Magnet Fun

I'm not sure if it's a 2 year old thing, or just a quirk that Tot has, but she LOVES stickers. However, she doesn't love sticking them somewhere and leaving them there. She wants to stick, peel, stick elsewhere, peel again, stick again, etc etc etc...
Magnets seem a great solution to this, but there's not always a convenient spot, nor is there a great variety to be had like there are stickers.
Hence the magnetic paper solution!

You can find magnetic paper from Avery products in most any office supply store, I got mine at OfficeMax, but Walmart may carry it too. Once you have the magnetic paper, you can print directly on it from your color printer and simply cut the shapes out and enjoy.
However, Tot got these wonderful Christmas stickers in her Santa goodie bag and I wanted her to be able to play with them, so I tried out our first magnet game by using the stickers on the magnetic paper and then cutting them out.

It worked GREAT! Plus, there's very little waste on the magnetic paper, so I only used a little over half a sheet for this one toy.

She LOVES IT. It is the best of both worlds, and even though the little pieces do stick to the large background piece (also stuck to magnetic paper) I got her a dollar store cookie sheet, because the magnet is sort of weak and sticks much better to the metal.

It is a big hit with her, and she spent about a half hour of quiet concetrated play time right away so that is a hit for me as well!

Next is to figure out convenient and efficient storage for them. I'm thinking maybe just putting them in envelopes for now. Any suggestions?

Now I'm going to do Paper Dolls on magnetic paper so that she can play with and dress them! I can create a dollhouse for the background they could move around in, too. (I can even make her a play family by printing out pictures of us!) This should be great for church if I can find something besides the cookie sheet, a flat metal piece that would be more conveient to carry in my bag.

Christmas tree chain

Another idea stolen from Pinterest was this simple Christmas countdown.
I knew that this would be simple enough for Tot to try and super simple and cheap so we did it!

She was so pleased with it that she carried it around until one of the strips tore in half. We simply glued it back together, but she decided to go ahead and leave it hanging up from then on (at least until naptime, who knows what fate awaits it next!)

You simply need paper of differing colors (or not!) We used construction paper, because I had it on hand. I cut 1"strips from one and a half sheets of green (11 1/2 X 8 1/2 regular letter size) simply lengthwise across the paper. If you used shorter strips, you would have a smaller tree, longer the larger the tree.

We needed 1Yellow 6Red and 18Green for this project. (A perfect 25 to count down to Christmas).
I decided that since we already had ample advent calendars that we would simply put it all together at once (although you could start with it together and take it apart as well).

Tot enjoyed gluing even though she always wanted to shut it instead of opening it. However, my couch and carpet loved that. Yes, we are gluing on top of a library book instead of at our table. Never fear, we were neat enough to NOT glue on the book, however the laminated cover would have been simple to wipe off should any glue have overflowed onto it. Nevertheless, I do not recommend crafting on books, especially ones that aren't yours.

After gluing, I put them in place and then she squeezed it together to hold until the glue stayed tacky enough to hold it. This was her favorite part.

She had lots of fun. I let her make the circles, but she didn't quite grasp that she had to turn the paper and kept making a bunch of teardrops instead. But, I simply quietly and discreetly fixed them when she was busy with the next piece. Plenty of time for that later, the important part here was to encourage her to have fun, follow simple directions, and to MAKE something!

Advent calendar

Remember the paper modeling post from a few days ago?

I found a great little advent calendar shaped as Santa's workshop from Delta 7 Studios! It was relatively easy to cut and glue, and to get color on it, I simply traced all the lines and colored the backside of the paper that I printed out on my black and white laser printer.

Next time I'll make it a lot easier on myself and alter the pdf files in photoshop first so I can simply color the printout, but for now, I think it turned out great!

Tot is super excited about it and loves to carry it around by the chimney.
This is going to be her secondary one for fun, as I've made up a great advent with scriptures and activities to do day by day in December. I'm super excited!

Paper Modeling

Lately I've been looking into paper modeling. This is a super fun, cheap and fast way to some good times. It takes some patience and a little skill with scissors and paper folding, but most older children will be able to do the simpler projects. There are a multitude of sites that give you free patterns (including Disney buildings and characters which we'll visit later) but the following I did came from the super neat site of Illinois where you can build paper replicas of most of their historical downtown buildings. The site is here and you should definately go and try it!

First you will have to download the pdf files, and then simply print them out. They are full color and look realistic, but I only have a black and white laser printer at the moment, so my models are all greytoned, but still fantastic.

There are instructions and each piece is well labeled, so it's pretty simple. The model I did was 15 pages and cutting it out only took a few hours (probably less if I wasn't also juggling Tot's activities to keep her occupied over the few days I spent on the project).

After each piece is cut out, you fold and glue them together.

Once the building is complete, it is surprisingly sturdy.

That was the gardeners museum from the Illinois site.

And the other building which is only partially done at the moment.
Tot loves to carry them around and play with them. She calls them her castles. She isn't completely gentle with them, but she hasn't fallen on them either, and they're still in very good shape.

That pic is after a few days play. Still fun!
I'll be doing more of these in the future for sure!

Turkey Handprints

We've all seen the turkeys made out of handprints, whether they're painted, cut out of colored construction paper, traced, stamped, or just freestyled on the paper.
Sometimes, you just can't go wrong with tradition!

Tot had a LOT of fun with this one. She adores tracing her hands (and I adore the cute little handprints left behind) so it was a breeze to get her to pose her hand all in a circle for our turkey.

I'm not ready to let her go all out with paint yet, so we did ours in crayon, but there's so many different ways you could go with this one, you really can't go wrong!

We did two papers with her hands traced. I colored her turkey, and she made the masterpiece below. She is BIG on circles right now, so she filled the page.

A wonderful and fun November afternoon!
What Tday traditions are on your plates this month?

Owlapalooza 2

I had every intention of doing a cloth owl for the second week of owlapalooza. But, an emergency came up, so we were scrambling to fit in a craft. I had thought of doing this one for our first paper craft, but didn't, so I figured now was as good a time as any to let Tot try her hand at gluing.

 First, we gathered our materials. In this case, a foam circle, scraps of orange and brown paper, glue, glitter, and scissors. And of course, the google eyes!

Tot put the eyes on first. She liked the yellow circle and once it had the eyes on, she kept calling it a happy.
I cut the feathers out while she was gluing the eyes and playing with "a happy". hee hee.

Then, I simply spread a little glue with her "helping" and let her go to town putting the feathers on. She was very precise at first, but then she got some glue on her fingers and decided she could go no further. After a bit of a cry and some paper towel rescue, we were able to finish placing the feathers.

We added some big "ear" feathers at top, and I glued the orange feet and beack on. Yes, there is even some 3D effect with the beak. Just make a triangle, then fold the two long ends down to the middle so it forms a square. Then, you can fold it in half, and when you pull it just so, the front pops out a bit. It still has the ability to fold flat for storage, though.

And here he is after the glitter accents were added. Tot like these, although she had more fun glittering the kitty than her paper owl. Oh well. I think he'll be a lot of fun for her once he finishes drying. She loved saying: Who who Hoo!

Owlapalooza Post 1

I decided that October is going to be our Owlapalooza.
This means Owls....lots of owls! Bring on the owls, because you can never have too many! (unless they outnumber the cats)

So, my goal is at least one owl craft a week until Halloween.
That is roughly 4-5 owl filled fun days.

Day one was a simple papercraft owl.

I decided that since Tot was familiar with paint with water, she may switch over to watercolors fairly easy. I had picked up a set of watercolors from Walmart's back-to-school sale for a very sweet price, and I was itching to see how well she could do! And what she would do!

 She was a very careful painter. Just like when she colors, she thinks about where she's putting each and every stroke. She carefully painted these colors, although, she didn't quite get the concept of putting the COLOR down. She kept dipping the brush in the water and smearing it around instead. That's what I get for starting her out with paint with water, I guess!

 Still, by the time she had done, we had a nice fall colored bunch of lines that could resemble a forest. I added a treeish figure on the left and then we assembled and glued the paper owls I had cut while she was coloring. I just did everything freehand, simple shapes to put together. Oval owls with a square bottom, triangle ears and circle eyes.

 Of course we HAD to opt for google eyes to finish it off! There we are for our first Owlapalooza entry, a nice little owl famiy just waiting to say: Happy Whoolaween! Hee hee.

Fall leaves from Pinterest

I love the ideas I find from Pinterest, and this wax paper leaf project was exactly what I needed to spruce up my house for fall.

Tot and I had just put the fall decor up the other day and I decided that we needed more.
The orignial post that inspired this is here.

I had read this post a while ago, and thought I remembered how to do it, so I made a few mistakes which I'll share with you along the way.

First, you'll need to put a towel (and paper towel lining) down to protect your ironing board.
Then you need to put down a layer of wax paper.
Next, gather the crayon bits and get shavings from them. I wasn't sure how I wanted to do this, I almost used a cheese grater, but then I got SS (Super Spouse) to lend me his box knife. It came out covered with crayon wax, which I was able to get mostly clean. However, in his super sweet way when I told him I thought I had gotten all the crayon off, he said, "That's ok, it's a tool, it needs to be used and get dirty."

Here are all the bits right before I put another sheet of wax paper down.
If I had to do this over, I'd use larger and thinner pieces of crayon to get it to melt better. I would also use less colors.

After putting another sheet of wax paper over it, I folded my towel over.

And use the iron to melt the wax and push the color around. The original tutorial said to use sparingly because you want a very thin layer of crayon. However, I found that at least with my bits, it didn't spread much and so I had clearish white holes in between my colors. I also had bits of crayon that didn't melt as they were bigger chunks, so finding a way to shave off the crayon would probably have worked better than a box knife.

You will want to put a layer of paper towel down on either side of your wax paper instead of a regular towel. Because it DOES ruin the towel. (and it would definitly ruin your ironing board or iron with direct contact)

Always stop work to check on what Tot is doing. This time, she was hiding under the bed with the kitty.

Once the wax paper has cooled, you can cut out your leaves. The original tutorial had a leaf image to trace but I found interesting patterns within the melted wax and just cut around them. I wanted my leaves to be interesting and different sizes. It worked rather well to free hand them.

After you have them all cut, you can put them on thread or fishing line to hang, adhere them to branches, or just hang them up with tape. As you can see, hanging below the storebought leaf garland, they add just the right touch to have a "fall" in our house.

Fun with Silhouettes

Call me old fashioned, call me romantic, but there's nothing I love more than a great silhouette!
Now getting one of a child could be near impossible if you try to do it the old fashioned way (by tracing the shadow from the sunlight or a lamp). However, with some photo editing software and a picture snapped of the profile, I was able to create the perfect old fashioned silhouette of a child.

This was the picture (I cropped it down to just what I needed, which was basically just the profile bust) we started out with.

As you can see, it is nothing fancy, nothing special. It doesn't even have all that much contrast (which would make it easier) but still works fine. If you want to make it super easy on yourself, have the child stand in front of a sunny window so they're totally backlit. Then you'll essentially have the silhouette to start with, and simply cutting and pasting with a teeny bit of adjusting will be all that is necessary.

What you want to do is take this photo and using your photo editing software, select or manually outline the profile and around the head. Don't worry too much about getting all the hair exactly, just try to use a smooth and continuous line around the back of the head and below the neck. The part you really want to be picky about is following around the face. Don't take shortcuts there, but everything else can kind of be fudged.
Once you have the outline traced, its a simple paint job. Fill the inside of the line with black and the outside with white (or vice versa).
Then you end up with something like this:

I added an embellished T for a monogram. (Parchment font) I thought it looked cute placed there as it could be a barrette holding back her hair. In any case, there won't be a question of who is this in the future.

Now, you can print this out either on colored paper, or white, or whatever you can run through your printer.
You can also print it out on regular white and the cut it out and paste it on a differing background.
I printed out a few as I wanted to try different things to finish them off. I also chose a few different sizes. Silhouettes were typically done on a life sized or smaller scale. Most of the ones I've seen are very small jewelry size. So I used a smaller scale as well. This serves as your friend as it smooths out some of your rough lines, and minimizes any jagged or pixelated edges.

Here are some examples of what I did with the one silhouette:

"Framed" vintage looking photo (foam circle with tulle and ribbon, everything is layered and hot glued in place):

One for Tot to play with as she pleases as she LOVES google eyes:

A modern art version (glued on foam circles that are glued together with a hollow rectangle paper backing:

A framed piece cut from scrapbook paper (I just traced the original and cut it out):

And one for the scrapbook:

And I printed a teeny one to go in my locket.

So as you can see, these babies can be as vintage or modern as you want them to be, and can fill a variety of needs/designs.
It's so fun that they're super easy to do!
So, have fun!

Linked to Tip Me Tuesday

Spring flower flashback

Last spring I was feeling a distinct lack of decor love in my kitchen. The easiest way to resolve this is to have Tot color some pictures and tape them to the cabinets. However, both of us were tiring of the color in the lines type of printout. She doesn't exactly color so much as scribble yet anyway.

I came across this Video on how to make a paper flower ball, and thought it would be fun to try.
I watched a few times to get the folding technique down and then folded and cut out the two different pieces for the flowers.

The trial I did was with one piece of pink paper, so sorry about the pic. I am horrible about taking in progress pics, something I intend to work on here.

I was using white centers with pink flowers, so once the white centers were cut, I gave them to Tot to "color" where she was able to scribble and draw to her hearts content while I cut the pink ones.

Then, instead of making it into a ball that would need to hang, I glued the centers in to the pink flowers, folding them through the slots, and then glued the pink flowers to a larger piece of paper. It looked like a huge boquet, so I added another piece, cut the bottom to the shape of a vase and then with green crayon added a few stems and leaves.

It isn't quite elegant, but it's still very colorful in our kitchen! The important thing, though, is that we had fun together creating something.