Shrinky Dink Craft

   I don't know about your kids, but mine are already getting stir crazy. I wouldn't say that they LOVE school, but they like having things to do. We try and find little things for them to do that will help their imagination. Crafting is a great way to get them to use those little brains and keep them from turning into TV watching blobs.

   Saturday, Hubby and I were out on a date and we decided to hit up the craft store. Now, before you think that we are lame at coming up with date ideas, we had already had lunch and going to a store without the kiddos is a great way to reconnect and have a bit of peace and quiet. Anyway, we were looking around and came upon some Shrinky Dinks Crystal Clear paper.

   The wheel started turning and we decided we would make ourselves some Shrinky Dinks monsters for when we play King of Tokyo. What's more fun than playing with something that you created yourself?

   Last night we actually had a quiet night with nothing going on, so we pulled out some paper and pencils and got to designing. I wanted a Wolverine type monster, but didn't want to just trace one out of a coloring book. Hubby gave me the idea to make a Meeple one, so I ran with it.

   I grabbed the template for my large Meeple and got to work. I looked up a picture of Wolverine and did my best at free handing. I know it isn't the best, but isn't it awesome?

   I taped the Shrinky Dink paper over my paper (had to adjust and make my drawing a bit shorter) and then got to tracing and coloring. The more I colored the more awesome I thought it became. After I was done coloring, I cut him out. Since he was as tall and wide as the Shrinky Dink paper, I had to cut it close to the edge. The claws were a bit difficult since the plastic doesn't bend, but I managed.

   We put it into the oven and watched him shrink. I haven't made one before, so I thought it was pretty cool to watch. I now have the most awesome Shrinky Dink and can't wait to play King of Tokyo with him.

   Until then, he has a nice place to hang out on my nerd shelf!

Take a Moment to Make a Memory: Fun Christmas Crafts

It is that time of the year again--the Christmas season is upon us.  That means decorating, shopping, cleaning, and celebrating all on top of all the stuff we already have to do.  I hope your holiday preparations are going great and that you are taking a few minutes to experience the JOY of the season.  Today's post includes activities that are simple and easy and won't take too much of your time. In a just a few minutes, you may make a memory that lasts a lifetime or start a beloved family tradition. Here are some ideas:

• Paper snowflakes: These are beautiful and easy.  Once you teach your kids how to make these, they can be busy for hours because no two paper snow flakes ever turn out alike. :)  The creativity is endless. If you aren't sure how to do this or are a little rusty learn how to make them here.
• Make Christmas cards: Children will love to create hand made cards for their friends, teachers, and loved ones.  They can use crayons, markers, paints, googly eyes, stickers, and scrapbook paper--whatever you have on hand.
• Recycle old Christmas cards: Use old Christmas cards to make book marks or Christmas collages.  To make a book mark, cut the cards into one inch strips and put a string through the top.  To make a collage, cut out words or pictures from old cards and glue them on a piece of paper in whatever design you would like.
• Make a Nativity Season diorama:  You can print pictures to color here. Let your children design a manger scene and backdrop inside a box.  They will love displaying this!
• Puffy Paint Window Clings: Who doesn't love festively decorated windows?  Get designs and instructions on how to make  your own window clings here. These are very easy and even the littlest hands will enjoy making the designs!
• Craft Stick Activities:  Hours of entertainment can be found in a box of craft sticks and a bottle of Elmer's glue.  Kids can create Christmas trees, snowflakes, picture frames and more.  Here's a great tutorial for craft stick Christmas tree ornament.  
• Play snow: Whip of a batch of this snow for kids and they will love you.  It won't melt or freeze their hands so that is a bonus too. 

I don't know about you but my kids always want to do Christmas crafts.  They would do them everyday if they could.  This is a list of fun and easy crafts that require few materials.  If  you have a few free minutes, you can enjoy doing these with the kids.  If you don't, many can be done on their own too.  Most of them are made with materials you probably have on hand!  

Please take a minute to enJOY the season.  As I was watching my husband and 10 year old daughter the other day, I was reminded of the day he carried her in our home the first time.  10 years goes by so fast--that's 10 Christmases we've had together.  I want to make sure this Christmas season I take a moment to make a memory.  It's not hard, it's not expensive, and unlike the exciting toys, fancy wrapping paper, and sweet treats, it will last a lifetime. 

Perler Bead Projects

   If you've been following my blog for a while, you know we enjoy doing Perler Bead projects as a family. We've made both Settlers of Catan and Hive out of them.

   Recently I decided I wanted to try using a cross stitch pattern as a Perler Bead pattern. I got on my trusty Pinterest and did a little search. I settled on a cross stitch pattern of the main Supernatural characters.

   If you've never used Perler Beads, they are these little beads you put on a peg board. They come in all sorts of colors. The peg boards come in many different shapes.

   Lay out your design on the board. You can use a pattern or your own imagination. I followed the cross stitch pattern but also mixed it up a bit. I guess it was mostly a guideline. Just make sure you leave a row of beads all the way around your project or else it will melt together. This includes diagonally.

   If you buy a kit, it comes with some type of paper you lay over it and then use an iron and melt them together. Be careful during this part. After you are done ironing, the beads will still be hot.

   You can carefully peel the beads off and lay it on a table or counter and do the same thing to the other side. Make sure you melt them as evenly as you can. If you miss a spot, they will fall apart. If you want to keep them flat, put them under a book or something while it cools. Otherwise it will curve a little.

   Once it's cooled, you can do whatever you'd like with them. You can string them up and put them on your Christmas tree. Give them to an older child to play with or put them on display. I have a nerd shelf that I have mine displayed on.

   If you want to try something a bit harder, I also found this pattern to make a TARDIS out of these beads. It was quite a project, but I couldn't help myself. It's a lot taller than I thought it would be. I changed a couple of things. I used yarn for the black part instead of embroidery thread. I also glued it together on the inside, she sewed it together. The top does come off, so you can keep stuff inside. I'm rather pleased with it!

Felt Activities

   One thing my kids love to play with is felt boards. A couple of years ago, we were going to go on a 10 hour drive to my aunts house for vacation. Having three small boys, we needed ideas of how to keep them occupied so we would all survive the long drive. I started looking up ideas, and found someone that had done felt boards for their kids. I thought that was a wonderful idea, so I made some. They were a huge hit and the boys still play with them to this day. They are great for those days when you just need a little bit of quiet time.

   To begin, I searched online for a template of what I wanted to make. This time, I wanted to make a gumball machine to help my three year old count.

   You can either cut out the pieces of the template to trace, free hand it, or do what I do and tape the paper to a window so you can see through the felt and trace it that way.

   Once you have it all traced out, cut out the pieces. If you want to sew or glue them together, make sure you leave extra around your cut outs. For example, the white piece can be a complete circle and then sew or glue the red pieces onto it. I decided making the machine could be part of the fun.

   You now have a gumball machine.

   To make the gumballs, pick out the colors you'd like to use. I wanted to make twenty gumballs so I grabbed five colors. Scraps of felt are perfect for this part.

   Decide how big you want the gumballs. I used a soda lid to trace the circles.

   Cut out all of your gumballs

   Next, I printed off the numbers on a piece of card stock. This will help the numbers be a little more sturdy.

   Cut out out all of your numbers. If you have a straight edge cutter, it makes this job a lot easier.

   To get the numbers to stick, hot glue the numbers onto another piece of felt. The color doesn't really matter since you won't see it anyway. Be careful when doing this, hot glue on fingers is rather painful! Once they are all glued on, cut around the edges of the card stock.

   You now have a felt gumball machine to help with counting!

   Some other ideas you can do are:

   You can make a little city or even just a road with some cars. Cut out strips of black, add some yellow lines (I glued mine on for ease of play) and cut out however many different cars and trucks you'd like.

   My kids used to be really into potato heads. Cut out some brown potato shapes and then use your imagination.

   I don't know about your kids, but my oldest LOVES anything space right now. That includes Star Trek. So this summer, on a day when there was "nothing to do", I decided I would make him some new felt cutouts. He was beside himself with excitement. These didn't take too long to do and you can make them as detailed as you'd like. I cut him out a yellow circle he could use as either the sun or a planet and a couple of red circles. I added a little touch to the red circles so they would look a little more planet like.

   And lastly, don't forget about games. Tic Tac Toe is a great game for kids. It's easy to learn and not hard to make. Just cut out four strips and a few squares in two different colors. Now you have a game for on the go.

   Felt activities are a lot of fun and you can take them anywhere! They are pretty easy to make depending on how detailed you want to get. The boards we made for in the car was just a piece of felt taped to some cardboard. You can get as fancy as you want with making a board. Sometimes my kids just play with them on the table without any felt under it at all. Use your imagination and most importantly, have fun with it!

Melted Crayon Art

   A week or so ago, I decided I wanted to try out some melted crayon art. I don't own a hair dryer to do the one that drips down so I was trying to find a different way. I found a post on Pinterest about shredding a crayon and using an iron to melt it. I didn't really like the way it turned out. I looked into it more and found out they were ironing it like you would clothes, but if you held the iron still, it wouldn't make it a big mess of mixed crayon. I decided to give it a try. I had read that they used a cheese grater to shred the crayon. All I accomplished by trying it that way was coloring on my cheese grater. I grabbed a sharp knife and carefully got to work.

This is about two crayons each. You may need a couple boxes depending on what you are making.

   I grabbed a piece of card stock, hoping it would hold up better than regular paper.

   I decided I wanted to try out a Batman logo. I printed one off of the internet and carefully cut it out.

   I figured it would be easiest to start on the inside and work your way out. I placed the cut out logo on the paper.

   Carefully fill it in. One nice thing about doing it this way is you can gently push the crayon that landed on the template into the middle to help keep it nice and clean.

   Carefully lift the paper and touch up the outline.

   Next, I used the piece I had cut out to cover the black crayon to help keep the yellow from mixing in. I just shaped this on my own. It wasn't too hard since it's an oval.

   I thought it might look cool to add the mixture of the two colors around the outside.

   Very carefully remove the paper from the logo. I did end up getting a couple bits of yellow mixed in with my black. I used a toothpick to very carefully pick out the yellow.

   Tape down some wax paper over the top of your art work. Put your iron on the lowest setting and very carefully melt the crayon.

  

   Here is my finished work. Not bad for a first time, but can still use a little bit of improvement.

   Some tips that might help:

   Make sure your crayon is the same thickness throughout the work. The middle was much thicker than the outside. This made it so it wouldn't melt evenly.

   It doesn't look cool to add a mixture of the two colors around the outside. It would have looked a lot better if that mess around the edge was just yellow. It would actually look pretty cool.

    Hold the iron flat and don't move it around. Don't even put it on the paper. Just hold it above the paper. It gets plenty hot to do it that way.

   When you are letting it cool, place something over it or on the edges of the paper. It will curl and if you try and flatten it back out, the crayon will crack. I had mine curl so I placed it on a cookie sheet out in the sun. It melted back down again pretty quick. This might also be a good way to melt it without an iron. Just make sure you watch it, once it starts melting, it goes fast!

   Other than that, have fun with it! If you are doing it with children, make sure you watch them closely. I recommend not letting them shred the crayon or use the iron unless they are old enough to do it safely. When I was looking at different ways to do this project, I saw one where they let their kids use a pencil sharpener to help get the crayons ready. This might be a good alternative.

   If you give this craft a try, I would love to see what you come up with as well! I'm already trying to decide what I want to do next.

   Happy crafting!

Father's Day Fun: A Craft for Dad

Father's Day is here again and it't time for you  your kids to make a craft for Dad.  Here is a simple and fun idea that your kids will love!  (And dad will love having this special little keepsake from his little ones!)

Start with a 12 x 12 piece of card stock in a light color like white or yellow. Paint waves about 1/3 from the top and paint the entire bottom blue so the bottom 2/3's of the paper is blue.  If some blue paint goes outside the line, don't worry, it will look like ocean spray or a big wave.  One of our little crafters painted in a tsunami for her dad. :)

Before the paint dries, sprinkle the page with blue glitter.  Let it sit for a minute and shake the excess onto a paper plate. Let dry completely.  This won't take more than five or ten minutes.

While my kids were waiting for the paint to dry, they decorated a jar like the ocean.  They also cut out fish and wrote a reason why they love their dad on each one.  The put all their little fish in a jar.   I know my husband is going to enjoy reading each little "fishy" note that fills this jar.  I think my kids are looking forward to adding more notes to dad throughout the whole year.

Now that your blue paint is dry, your child will need a little help on the next step.  Place your child's left hand palm down in orange paint and then place it on the center of the blue part of the paper.  The thumb should be pointed up and the fingers spread.   This hand print will soon become an adorable fish. Let it dry.

Once the fish is dry, add a google eye (the big ones are pretty cute.).   Use a red marker to draw on lips. You can add some sea weed if you'd like.

Be careful on this step.  Mysteriously while I was helping the kids make their hand print fish, a hand print appeared  on my wall.

Now,  use stickers to write out, "I'm hooked on Dad!"  Last, draw a hook near the mouth, a round bobber above the hook, and  a fishing line towards the top of the paper.  You can frame it or place it in a plastic sleeve if you'd like.

How cute is that?

Happy craftin' and Happy Father's Day!