April 2, 2020
Animals, Baby, Early Elementary, Everyday Crafts, Older Elementary, Upcycled, Yarn & Fabric
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!
What you’ll need:
• Cardboard
• Pen or pencil
• Scissors
• 12 small red, 4 large red, and 5 small pink pom-poms
• 1 pipe cleaner
• White felt
• 3 tiny black pom-poms
• 3 Matchbox cars
• 2 tongue depressors
• Yarn
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.
April 1, 2020
Activities, Early Elementary, Everyday Crafts, Grown-Up, Older Elementary, Preschool, Toddler, Tween to Teen, Unplugged Time, Upcycled, Wood
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:
TRADITIONAL MATERIALS
RECYCLED MATERIALS
HOUSEHOLD MATERIALS
March 27, 2020
ad, Decor, Everyday Crafts, Furniture, Kids Rooms, Older Elementary, Toys, Tween to Teen, Uncategorized, Yarn & Fabric
This post was sponsored by P-touch Embellish ELITE.
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.
What you’ll need:
MAKE THE BED:
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.
March 20, 2020
Activities, ad, Early Elementary, Everyday Crafts, Older Elementary
This post was sponsored by P-touch Embellish ELITE.
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:
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.
What you need:
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!
March 18, 2020
Activities, Early Elementary, Older Elementary, Preschool, Tween to Teen, Uncategorized, Upcycled
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!
6 FLYING AIRPLANE
Attach this plane to a string and watch it fly across the room. From my book, Project Kid: Crafts that Go!
7 TOILET PAPER TUBE CROWNS
Cut and painted with a cute Frenchy style, I love the crowns from Hello Wonderful!
8 TOILET PAPER TUBE ANIMALS
These artful little sculptures by Ukkonooa feel like they leaped right out of a storybook!
9 TUBE CATS
These Molly Moo cats have such a personality!
10 MIRO INSPIRED SCULPTURE
Art Camp LA really took these tubes to a high art level, creating Miro-inspired sculptures.
