More easter crafty fun

This will be a quick one because it is 10.30pm, I still have the dreaded lurgy and I really should be in bed but wanted to do a post today and only just finished everything else. Well, finishing stuff and uploading easter egg hunt and circus photos on Facebook.....


So, with school holidays here and easter looming we managed an egg craft. That is to say, we used the lovely little hollow plastic eggs that were given out at the easter egg hunt for a fun craft. Not necessarily an easter themed craft, what with aliens and all.....you get the picture.


Anyway, after getting a bunch of these cool hollow eggs I was wondering what to do with them when the lovely Mister Maker just happened to come on TV with this little idea. Serendipity! We did them straight away.




I don't think instructions are really needed here. We just cut out various features and appendages and glued them on as well as googly eyes. Oh, you just need to put a little ball of modelling clay inside to help them stay up. That's it really. Miss E had a ball doing them though.


This one is Miss E and A's 'bug box'. I just used a really sturdy shoe box I had lying around (hard to believe that I would have one of those, isn't it Lynette?). I cut a big hole in the lid and glued some clear plastic to the inside frame for the window. A little grasshopper lived happily in there for at least, oh, 2 hours before they couldn't help but set him free. Oh well, it is ready for the next bug invasion!



This is the easiest dress up costume I have ever done! Miss E wanted to be a fox, we had fuzzy orange pipecleaners lying there so I wrapped a couple around her headband and voila! She played fox happily for quite awhile. Mind you, she keeps asking for a tail and I am running thin on ideas of how to do a nice big fluffy tail when I don't have access to any orange faux fur. Thinking, thinking......



This cute crown was inspired by this over at WhiMSy love. I just made mine bigger to fit on their heads and I didn't have any jewels or sparkly pipecleaners so pink and orange it had to be! I couldn't get one of them to stand still so I could get a picture of it on one of their heads.



Well, that's it for the last few days. Not sure when my next post will be as I need new batteries for my camera. I am hoping I won't have a hard time buying lithium ones here....

Easter basket

Miss E and I were brainstorming ideas for some Easter craft today. She came up with this idea because she has a lovely easter basket but we didn't have one for A and she was very concerned about where the easter bunny would put his eggs. Anyway, we had a lot of fun putting this together and are thrilled with the finished item. We had already done similar weaving on a tiny scale so I just had to modify it for a larger project by adding the card base.

Here is the tutorial.

Firstly, cut a circle of paper from a paper plate or stiff card and put an odd number of dots around the perimeter (it is important that it is an odd number otherwise the weaving won't work).

Next, I just used the pointy end of the scissors to make a little hole where each pencilled dot is.

Then softly fold your chenille stems (or pipecleaners as they are also known) in half and push each end up through 2 holes. Now, obviously there is an odd number of dots so you will need to put one chenille stem through halfway and secure it to the underside loop of the chenille stem next door, so to speak. Once you have wound it around or pinched it to secure you can trim the excess off.

Now, you just bend one end of a chenille stem around any of the uprights and start weaving. Miss E is nearly 7 and she had no problems with the weaving - it is nice and simple. Just keep adding chenille stems by twisting their ends together as you run out.

Once you get to a little bit less than an inch from the top you can secure the last weaving chenille stem around one of the uprights and then bend over all of the uprights to secure the top of the basket. Now, half of the uprights will have their horizontal chenille stem on the inside so you can just simply fold the upright over and pinch. The other half will have their horizontal chenille stem on the outside so I just folded the upright the other way and then pushed it through to the inside for a neat finish. The idea is to make sure the last horizontal chenille stem is secured with every upright one.

You could leave it without a handle but we also added a handle simply by winding two stems together to get a good length and then poking it through on either side and winding it back around itself to secure. I also made a little chenille bunny outline and popped that on the front so we know it is for easter. Miss E had creative control over the colours so they are not necessarily the 'spring'iest' of colour combinations but I think it looks great anyway.

Clipboard fun and mucho baking...

I saw this great idea for a mini clipboard over at Let's Explore and made one for Miss E. She has been having great fun with such a simple idea! I love her little bird drawing. I used some old cut offs of matboard and covered it with wrapping paper and contact adhesive.

Well, I have been very busy with baking up a storm for a party for 35 last night and I was hosting my book club this morning (about 20 people). I forgot (didn't have a moment to scratch myself really...) to take any photos of the yummy food on offer but it included an orange cake, my wonderful friend, Emily's, delicious chocolate brownies (which Miss E will only call Fritz brownies now after reading the recipe title, Emily), mini baked lemon cheesecakes and Tiramisu. Not to mention all the salads, nibblies etc. All well received I believe! Phew. I am e.x.h.a.u.s.t.e.d. Note to self - never doing a party mid week again! Well, especially not the night before another function as well.....

Kid's odds and ends

Someone kindly commented the other day about some of my organising tips and kid's room ideas so I thought I would share a few. Firstly, a couple of organising tips as that is one of my very favourite things to do (seriously, it is....).

I had a large flat'ish bottomed basket that I wasn't sure what to do with and decided to store little books in it for my daughter first, and now my son is using it. I didn't like the bumpy bottom that baskets naturally have so asked my good friend, Barry, to cut a rectangular piece of thin (I think it was 3mm) MDF to fit which I painted white. It provides a smooth surface so everything sits neatly and I am sure this idea would be great for many other things also.

I love finding old enamel bowls, baking dishes etc. at flea markets, thrift shops and so on and I use them for different storage if I don't use them in the kitchen. This one is for felt pens as I find my children really prefer to use them if they are standing up in a container rather than lying down (I originally had them in a lovely multicoloured woven basket lying down). All that sifting for the right colour must be too annoying.

One day I found some very cheap packets of felt shapes sold without the accompanying cute little felt board (that so many of them come with). Rather than buy another set with the board I decided to make a basic one myself just from a length of felt and a piece of thick cardboard. This has lasted a few years now and I won't feel guilty when the time comes to get rid of it! I simply cut a cardboard rectangle big enough for our chalkboard and glued the felt around it to the reverse side. Not so neatly so don't look too closely!

I also like to use the kid's own artworks for their rooms at times and I loved this picture Miss E drew last year for A so it is cheering up his room now. I just used an economical frame from Ikea and glued the picture to a frame sized piece of red card to give the impression of a mat.

Day Nine of 'Housebound with Chicken Pox Child'

Ok, first let me say that I love my children. Love, adore, would do anything for them. However, after 9 days of being at home with a quarantined child (and a grumpy other child who has a particularly social nature and likes to go out A LOT) I would really, really like to go away somewhere by myself for quite a long time.....actually it hasn't been that bad but a bit of cabin fever is definitely starting to sneak in!

So, now I can show you what I have been doing over the last couple of days to try and ease the boredom/cure the cabin fever etc.

Firstly, I have made yet more cards. My niece and nephew's birthdays are coming up and, seeing as I can't buy cards in english here, a couple of cards were in order. I could have used a gorgeous floral art card from my very talented photographer friend, Karen, however I had a specific idea in mind for my niece (SPOILER WARNING MELISSA!) and I didn't think a teenage boy would be that thrilled with a flower - no matter the beauty of the shot - so I came up with these two.

Miss E was inspired and made her own card too. I love it - I think her colour coordination is often much better than mine (see russian doll card in earlier post).

After our card making time, A was in desperate need of some crafty fun so I came up with the idea of drawing a basic outline picture on the non-sticky side of some contact adhesive and then turned it over for him to stick little crepe paper squares on. It went very well and cutting up all the crepe paper wasn't toooo time consuming (good thing is, a little goes a long way and they will last for a number of projects).

Here is the drawing....

Here it is flipped over with the crepe paper ready and waiting.... (hint: turn under a couple or all corners to stick it to the tabletop so it doesn't move about when little fingers touch the sticky part)

Here is A getting busy....

Here is Miss E's turn....

Here are the finished products! I put another layer of contact over the top of them so they can hang around for awhile.

Handmade memories

Not only do I love to make stuff, I love to see what all the wonderfully talented blog community are making also. Here is one I recently came across.

These memory hearts are so lovely from the inspiring scrumdilly-do blog. Link through for the excellent instructions.

It reminded me of some handmade ones I already have. Lynette (one of my wonderful sisters) made these years ago and I still love them. These are drawn freehand onto cards and then covered in contact (years before our laminator ownership) and they are very sturdy. I haven't shown every single one (Lynette was very industrious!) or the matching pairs but you get the idea. I might make a heart set as well just because you can't have too many memory games. Maybe I should be playing them more actually.....

Stitched book instructions

Ok, as promised, here is my attempt at drawing and explaining how to make the little stitched books from my previous post. Warning! These drawings are very primitive!

Step 1. Cut out cover & inside pages (I have given my measurements in previous post). Fold all in half.

Step 2. Unfold and clip pages together securely. Mark & punch holes.

Step 3. Sew through hole 'B' from outside cover to inside pages, leaving a short tail outside. Then stitch up through hole 'C', down through hole 'A' and back up through hole 'B'. Tie the two middle threads (sticking up out of hole 'B') into a knot, around the thread that runs the length of the spine.

Hope that is easy to follow!

Stitched books & cotton bud (q-tip) paintings

Well, this started out as a quick simple craft to do with my 6 yr old daughter, Miss E, but ended up being a lovely way of spending an hour and a half together one very wintry afternoon. Instead of using plain card or construction paper for the cover, I thought it would be fun to do some painting first for a more decorative look. The painting techniques we used were good ol' watercolours and cotton bud (q-tip) painting using food colours. For the watercolour one we just brushed different colours all over the paper randomly and here are some basic instructions for cotton bud painting if you aren't familiar with it. It is very simple and easy and is even good for the 2 yr olds and up, although I would suggest you supervise closely with the littlies as the food colours can stain.

1. Add a small amount of water to a small container (I have used an empty yoghurt pot here but I usually use ramekins from my kitchen as they don't tip over).
2. Add a couple of drops of food colour to the water (I add them with an old medicinal eye dropper so you don't have food colouring dripping down the outside of the bottle).
3. Pop in a couple of cotton buds (q-tips) in each container you have added colour to (to prevent mixing them up). These soak up the combined water and colour and provide a nifty little drip free paint 'brush' of sorts.
4. Use these to draw all over your paper.

You get such lovely vibrant colours this way and they dry in minutes so you can use them for other things.

Ok, back to the stitched books. I first saw the instructions for these on a blog somewhere and I am so frustrated that I cannot find it to link to (I am sure I added it to my favourites at the time!) so I am going to try and draw them myself and put them up here in a day or two. I can say though that they are so simple and easy to make and so satisfying that we have kept making them. I use up any size paper so we have them in all sizes ranging from almost postage stamp to the size I have outlined below.

For those pictured our measurements were:

Cover - 22cm x 14cm

Pages - 21cm x 13.5cm

Length of thread needed to sew comfortably was about 50cm from memory, which leaves you with some to cut off but makes it comfortable for tying the knot etc.

I used 5 pages so that, when folded, it gave us 10 but you can adjust that up or down to whatever suits. For the first couple we made I punched holes for us to thread through (and that is easiest for Miss E) but if I am doing them myself I just push the needle straight through without any problem.

We love them and I hope you are inspired to make a whole bunch yourself!