamWorks Animation comes a surprising tale about growing up, finding the courage to face the unknown…and how nothing can ever train you to let go. What began as an unlikely friendship between an adolescent Viking and a fearsome Night Fury dragon has become an epic adventure spanning their lives. Welcome to the most astonishing chapter of one of the most beloved animated franchises in film history: How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.

Now chief and ruler of Berk alongside Astrid, Hiccup has created a gloriously chaotic dragon utopia. When the sudden appearance of female Light Fury coincides with the darkest threat their village has ever faced, Hiccup and Toothless must leave the only home they’ve known and journey to a hidden world thought only to exist in myth. As their true destinies are revealed, dragon and rider will fight together—to the very ends of the Earth—to protect everything they’ve grown to treasure.

 

This post is sponsored by Universal Pictures.

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Make a Pet Dragon Costume

| ad, Animals, Early Elementary, Family Bonding, Grown-Up, Halloween, Older Elementary, Tween to Teen

This post is sponsored by Universal Pictures.

hiccup toothless how to train a dragon

Much like everyone that has seen the How To Train Your Dragon movies, my kids and I fell in love with Toothless. Loyal, courageous, and kind, he has it all…just like our fave four-legged friends. And finally, now that How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is hitting theaters on February 22, we can’t wait to see what epic adventures Toothless and Hiccup embark upon.

With simple materials we turned our loyal friend Joni into a Toothless the Dragon look-alike. Her fire-breathing skills have yet to develop, but no worries—there’s time!

 

What you’ll need:

httyd toothless craft materials

  • Two Tyvek 10×13-inch envelopes
  • Template 
  • Pencil
  • Straight pins
  • Scissors
  • 16 gauge wire
  • Wire cutters
  • Hot glue gun
  • Paint brushes
  • Black paint
  • Glitter paint
  • Dog harness
  • Safety pins

 

  1. Cut two tyvek envelopes down each long side so they becomes long rectangles.

httyd toothless craft

2. Enlarge template to fit your dog. Print and cut out template and trace onto the tyvek towards one end. Flip the template lining up the straight edges and trace again. Repeat to cut a second a second set of wings.

httyd toothless craft

3. Paint both sets of wings black. Let dry.

4. On the backside of one set, hot-glue wire around the top curved edge of the wings, working all the way around to the second wing.  

5. Then, hot-glue pieces of wire down from the top middle edge of the wings to the bottom points.

6. Hot-glue both sets of wings back-to-back, with the wire in between.

httyd toothless craft

7. Paint one side of the wings with glitter paint. Let dry. Hot-glue or pin (for a more temporary costume) wings to the harness.

Make your plans to see How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World in theaters with your kiddos when it opens everywhere on February 22!  Get your tickets now! 

 

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD – In Theaters February 22

From DreamWorks Animation comes a surprising tale about growing up, finding the courage to face the unknown…and how nothing can ever train you to let go. What began as an unlikely friendship between an adolescent Viking and a fearsome Night Fury dragon has become an epic adventure spanning their lives. Welcome to the most astonishing chapter of one of the most beloved animated franchises in film history: How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.

Now chief and ruler of Berk alongside Astrid, Hiccup has created a gloriously chaotic dragon utopia. When the sudden appearance of female Light Fury coincides with the darkest threat their village has ever faced, Hiccup and Toothless must leave the only home they’ve known and journey to a hidden world thought only to exist in myth. As their true destinies are revealed, dragon and rider will fight together—to the very ends of the Earth—to protect everything they’ve grown to treasure.

Don’t forget to go see How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World in theaters February 22! Get your tickets now here!

This post is sponsored by Universal Pictures.

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Valentine Heart Accessories

| Grown-Up, Holidays, Jewelry and Fashion, Older Elementary, Toddler, Tween to Teen, Valentine's Day

Here’s a sweet idea that kids can craft to celebrate their loved ones beyond February 14th. By giving a keychain, a pin, or a necklace, your Valentine will feel loved when she looks at her heart all year round!

conversation heart easy diy gifts for kids valentines

What you’ll need:

 

Make it!

  1. Paint your hearts and let dry. (You can also leave the hearts natural wood.)
  2. Stamp your message onto the conversation heart.
  3. Loop string through the hole to make a necklace or keychain. String on beads. For a keychain, knot it a few times onto the keychain.
  4. To make a pin, glue pin-back to the back of the heart. Glue the ends of the tassel to the bottom edge.

 

 

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Stuffie Superhero Capes

| Activities, Animals, Early Elementary, Family Bonding, Older Elementary, Preschool, Unplugged Time, Yarn & Fabric

Who was your child’s first best friend? Before playdates and string bracelets, kids find love and companionship in their stuffed animals—a playmate, a shoulder to cry on, and a superhero all wrapped into one.

kid with stuffed animal and cape hero diy craft

If you are in the NYC area, please join me on Saturday, January 19th at the Museum of the City of New York to celebrate the exhibition, A City for Corduroy: Don Freeman’s New York. The classic story celebrates the bond between a girl and her bear, who through her eyes, is perfect just as he is. We will be making superhero capes for your kids’ favorite lovies (stuffed animals are welcome too!).

Click here to RSVP!

MAKE A SUPERHERO CAPE:

What you’ll need:

Make it:

  1. For a medium-sized stuffed animal, cut an 8-inch-by-10-inch piece of felt. Cut 6 slits about 1/2-inch down from top edge.
  2. Weave ribbon through the slits.
  3. Decorate the cape the cape using Aleene’s Turbo Tacky Glue to keep those embellishments right where you want them!
  4. Tie cape onto stuffed animal and watch them leap tall couches in a single bound!
  1. For a medium-sized stuffed animal, cut an 8-inch-by-10-inch piece of felt. Cut 6 slits about 1/2-inch down from top edge.
  2. Weave ribbon through the slits.
  3. Decorate the cape the cape using Aleene’s Turbo Tacky Glue to keep those embellishments right where you want them!
  4. Tie cape onto stuffed animal and watch them leap tall couches in a single bound!

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Show & Tell #2

| Uncategorized

What’s your feeling on the whole New Year’s resolution thing? Do you make ’em? Do you keep ’em? Do you write them down? Do you share them or keep them secret? This is the first year that I didn’t even mentally write a list of promises of change and I’m okay with that. And then I saw Julia Rothman‘s More/Less list on Instagram and thought it was the perfect soft launch into resolutions for 2019. I’ll be penning mine this weekend.

We got a great response from our first Show & Tell last week, so here we go with installment numero dos!

  • This Printbrush do-hicky on Kickstarter literally blew my mind. When he printed straight onto a balloon, I was done.

 

  • So the Ostrich Pillow is not a new thing, but it just landed in my inbox via their PR company and it just made me want to curl up in a warm ball. Plus, Moira uses one on the best show on the planet, Schitt’s Creek. Is anyone watching on Netflix?

 

  • Would you add an IV drip to your wellness routine? Too drastic or just what the doctor ordered?

 

 

  • I’m loving Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s response to the people that find fault with a video of her dancing on a rooftop in college! Explain to me what’s wrong with that original video!

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Crafting with J. Crew!

| Everyday Crafts, Family Bonding, Games & Activities, Jewelry and Fashion, Parties

Project Kid had the extreme pleasure of working with J. Crew and their mini-me brand, crew cuts on a super fun craft event to celebrate their September 2018 relaunch. If you know Project Kid and our aesthetic, you’d hopefully recognize that crew cuts is like the clothing sister to our lil craft brand. Bright colors, sweet shapes, and a little bit of humor.

J. Crew’s relaunch campaign was called Meet My Crew, celebrating the people in all of our lives that make up our beloved trusted crews. And when it comes to families, there’s no better crew than the folks that live within the same four walls.

When tasked with creating kids’ craft activities for an iconic clothing and accessory brand, we had to consider a bunch of things. First, the projects have to make sense with the style and the message of the campaign. So making a bird feeder, for example, would have not have flown (pun intended). Also, you can create things to accent their products, but not compete with them. So I’m glad I researched their accessory line before I went to them with my fun pom-pom necklace idea. Here’s what we came up with…

COLORFUL PATCHES

Mom and daughter making patches

Crew cuts wasn’t currently selling anything like this, but there were so many ways to use them with their products…on jean jackets, backpacks, or hats. We started off creating the felt patches beginning with 4 basic shapes…a square, a half-circle, a rounded rectangle (think Pac-man ghost), and a triangle.

Circles and squares and colors OH MY!

We brainstormed different icons that could be made with these simple shapes. So that the kids didn’t have to cut up all of the little pieces, we pre-cut all of the pieces and displayed in sort of a toppings-bar style buffet.

“Toppings” buffet for felt patches!

This was our process of planning colors and shapes for the patches

COLORED GLASSES

Riffing off of the “seeing the world through rose-colored glasses” idea, we gave the kids these cool blue, red, yellow, and green lensed glasses to decorate and wear. They had a real Elton John 70s vibe and the kids looked amazing in them. (These are the cardboard glasses we used, but we punched out the centers on all of them.)

Glasses in the making!

MEET MY CREW PHOTO BOOTH

Clare, me and Bridgid…my beloved craft crew!

What’s a party without a photo booth? Made with just grosgrain ribbon and gold paper, this backdrop had a cool, geometric vibe.

FLOOR TILE PROMPTS

We had vinyl floor tiles made to match the colors of the collection. We wanted it to feel like confetti was dropped from a giant down onto the floor.

 

And every so often, there was a circle that gave an instruction, like “floss like you mean it” “freeze like a flamingo” “believe you can fly” or “high-five your crew”. We wanted the kids to literally stop in their tracks and do something silly, sentimental, or just plain fun.

FUN DECOR!

Just to add some whimsical decor, we also made these colorful panels to match the color story of the collection. You can bet these will be tiling a wall of my studio!

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Show & Tell #1

| Show & Tell

Ya know those moments when you read something or see something and you think, “Oh how clever/cool/sad/beautiful, I need to remember to tell so-and-so about that.”? I have them all the time, and so for that reason I thought I’d start a little weekly habit here on Project Kid called Show & Tell…a column to share discoveries with my like-minded people (that’s you).

Not quite sure if it will be the same number of items every week, but I do hope you’ll enjoy discovering these little Internet tidbits as much as I enjoy sharing them!

Show & Tell, issue no. 001…let’s do this!

  • After the the crazy gift-giving month of December, seeing these beautiful DIY toys made by South Sudanese refugee children both tugged at my heart strings and blew me away with their ingenuity.

 

 

  • USA Today gave us a handy little cheat-sheet of the best post-Christmas holiday sales.

 

  • Holiday party season ain’t over yet! For a little shake-up in the hostess gift category, consider one these clever little guys. (My personal fave is the knife that solves the butter that’s too cold to spread!)

 

  • If you haven’t gotten your fill of Santa beards, twinkle lights, and angels on high, check out this beautiful slideshow of Christmas pics from around the world.

 

  • Any resolutions about taking charge of your life and making changes? Thought so. Check out this list of nonfiction books compiled by some pretty big thinkers to start 2019 off right. (Anyone read this one?)

 

 

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Origami Ornament Craft

| Christmas, Decor, Everyday Crafts, Grown-Up, Holidays, Older Elementary, Paper, Tween to Teen

The first time you fold up a more complex origami project, you pat yourself on the back a few times and you can’t quite believe that all of those simple folds and bends and creases ended up looking so beautiful. But you imagine that mass producing origami would be painful. But actually, the more you make the more your hands just go go go and it becomes this sort of meditative, rote activity. That’s how I felt making these origami Christmas ornaments for Bluprint.

What you need

  • Origami paper
  • Glue
  • Scissors
  • String or thin yarn
  • Sewing needle

1. Initial folds

Start with a square piece of origami paper. Fold it in half and crease. 

Open it back up and fold it in half the other way. Then, open it up again. 

Fold the paper in half diagonally and open it back up. Then fold the remaining opposite corners together. This time, keep the paper folded into a triangle. 

2. Shrink the triangle

Take the top point and fold it down to the left as shown above.

Push the outer corner in on itself. You should now have a smaller triangle. 

3. Fold to the center

Take the right top corner of the triangle and fold it toward the center, as shown above. 

Repeat this step on the other side. 

Flip the paper over and trim off the two projecting tips. You’ll have yet another triangle shape.

4. Repeat

With your paper still flipped, repeat the previous step. 

Once again, trim off the excess.

5. Unfold

Unfold the flaps you just made so you have a wide diamond shape. 

Fold the right flap in toward the center and crease it flat, as shown above. 

Then, flip the left side of this flap over to the right and crease. 

Repeat this step on the opposite side. 

Then, flip the right flap over to the left at the center. 

Flip the whole thing over and repeat all these steps on this new side. 

Keep folding!

Once everything is folded, you’ll have a small triangle.

6. Fold the corners

Fold the top corners of the triangle down.

Then, flip over the right side twice, so you have the small triangle again. 

Fold down the corners here as well.

Turn the triangle to the opposite side and fold down these corners. 

Just as before, flip the right side over twice and fold down the corners. 

7. Open it up

Unfold the paper completely.

Fold each point down as shown.

It should now look like this.

8. String it up

Thread your string, make a knot and poke it through the very center of your origami. 

Repeat all of these steps on another piece of paper, add some dots of glue to your folds and stick ’em together!

Then hang them on your tree!

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