I was cooking a new recipe the other day, and it called for a teaspoon of turmeric. When I took off the lid of the spice jar, I had to pull off that little shaker insert that comes with all spice jars. After I removed the insert and set it on my counter, I dipped my teaspoon into the spice to add to my recipe. I was cleaning the kitchen later that day, and I realized that I hadn’t replaced that little plastic circle and for some reason, in that moment, a lightbulb went off in my head. These inserts are like tiny, star-shaped needlepoint canvases just waiting to be stitched!
It felt like one of my most outlandish craft ideas, but I’ve really been attracted to needlepoint, embroidery, and stitching lately. I grabbed some yarn and needles and started playing. Then I went into the spice jar and removed as many shaker inserts as I could find on spices that I KNOW I will never shake!
I turned my stitched circles into award ribbons, but I think there are so many ways to use them: necklaces, refrigerator magnets, framed in a grid and turned into wall art!
Remove those goofy little inserts from your spice jars. Who really shakes out spices unless you are making cinnamon toast??
Cut yarn and thread the needle. Tie a double knot at the end of the yarn; make sure it’s large enough so that it won’t go through the hole.
Stitch as though you were working on a canvas. Here are a few tips:
When you are stitching through a hole that already has yarn though, try to push the yarn to the side so that you are not stitching through the yarn. That could pull the strands of the yarn in a funny way and mess up the look.
Try going around the entire shaker insert to create a sun-ray effect. Think outside the circle!
Stitch with two yarn colors at the same time to create a cool striped effect.
If you want to create a “french knot,” you can sort of cheat it. With the yarn on top of the “canvas”, tie a knot in the yarn close to the surface of the shaker lid. Thread the needle back through the hole. This is a great way to hide the hole.
If you choose to turn yours into award ribbons, Cut 1-to-2-inch pieces of felt, about 1/2″ wide. Trim a triangle out of the bottom to make it look like ribbon ends, and glue them to the back of the stitched shaker insert. Feel free to add some stitching to make the ribbons dynamic too! Also, if you happen to have ribbon, you can certainly skip the felt step and just use ribbon.
Glue a pin back to the back of the center of the circle.
I had asked Sommer if she preferred the ribbon design or the one that looks more like a military medal, but she had no reference for that, so we went with the award ribbon design. But here’s what that looked like just for your reference!
One of my favorite things to do when I craft is to really transform the material into something so different than it was when I began. Whether it’s using it in a different way, deconstructing it and rebuilding it, or adding a material to change it’s shape, it’s fun to play with the possibilities.
This DIY yarn birdcage is such a cool AHA! project that kids will love! When we made the cage, we left the bottom open, because why cage up a bird that wants to fly around, even if that bird is made from paper? You can have fun experimenting with fun bird crafts like origami birds or pom-pom birds.
1. Blow up a balloon until it fits snuggly in vase. (If you don’t have a vase, you can cut off the bottom of a 2-liter drink bottle.) Adhere a piece of painter’s tape around where the balloon meets the edge of the vase, then cover the whole thing in plastic wrap. Place this on the cookie sheet.
2. Cut 4 pieces of yarn that stretch from the bottom edge of vase to the bottom edge of the vase on the other side. Cut 2 of these in half. Then cut 3 pieces that wrap around the circumference of the vase. Lastly, cut 1 4-inch piece.
3. Pour Mod Podge into a disposable bowl. Dip one of the long pieces into the glue and squeeze off the excess with your fingers. Drape the yarn over the top of the balloon, centered, until it reaches the bottom edge. The yarn will stretch out a bit when wet, so just lay the excess on the wax paper. Smooth it down over the surface of the balloon and vase. Repeat, adhering the next long piece exactly perpendicular to the first.
4. Take one of the 4 half pieces, dip it in Mod Podge, and adhere it centered in between 2 of the lines. Repeat in the next 3 spaces.
5. Dip one of the other 3 pieces of yarn, and wrap around the base of the vase. Smooth it down. Dip and wrap the other two pieces where the balloon meets the vase, about a ½ inch apart. Set cookie sheet aside and let it dry, about 4 hours.
6. Dip 4-inch piece of yarn and make a circle flat on the wax paper. This will become the hanger.
7. Once it’s hard and dry to the touch, use scissors to pop the balloon. Wiggle the vase, plastic wrap, and balloon out of the cage. With your fingers, scrape off the excess dried Mod Podge. Trim off excess strings on the bottom.
8. Hot glue bead to the top of the cage, then glue the dried yarn circle on top of that. Thread cord through the top loop for hanging. Tie dowel to 2 pieces of cord, thread the cords through the holes in the cage, and knot behind the hanger.
We love crafting with feathers…they are so lightweight, they can stay stuck to virtually anything with a little glue or tape.
We got to go deep into our Oriental Trading feather stash recently and craft up some cute feather projects for their Fun 365 website. Head over to the site for all the materials and how-tos!
We had fun getting messy with mod podge to make this cool feather bowl!
Some may think it’s weird to make kids’ crafts with wine corks. But I think it’s totally natural. Like beyond natural. As natural as crafting with toilet paper tubes…there is always at least one empty somewhere in the house!
Corks are a great craft material…there is so much potential in these cylindrical little gems. Here are some of my faves…
Above: Mix nature, felt, and upcycled materials like a cork and jam jar to make this cute little mushroom and snail vignette. (From Project Kid.)
I’ve seen a lot of cork rafts and boats in my life, but these really blew me out of the water! Such simple instructions from Make n Create.
I’m beyond obsessed with little characters with pushpin legs and ball-pin noses! Found on MerolMerol’s Instagram.
Corks make great stamps because little hands can really get a good grip on them. Art Bar made these stamps by gluing craft foam to the base of the cork.
Corks make the perfect mini-owl shape! Happy Hooligans used buttons and felt to bring these little guys to life!
These balloon-cork characters from Reciclando en la Escuala bring me so much joy, I don’t even know where to begin! Even though I can’t read the instructions, I think it’s best to use small balloons or water balloons.
These cork totems were made from a kit found on Monkey Business, but if you want DIY these at home, you can def make some cute details with felt and ball pins.
Here’s my advice…never throw away a champagne cork! Why would you ever deprive yourself of a cute animal like these from Molly Moo?
Mix your love of wine with your green thumb to make these cute cork succulents from The Decorated Cookie.
My kids are obsessed with getting a dog right now. Like consumed beyond imagination. And while we are totally willing to do it eventually, we keep putting them off and promising that it will happen at a later date.
I wonder what will happen if I convince them to make their own puppy dog on wheels? I say it’s the perfect pet…it doesn’t need to be fed, walked, bathed, or cleaned up after!
1 Draw a 4-inch-tall-by-5-inch-long dog on cardboard and cut it out. Don’t worry if your dog isn’t perfect or poodlelike—a general canine shape will work.
2 Glue red yarn pom-poms to one side of the dog—two small ones on each leg, two large ones on the body, and two more small ones for the head and snout. Glue two pink pompoms on top of the bottommost pom-poms to make the paws. Repeat on the other side of the cardboard dog.
3 To make the dog’s tail, cut a 3-inch length of pipe cleaner and glue a pink pom-pom to the end. Poke the other end into the cardboard and secure it with glue.
4 To make the ears, cut two small teardrop shapes, about 1 inch tall, from the felt. Glue the pointed ends to the sides of the dog’s head and finish the dog’s face by gluing the tiny black pom-poms onto the head and snout as the eyes and nose.
5 To make the base of the pull toy, glue a 12-by- 4-inch piece of felt around a 6-by-4-inch piece of cardboard.
6 Glue the Matchbox cars to the underside of the cardboard (one in front, two in back).
7 Glue a tongue depressor to each side of the base to cover the cardboard edges.
8 To make the pull cord, braid six 30-inch-long strands of yarn together to make a 24-inch cord. Glue it to the underside of the base, in front of the single car. Glue the dog’s feet to the top of the base.
Who gets more intimidated by detailed craft project instructions…you or your child?
Sometimes I think it’s the parent that feels the most pressure making sure everything goes exactly right. Kids are usually more adaptable when it comes to improvising. Which is why I’m introducing this concept of the Project Kid Roll-the-Dice Craft!
I labeled 3 wooden blocks with materials. One block had traditional craft supplies, one had recycled materials, and one had typical household materials. We color-coded ours using our P-touch label maker, but you can even just write the names of materials on masking tape and stick them on.
Here’s the challenge…roll the dice and craft something using those three materials! And of course there are tools and materials that are always fair game like glue, markers, paint, hole punch, scissors, etc. Here are suggestions of what you can include on your blocks:
When I was about nine years old, a friend of a friend of a friend was getting rid of the most ginormous dollhouse. When my older sister and I saw a picture of this dollhouse, we freaked. It was huge and it was FREE…we just had to figure out a way to get it home. So my folks, being the YES parents that they were, rented a trailer to tow this thing home (it was THAT big).
Once we got the empty house into our house, we had work to do. There were floors to clean, peeling wallpaper to repair, chipped paint on the roof begging for a patch-up, and we were there for all of it! Once the reno was done, it was time to fill the empty rooms with furniture. The problem was, this dollhouse was so oversized that regular furniture looked like a scene from a movie. So we set forth to make beds, rugs, tables, chairs and all the things! We even spent hours using polymer clay to make the right sized foods.
When I was coming up with ideas for a new P-touch Embellish ELITE craft, I was so excited that they were game for me to make a miniature bed (and my daughter was pretty thrilled too). You can use their printable ribbon to make a custom quilt, and if you want to take it one step further, you can add decorative tape flourishes to the headboard. I started with a medium-size yellow gift box, but you can use any that you have on hand.
1 Glue four straws to the corners of the box large half of the box, making sure that the open part is facing up. You want the “legs” to be about 1-inch tall. Trim the tops of the straws—make the headboard posts about 1” tall, and the footboard posts about ½” tall.
2 Glue beads to the tops of the straws.
3 Cut off the ends of the box lid and glue them across the taller posts to make the headboard.
4 To make your mattress, fill a plastic bag with cotton balls. Make sure the bag fits in the box; fold the opening over and tape closed.
5 Wrap the plastic bag in fabric and glue it closed. Tuck the mattress inside the box.
MAKE THE QUILT:
1 Cut a piece of felt that drapes over the end of your bed.
2 Use your P-touch Embellish ELITE and print ~1”-wide ribbon to fit around the felt as the border. Print thinner ribbon on your P-touch Embellish ELITE to make a patchwork-like pattern.
3 Use a hot-glue gun or fabric tape to attach the ribbons to the felt.
4 Make a pillow by rolling two or three cotton balls in felt and glue the back and the side seams.
We are a gaming family through and through…we love it all from board games to video games to card games to the classics like chess, checkers and tic-tac-toe. We love solo play and some healthy competition, so we definitely have a game closet that’s filled to the brim.
Tic-tac-toe is a classic that you can play with your little, little kids, and it’s even fun to watch the older kids play it with the younger. We teamed up with P-touch Embellish ELITE to craft a simple, portable version of this classic game. What’s the best part of crafting your own rendition of tic-tac-toe? You don’t need to marry yourself to the classic Xs and Os…explore the hundreds of symbols that the P-touch Embellish ELITE offers. It’s so fun to let the kids choose their own symbol pairings!
Here are some fun pairing ideas:
Mouse and Cheese
Sun and Moon
Soccer ball and Sneaker
Music note and Guitar
Shirt and Pants
Airplane and train
Strawberry and Apple
We made our game board on a fabric bag so we could take it on the go, but you can apply the 1-inch wide tape or ribbon to any surface you have.
1. Print out Xs and Os on the 1-inch wide P-touch Embellish tape. Print your font as large as possible; this font was printed at 48pt. You’ll need twenty-four Os and thirty Xs (X always goes first in the game!). Trim off the necessary excess to make them fit on the 1-inch block, and adhere the printed tape to the blocks on all six sides. (Remember…if you don’t want to do the classic X and O game pieces, you can choose from the hundreds of symbols that the P-touch Embellish ELITE offers!)
2. Print out four 8-inch pieces of ribbon using the pattern of your choice.
3. Adhere a dash of fabric tape to the ends of each and fold them over to prevent fraying.
4. Adhere a long strip of fabric tape up the entire length of each ribbon, and then adhere them to the bag in the typical “#” shape. Put your playing cubes in the bag for a cute, mobile tic-tac-toe game!
This is a hard and fast rule in my house: Never, ever, EVER throw away toilet paper tubes! Or paper towel tubes for that matter. Basically all cardboard has a second life around here. Toilet paper tubes provide such a wide variety of bases for crafting, and I really believe you can never have too many! And actually, if you ever run out, don’t fret! You can actually buy naked tubes now and they are super sturdy and perfectly shaped with no straggling toilet paper residue!
Here are ten of my favorite toilet paper tube crafts but some of my favorite crafters out there!
1 LLAMAS
I love the simplicity of these toilet paper tube llamas by Mer Mag.
2 ICE CREAM CONES
There’s no one better than my friend Jodi Levine of Super Make It when it comes to toilet paper tube crafts!
3 TUBE KNITTING
Another one from Super Make It…this one uses the tube to help you knit these amazing finger puppets!
4 ABSTRACT PUZZLE SCULPTURE
Paint tubes in various colors, cut slits in the sides, and use them as building blocks like Picklebums did.
5 WINDMILL
One Little Project did some simple engineering to make this cute windmill spin!
At Project Kid, our mission is to open kids’ eyes to different ways of crafting. We want kids to think outside the aisles of a craft store and really explore to find their materials to help them build and design something that they can play with, wear, use or even just display (I mean, it’s art, right?).
But today I want to talk a little bit about process art which has a different focus. I love Meri Cherry’s definition:
Art that’s all about the making and the doing, rather than the finished product. Process art doesn’t mean there isn’t an amazing product at the end. There very well could be. It just means that’s not really the point. We’re trying to get kids and their adults to find value in making and doing, where they are making decisions, taking risks, thinking outside the box, taking their time, working with challenges, cultivating connection, and building empathy. Those things are the point.
I have always struggled with sharing projects that have such nit-picky instructions because I worry about kids’ fear of failure. When I wrote the draft of my first book, I kept all of the instructions very loose and open, hoping that parents would be encouraged to let their kids make decisions. But as editors do, they were afraid that parents would get frustrated with the lack of specificity, so I added the details back in. As much as possible, I always say—make it your own! Make choices! My way is not THE way, it’s just how I was feeling that day!
Here are a few of my favorite process art masters and some prompts and projects that you can pepper into the crafting that you do with your kids.
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1 SELF PORTRAITS
This is the perfect activity…all you need is a Sharpie, watercolor paints, paper and you! Once the permanent marker outline is down, you can paint over with the watercolor and let the colors flow! Image via Meri Cherry. I love the idea of doing these at least once a year to see how kids’ self-image changes.
2 WACKY WOOD SCULPTURES
Another gem from Meri Cherry are these delightful, open-ended sculptures. I’d suggest using Aleene’s® Tacky Glue to really hold it all together. But with oil pastels, paint, and gluing on little doodads, each one comes out totally original. And there’s no pressure to attain a certain skill level…this project (like most process art), really meets there kids where they are.
3 DRAWING STICKS
This idea from Art Bar Blog is genius. Tape markers or paint bushes to a stick from outside (or dowels if you have them), and tape paper to the floor. Challenge the kids to make some art by holding the sticks with their toes!
You can let them just run wild or give them prompts that will result in some hilarity…like “draw a self-portrait” or “draw what you want to eat for dinner” or “draw your favorite vacation spot.” They will most like giggle though it but you’ll all be amazed at the results!
4 ENVELOPE CITY
I adore this project from Art Bar…it reminds me of an envelope house project that appeared in my first book! When a child can see that the shape of a traditional object references something else, that’s when my heart sings…like how an unfolded envelope looks like a house.
Color some of the wide wood craft sticks to look like people and set up a little play village! Markers, crayons, or oil pastels work just fine on these!
I think this abstract painting is frame-worthy, and you can also cut it up to make postcards, gift tags, or shapes to make a pretty garland.
6 CONTACT PAPER COLLAGE
The only thing you may not have already in your home for this one is clear contact paper—get it! There are so may creative ways to make the contact paper collages from Art Bar…I want to get started immediately! Magazine clippings, cupcake liners, string, newspaper, or paper scraps of any kind!
Just let kids put their materials down on the contact paper (sticky side up of course) like it’s a big piece of scotch tape. It’s probably a good idea to use some paper masking tape to hold the contact paper down to the table so they don’t get frustrated with it curling up on itself. The end results are so varied and fabulous!
7 PAINTING RECONSTRUCTIONS
I love how Katie Vernon cut up old paintings to make new assemblages. If your child makes something that she really rejects, encourage her to look at it another way. Maybe it was meant to be a different shape? Maybe it was meant to have eyes painted on it to turn it into a monster? It’s so hard talk them off the ledge when they insist on bad-mouthing something that they made, but there are so many ways to reconfigure what we create into something new. (Also, how beautiful is Katie Vernon’s work?)
8 STICKER PROCESS ART
There is no denying that stickers are fun. I love this idea from Tinkerlab of drawing a frame and using office stickers, available online or any office store, to create an abstract composition. Consider adding some drawing lines to connect shapes and give the piece some different line weights.
Definitely explore the websites of these creative women for endless ideas! The beauty of process art is that I think you as parents or caregivers will be inspired to start playing around with materials in experimental ways!
