Category: Craftiness

General craft ideas, including sewing projects, kid-friendly ideas and VBS inspiration.

Make a Batch of St. Patty Playing Dough

Make a Batch of St. Patty Playing Dough

playingdough3Last night I gave this very green recipe a go just in time for St. Patrick’s Day. While my son loved the finished product; during the cooking process, I was really beginning to wonder why I emptied a few of my kitchen staples into such a venture. I started out with a gooey, sticky mess that progressively became tougher to stir, but patience won out and I was rewarded with a huge ball of St. Patty playing dough.

The recipe for this big blob of fun comes from Being Creative to Keep My Sanity, but I’m going to expand on it just a bit. It really is an easy recipe and doesn’t take much time; so if you have faith that it’s working, you’ll be rewarded with hours of entertainment.

Ingredients:

  •  2 cups flour
  •  2 cups water
  •  1 cup salt
  •  green food coloring
  •  green glitter

Directions:

  1. Mix all of your ingredients together in a medium saucepan, preferably not the nicest one in the cabinet. It’s not like this process will hurt the pan, but it sure won’t be pretty when you’re finished. As far as food coloring and glitter go, the amount is up to you — add enough to get the color and glitz that’s toward your liking.
  2. Put the pan of ingredients on medium heat and stir as it cooks. You don’t have to stir constantly, but I did give it a good mix about every other minute or so.
  3. As the goo first starts cooking, it becomes a very sticky mess; but as it continues to cook, it will slowly change to a darker color, become a lot less sticky and will ball up a lot more. Cook until it becomes a big ball of dough and most of it is a darker color. Don’t over cook or burn.
  4. Turn the dough out onto a piece of wax paper or plate to cool.
  5. After the dough has cooled, it’s play time! Store your dough in an air-tight container.

 

One Boy’s Valentine Banner

One Boy’s Valentine Banner

Valentine banner

Yesterday I told you that my three-year-old son and I spent part of our snow day creating a cute little Valentine project, so today I thought I would share our kid-friendly craft with all of you (especially if you’re still stuck inside from this week’s storm). I came up with this quick banner idea by combining a couple of Pinterest projects with some of my son’s favorite things — paint and glue.

To create your own Valentine banner you will need:

  • brown paper lunch bags
  • empty toilet paper/paper towel roll
  • red washable paint
  • scissors
  • glue
  • string

To begin the project, cut a paper bag right above the bottom fold. Then cute along the two outside edges to give you two rectangular banner pieces. If you want, you can cut a triangle out of each of those pieces or just leave them square on the bottom. Cut as many bags as you desire for your project. If your child is old enough to handle the scissors, great but make sure an adult supervises this task (I let my three year old, cut on some scrap pieces, but he wasn’t up for the first part of this project).

TPheartstamp2Next, shape the empty toilet paper roll into a heart. I started by creasing the top inward, being carefully not to make creases in the rounded parts of the heart, and then I creased the bottom point of the heart. After you have the shape to your liking, pour some washable paint on a paper plate. Have your child grasp the TP heart roll around the middle to hold its shape, dip an end into the paint and stamp it onto each banner piece. Your child can redip as necessary.

After the paint dries, flip over each banner piece and run a bead of glue along the top of each one. My son loved doing this and it really didn’t matter that he got a little sloppy (you might want to cover your work space before this step). Meanwhile, I cut string long enough to span each banner with a small gap between and extra for tying off at the ends. After the glue was in place, I came along and pushed the string into each bead of glue. We let it dry over night and by the next day we had a truly heart-warming Valentine banner to hang about the house.

If watching your youngest glue paper bags to his fingers, the table and the cat is not your idea of a good time, you might try one of these alternative methods. 1) Punch a hole at the top of each side of your banner pieces and run the string through the holes to create your finished banner. 2) Fold the top of each banner piece over the piece of string and staple the flap in place to create your finished banner. Which ever finishing touch your choose, pick one that works best with your child’s taste and strengths (and your mama mess index).

From T-Shirt to Self-Tying Paint Smock

From T-Shirt to Self-Tying Paint Smock

paintsmockOkay, so it’s not often that I have a completely original idea, so here’s one for the books. . . or the blog, or however the saying must go in today’s electronic age. It’s not like it’s an earth shattering discovery or anything, but it sure did make last week’s VBS painting projects much less messy.

I picked up several extra large t-shirts from my Mom’s church for a buck each and planned to use them as paint smocks, but I didn’t think the children would appreciate us pulling them on and off their heads each day so I started thinking about an easy way to make them into backwards vests that somehow stayed on their little bodies. I wanted them to have ties in the back, but I just didn’t have the time or gumption to do a sewing project involving that many shirts.

Suddenly the thought occurred to me that perhaps there was a way to cut the shirts themselves so that they would be equipped with built-in ties, and that’s when this idea was born (now if I’m the last VBS craft girl on the planet to ever think of this, please tell me now so that I’ll stop being so darn pleased with myself).

Materials:

  • good pair of scissors (I keep a couple of pair just for material)
  • t-shirt

cuthereDirections:

  1. Lay the t-shit flat on a hard surface with the back facing up.
  2. Cut straight up the entire back of the shirt from hem to neckband.
  3. Flop the shirt over to the front and cut a slit just through the center of the neckband.
  4. Then cut around the neck band toward the back of the shirt on both sides, stopping about an inch and a half from cutting off the entire neck band on each side.
  5. These little flapping pieces of neckband will now be your ties.

Just have your child(ren) put on the shirt with the open slit at the back and use your two pieces of neckband to tie a loose knot at the top. That’s just how easy it is to make a mess-saving painting smock.

 

Shared at:
Wow Us Wednesdays @ Savvy Southern Style

 

 

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