Polymer Clay Creations

On our summer bucket list, which has now turned into our "project binder" One of everyone's favorites is playing with sculpey clay.  This stuff is available almost everywhere.  And I usually get mine on an online sale or at my local Michaels when it's on sale there.  A little bit goes a long way for the kiddos.  So it has lasted us a long time.  I also use my coupons at Michaels to get some tools because we learned there really isn't a great substitue for those.

 

Today we are making our own beads to be strung into necklaces later. Note: Use a toothpick to create the hole for the beads to be strung later. 

 

 

 

Once everyone is done, place them all in a glass pan and bake according to package directions. The younger one did not enjoy creating her own beads and rather created blobs.  These needed to bake MUCH longer.  I think it ended up being a few hours. I just checked them every 20 minutes or so.

Once they had cooled When Mom found some time several days later, we strung them into necklaces.  I forgot to put holes into the blobs, so I ended up wrapping them with wire and putting them on that way.  They've held up so far, but they are REALLY heavy and so she does not really like wearing the necklace.  Lesson learned.

 

I always keep a few "fancy" beads on hand for things.  She chose to alternate with round black beads and then clear faceted ones.  She really enjoyed all aspects of this project. And of course we are already looking for more ideas of things the kids can make themselves with the clay.

 



Crayola Fabric Fun

Whoa, I've been absent lately.  I guess the back to school, fall season, life in general bug got me.  This summer we decided to try different thing to make our own tshirts and see which we liked best.  We are far from through our list of techniques but the first one we tried was Crayola's Fabric Markers.  And instead of a tshirt we got white bandana's from Hobby Lobby.

 

Now, while this is a great idea, I didn't realize how long it would take.  But at least it kept them busy for about 45ish minutes.

 

Needless to say, its been awhile since we started this project.  We still aren't done.  But it was fun and they do like they get to color on something they wouldnt normally be allowed to! :)

 

If I were doing this again, I would maybe do a transfer to a tshirt so that it is less to color and they can hopefully finish it in one sitting.  Either way, this gets a thumbs up from mom & kiddos.

 

 

Blobs in a bottle...not quite...

The girls decided they wanted to try the blobs in a bottle experiment found on Science Bob's website.  They were supposed to look like this.  But ours didn't quite turn out that way....

We started out with these suplies:

The girls  poured everything into their bottles...

The loved how the water and oil immediately seperate!

We added the food coloring, and finally dropped in the fizzy tablets.

We saw reaction (You can see the white fuzzy looking spots on the surface inside the bottles) but we never saw colored blobs floating around. No matter what we tried.  We went back to the intructions. We used a different size bottle that Science Bob.  We used knock off alka seltzer and we used equal parts of water and oil because someone didn't have enough oil in the house to fill these bottles. I am sure any one of these things could have given us scewed results.  Either way, the kids still loved this project and I agreed to try it again, once we saved up the right supplies.







Summer List: Potato Stampers

Another quick(ish) and simple kid project.  I had some potatoes that were probably fine to eat but not my first choice.  So we broke off all the growing parts and made stamps to paint with instead.

We used powder tempera paint because we hadn't experimented with it much yet.  But, after doing this, the liquid tempera paint would have been much better and quicker!

We didn't do anything to complicated for designs.  I used a small paring knife and just did the best I could.  And the girls were fine with this too.

We started out with regular copier paper, but that wasn't quite working for the girls so we quickly switched to our go-to paper; the butcher roll.

They made MANY pictures and I'm sure some of the relatives would love to see some of the masterpieces as well.  This was a very quick project but they enjoyed it all the same. 

Bored Jar Activity: Marshmellow Creations

A great summer day that turned out to be really productive brought us to the bored jar.  E drew "see what you can make out of toothpicks and marshmellows" So we got our supplies:

As usual, I just let the kids do whatever with them.  I showed them how to connect them, but then they started creating simple "pictutres"

Once that was mastered, they chose to create all kinds of things.

I didn't think this would keep them as busy as it did.  They spent easily an hour at this.

And before long, they had...

...lots of toothpick and marshmellow creations.  I can't remember what everything was, but as long as they were happy and entertained, it didn't much matter! :) Another simple and easy "project" in the books!

On our summer list - shaving cream colors

This concept is pretty common among preschool programs, but both my girls love this activity so much that they both requested it be added to our summer activity list.  And it's extremely inexpensive fun.  We picked up dollar store shaving cream cans, one for each girl. But one for the both would've been plenty!  And then we used cookie sheets and food coloring from the cupboard.

This is pretty simple.  Shake. Spray. Play.

And I totally let the girls take the lead here.  We just plaid in the white cream for awhile.  We talked about how it expands as it is being sprayed from the can.  How it feels, etc. 

I was especially proud of Little Miss Creative who used the cookie sheet and cream as a magna doodle of sorts.  Here she shows her family portrait. :)

Next we decided it was time to add food coloring.  Of course we stock regular colors and the neon colors.  Now if only they made more colors...

E loved dripping EVERY color on her tray, but realized later that may not have been the best choice as it made an icky poo green we could't fade out or change. But it sure looks cool here!

O chose to add her colors slowly.  At first picking her two favs, pink and purple.  (my girly girl!) and added more colors as we added more cream. This made for a cool rainbow affect.  And she really enjoyed when we added the spatulas and other utinsels.

We also added clear water beads to see what they would do.  But I think there was to much cream at this point and they sank right to the bottom of the pile.  E used hers to pretend it was buried treasure, but it was only found once as the pile was to big and the colors were to dark to find a clear softish marble.

Of course Mom had to make a rainbow pile of mooshy cream too! E wanted to know what would happen to the shaving cream if we baked it.  I honestly did not know. So of course we fired up the oven.  (I am blessed with a double oven, so the smaller one only takes minutes to heat up) We set it to 350 and "baked" our creations for about 2-3 minutes. 

Here's the cream after baking.  It's hard to explain what happened to it.  It was very clean smelling (like the original shaving cream but much lighter and airy) and it "sparkled".  It didn't seem to change size, but I suspect it would have had we left it in longer.  The girls were surprised that the cream was not at all hot like we all thought it would be.  But again, with longer time, who knows.  There are so  many things you can do with shaving cream, so thankfully we have some more for next time!

Bored "jar"

We've been mentally preparing for summer for at least a month now.  I am extremely excited about the upcoming months.  This is the first summer that I've been healthy enough to participate in playing with my kids like I want to.  And they are both old enough that they can play and contribute and a new and fun way too.  We've been preparing both a summer list (to be published later) and a bored jar list. 

Of course I searched Pinterest and found these fun ideas:

Click the picture to get to the links.  There are more on pinterest.  I just searched "bored jar" (and "board jar" - seriously...)  I liked things about each post, but of course needed to make it my own.  I wanted it to be a project for the kids more than me.  So I complied all of the lists I could find.  Then I gave them to my 7 year old with a highlighter and she chose the ones she wanted to make the cut.

We also set some guide lines.  The purpose of the bored jar is to entertain themselves.  So that means, when mommy is busy and there isn't anyone available or willing to play.  And you also have to be able to do each activity on your own, without needing help or materials we don't have.   So there were a lot of them that we both agreed would be fun to do, but that didn't fit our criteria.  Those things went on the Summer List.

I liked the idea of putting them on the sticks.  And I liked using Avery's clear address labels.  I was able to make them a little unique by using different, fun (free), download-able fonts from the Internet.  I also wanted to keep track of what we had borrowed from Internet friends and what ideas we came up with on our own.  So I color coded them. 

We had 120 ideas to start with.  We split up the sticks, got out the tempera paint and I let the girls go crazy.

O lasted about 3 minutes and then she resorted to just finger painting on the paper :)

But E likes to see the projects through and was THRILLED with the idea of the bored jar.  So she stuck it out and finished painting about 110 sticks on her own! (But it kept her busy nearly all of the morning! Day 1 of boredom - BUSTED!)

We let them dry, and then I helped her stick all the labels to all the sticks.  Originally we had planned to keep them in one of the large mason jars and swap them out with others to keep the idea newish. 

But the jar only held like 20 some sticks and we didn't like the way it looked. Plus, having helped compile the list, she knew what she really hoped to draw! Instead, we decided just to use the pink flower pot I picked up at the dollar store. 

We've had the "mommy-I'm-bored" flower pot in use for a week and a half. I've only heard those dreaded words once, and I immediately replied, I think you know what to do.  She skipped off to pick out a new stick. 

Some activities last a few minutes like, "stand on your head" and others can last as long as she is interested.  Like one of my childhood favorites, "paint the cement with water".

*Side note - some of the labels have come unstuck from the side they were folded over on.  So I just used a scissors to trim them off, and they've been fine ever since.

*Click on the images below to download the files via google docs.  (Don't worry, they're available to everyone - with or without a google account.) Thanks for looking! Enjoy!

 

Free Friday - St Patrick's Day & Free CRAFT Samples!!!

Finally Found a Free Friday Craft Sample! You have to have facebook, (but who doesn't!) and like them, and then you get a free tape measure.  I easily lose these bad boys for some reason!
http://www.indochino.com/tapemeasure

I'm not Irish, so I sometimes forget about St. Patrick's Day.  And I've had a hard time coming up with crafts for the kids or myself that I enjoy for the holiday.  So, today, I'm going to try to change that!  Here is a cute website, with several St. Pat's crafts.  Some kid related, some not.  But all cute none the less.
My favorite (because bright colors are always fun) are these rainbow bean bags!

If you follow me on Pintrest, I also pinned this image this morning!

Before our house fire, I did monthly kid craft classes.  And for St. Patrick's Day we made this adorable "pot of gold".  I had stopped at the dollar store and picked up some butterscotch candies for the gold.  And just asked some new moms I knew for enough jars.  Otherwise it was super easy - I had 3 year olds doing it (with some help obviously)

Note on these: Glue dots did not work for us! We had to use the glue gun.  And the Curly Ribbon is a cute touch, but didn't seem to be "kid friendly" for the end project - they were very excited about it.  I would recommend simple fabric ribbon instead.  The online instructions if you need them are here: http://www.familycorner.com/family/kids/crafts/pot_of_gold.shtml

The picture editing is not working for some reason...

I'm not a huge artist.  I am much more comfortable crafting things.  But I do like to play around with new things.  And this paper sample pack should be a lot of fun.  This was super easy! Fill in the bare bones basic info, click submit and with in 24 hours my request will be processed!  Sure beats the usual 4 - 6 weeks jazz!

http://fineartamerica.com/fineartprintondemandsamplekits.html

If you craft with your kids, you should be using glue dots.  They are simply freaking marvelous!! I don't use anything but if I can help it.  This request is a little different.  Send them a self addressed stamp envelope and the reason you are requesting the product and they'll send it off.  Really easy! And old fashion! :)

http://www.buygluedots.com/free_glue_dot_samples.html

Not sure about this one, but figured I'd let you be the judge.  The claim is 50 sheets of orgami paper.  But once I filled out the request, it said, you may be selected for a free sample.  So I don't know.  But still worth 5 seconds of my time I guess.  Good Luck!

http://www.everythinginpapercrafting.com/paper_promotion.html

Happy Freebie Friday!