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There was a time, and it wasn’t too long ago, that we only associated Barbie dolls with beauty, fashion, shopping, and let’s not forget Ken. Barbie has pivoted in a big way to teach little girls that they truly can be anything they want to be.
When my friends at Barbie asked me to create DIY costumes based on these new career dolls, I was excited to help promote this positive shift. Check out this intelligent and respectable scientist, with not just matching necklaces, but matching lab flasks, too!
What you need:
Adhere white felt circle stickers to dress. Use a ruler to line them up.
Thread pink pom-poms onto string to make Barbie’s necklace. Knot in back.
At some point in our lives, we all dream of being an astronaut…of floating around in the space and sticking a flag on the moon. Barbie is now turning those dreams into dolls in their new line of career dolls.
For Halloween, they asked me to design DIY costumes based on these awesome dolls. Super easy, this costume will thrill any girl to match her mini-me.
What you need:
October 20, 2018
Age, Decor, DIY Home, Grown-Up, Halloween, Holidays, Tween to Teen
Step 1: Scoop alginate compound into a large bucket or bowl. To cast an adult hand, you’ll need 6 cups.
Step 2: Add an equal amount of room temperature water to the alginate powder.
Step 3: Stir the ingredients together with a wood stick. Then eliminate any remaining lumps with one hand, making sure to keep the other hand clean for casting.
Step 4: Quickly pour the paste into the 2-liter bottle.
Step 5: Insert a clean hand, held in the pose that you want to cast, into the mixture. Keep your hand submerged and in position, remaining as still as possible, for 3 to 5 minutes.
Step 6: Tap the top of the alginate with your free hand to make sure it’s fully set. Once the alginate has hardened, gently wiggle your submerged hand and fingers to get them loose. Carefully remove your hand. Congratulations—you’ve just made a mold!
Step 7: Set your mold to the side and mix up some plaster according to package instructions, stirring thoroughly until smooth.
Step 8: Pour the plaster into the mold you created. Depending on the humidity, it can take 30 minutes or longer for the plaster to set.
Step 9: Once the plaster has set, tap the top to loosen, then begin cutting away the plastic bottle using a craft or utility knife. Continue cutting carefully, now through the alginate, being mindful not to cut into the plaster fingers you’ve made. Keep removing alginate until your plaster hand is revealed. If there are any air bubbles or mistakes, use extra plaster to fill in the holes.
Step 10: Let the hand dry for at least 12 hours before painting, and sand off any rough spots before you begin. You can also sand the bottom of the hand into a flat base so that it can stand upright.
Step 11: Paint the plaster with an opaque acrylic paint and let dry.
Step 12: Using a fine-tip paint pen in a contrasting color, follow a palmistry diagram to draw markings on the painted hand.
Step 13: If you want to make a flat plaster hand into a candle holder, use a small chisel or a flat clay sculpting tool to carve out a hole in the plaster to fit the candle. Work slowly, carving just a little at a time, until you’ve made a shallow well that matches the candle’s diameter.
After many failed attempts at making cake pops (how are there so many bad instructions out there?), I finally watched Kris Galicia Brown’s Cake Pop Decorating Class on Bluprint. It was not only super informative, but it had debunked so many false “rules” of cake pops that I had been using…the biggest being that candy melts should only be melted in silicone or plastic (that’s the true statement).
When Bluprint asked me to make these Jack-O-Lantern cake poppers for an article on their site, I used all of her genius tips!
I swear they are easier than they look!
August 7, 2018
ad, Early Elementary, Older Elementary, Paper, STEM, Tween to Teen
This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #BackToSchoolGoals18 #CollectiveBias
All summer long I worry about brain drain. I mean, it doesn’t keep me up at night or anything, but I think a lot about how their every-day habits of learning 9 months of the year halt during the summer months.
Our school sends us homework packets to do over the summer (not to turn in, but just as practice—which is really what homework is, after all), but it’s always just math and literacy. One of my favorite things about my kids’ school is that they start them on Spanish in Kindergarten. Oliver and Sommer have come away from these classes with the cutest little accents! Because they learn in a totally immersive way from teachers whose first language is Spanish (they don’t think their teachers even speak English!), they have adopted the best pronunciation when speaking.
So this summer I decided to do a little exercise in keeping the language recognition going by making labels for common household objects. So when we refer to these objects, my husband and I say them in Spanish and that reminds the kids to do the same. Since we are spending the last part of our summer in Scandinavia, I made the labels double-sided to introduce them to a little Swedish. I wanted to make them “flippable” so I used this amazing product from 3M— Scotch® Wall-Safe Tape—from Walmart so I could (A) attach a string securely to the wall and (B) not damage the paint in the process!
What you’ll need:
Print words in both languages on cardstock. Punch the works with a circle punch. I used yellow for Spanish and teal for Swedish.
Cut a 2-inch piece of string and sandwich in between the two circles, using a glue stick to attach them back to back.
So that I didn’t damage the paint on our walls, I used Scotch® Wall-Safe Tape that I bought at Walmart to attach the string to the wall.
Visit Scotch/3M for more clever inspiration for back-to-school ideas!