mini art kit

A recent car trip highlighted the need to have various distractions for the kiddo in my bag at all times. I wanted a stash of compact little things to fit in there that won't add too much extra bulk, but will keep him entertained in a restaurant, in the back seat, or in a yurt during an overly rainy overnight trip to the beach. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.

An empty mint tin is a great way to organize a few art supplies, including a couple of those crayons that restaurants sometimes give out.

I also added a couple of short colored pencils, some neon posterboard cut to size, and a sheet of stickers sent to me as part of an advertisement. (Kids magazines sometimes send them out to tempt us to subscribe.)

When cutting the posterboard, I made sure to leave an inch of space at the end and a textured edge to make it easier to remove from the box.

And there is is! A mini art kit perfect for stashing in your bag, next to a Hot Wheels car and a travel-sized packet of Play Doh.

I know it's really the Boy Scout motto, but I think I'm going to adopt "Be Prepared" as my own.

Thanks for reading!

c is for chasmosaurus

After last week's craft fail, it was nice to have a couple of craft successes. This is one!

This chasmosaurus shirt is part of our gift for an upcoming birthday party this weekend (second part to be featured here, soon!). Our little friend is a big-time dinosaur enthusiast.

Those of you without a Silhouette cutter will be happy to know that this was made without one. I used freezer paper and an X-Acto blade, after first designing the image in Adobe Illustrator. Free dinosaur graphics are everywhere on the internet, though, so it's possible to do this project with other dinosaurs, without Illustrator. Chasmosaurus fans can use this design for your own personal projects (not for sale!).

You can print directly on the freezer paper. Cut it to fit your printer and make sure you'll be printing on the textured "paper" side, not the slick plastic side.

To save ink, I turned the opacity down to 30% so that it would print a light gray instead of black. You could also just print the image in outline, but I like to have a filled-in figure for whatever reason.

After it's printed, cut it out with an extra-sharp X-acto blade on a self-healing mat or a surface you don't care too much about (like an old magazine or a drawing board). The sharpness of the blade is especially important for those tiny letters.

Then iron it on your shirt and paint using a short-bristled brush! As I've mentioned before, the beauty here is that kids can help with the painting part. My kiddo helped paint this for his friend, so the gift is really from his own two hands.

Here are some of my previous freezer paper stencil projects, in case you'd like some more ideas or a bit more step-by-step.

(1) flour sack towels
(2) viking t-shirt
(3) toddler art pretzel shirt

Thanks for reading!

p.s. you can make these images larger just by clicking on them . . . but you probably already knew that, clever you.