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.

freezer paper stencil toddler art pretzel t-shirt

My kiddo is less familiar with the 1960s than with pretzels, so it wasn't really too surprising when he pronounced the glittery, neon pink "peace sign" shirt a "pretzel shirt" and said he wanted to wear one. I thought something like that might make a nice project for one of the blank t-shirts we've picked up recently, so we headed home to make our own pretzel shirt.

Really, though, this would make a nice project for whatever image your kid wants. And the best part is that it's a great project for even little kids to help with, which means you're not trying to work on it by yourself while your kiddo is pulling at your sleeves.

You can take a peek at one of my previous freezer paper stencil projects (1 and 2) for the basics if you're not familiar with the freezer paper stencil process. Basically, cut a stencil from freezer paper and iron it on. For this project, we also used Crayola's fabric markers (previous freezer paper stencil projects here used acrylic paints and Tee Juice pens).

Because I planned on the kiddo doing most of the coloring, I covered as much of the t-shirt as possible with freezer paper to prevent color from ending up in unintended places. You'll also want to put a piece of cardboard inside the shirt to keep color from seeping through to the back if (like me) you have an enthusiastic marker-wielder.

I let the kiddo pick the colors and tried to encourage him to make sure a lot of color made it onto the shirt rather than the paper . . . but yeah, that's pretty much a losing battle, so I surrendered early.  After removing the stencil and heat-setting the design, we were done.

And here it is, finished! We were both pretty happy with the way it came out, although I think if I were to repeat this project, I'd outline the shape completely first so that any areas with lighter coverage wouldn't blend into the background quite so much. But I think that even without that step, this was a nice collaborative project. He got to color on a shirt, and I got to help make sure it looks like a pretzel.

Thanks for reading! What projects have you been doing with your toddlers lately? We're always looking for fun projects that keep well (read: don't have to be tossed out after a week).

p.s. you can make these photos larger by clicking on them; but you already knew that, clever you.

Crayola Fabric Marker, Assorted (Google Affiliate Ad)

post christmas craft-a-thon, part 1

After Christmas, when everyone's holding their big post-Christmas clearance sales, I like to spend a little gift card cash on some marked-down craft kits for a change-up to the daily finger-painting and coloring we do.

This little spin art kit in a very nicely designed box came from Bed, Bath, & Beyond and cost under $3.

It came with twenty-five circular sheets of paper, three little bottles of paint, and a "spinner", which is essentially a top.

Of course, if you're working with a not-quite-three-year-old, you're gonna burn through the supplied paint in just five art pieces, but I'm okay with that. The kiddo stayed interested for a half hour (shockingly long these days), and thinned-down tempera paint can substitute for the other stuff. Overall, a nice way to spend a bit of our afternoon.

If you pick up (or build) a similar kit, work inside the box as recommended to avoid spattering walls etc. And experiment with different speeds of spin and different amounts of paint; the results can vary wildly.

What post-Christmas craftiness have you and yours been up to? I've got a couple of competition projects and some birthday stuff in the works, which is good; the holiday projects didn't all come together in time, but I'm finishing stuff and feeling good about my progress.

Thanks for reading!

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

lascaux elk

My kiddo got a hold of some markers the other day . . . because I bought them and then left them out. I try convincing him that markers look best on paper, but he usually channels his inner tattoo artist in the end. Sweet, funny little thing.

This one looks like a Lascaux elk, I think.

Thanks for reading!

recycled crayon eggs

Hey all! I've got a little recycled crayon project redux for you.

A month back, I posted about the rupee crayon party favors we made for the kiddo's Zelda birthday party. Big success! But, I did have leftovers. Both leftover rupees, and some leftover old crayons. So I decided to take some of the leftovers and recycle them again, this time into a little treat for the kiddo's Easter basket. (Should we call it tri-cycling? Or re-recycling?)

Easter egg crayons are pretty simple to make, if you have one of these Jello egg molds. Mine is a few years old (so it looks different from the one I've linked to), and the eggs come out with a patterns instead of being smooth. And of course, you should plan on retiring your mold from food use after using it for crayon eggs. FYI.

The process is slightly different from making the rupee crayons, because that was an open mold, and this one is closed. I could still have pushed crayon bits into the hole, but it would have been harder to get the entire mold filled to the top.

So I improvised a double boiler for the microwave. You can see the glass jar in the background there.

I put the crayons (broken into pieces) into the jar, then placed the jar into a bowl of water about two inches deep. The whole thing went into the microwave. Note: I've had good success with this method and have never been injured, but microwaves can cause hot spots, fires and occasional water eruptions. Please proceed knowing these risks, and remember: the crayons might be for kids, but this project is not. (In fact, if you have a standard double boiler you can use exclusively for crafts or candles, I'd recommend that over the microwave method any day.)

Once the wax was melted completely, I carefully poured it from the jar into the molds (using a silicon hot mitt to hold the hot jar). After letting it cool for a couple of hours, the mold popped right open, and the crayon came right out.

You might need to babysit your project a little. Wax contracts a little as it cools, so you may need to fill in your mold a little more to prevent hollow spots.

Once the crayons are out of the mold, they'll have little stumps.

If you leave them intact, the eggs won't fit into an unmodified egg carton. Luckily, the stumps are easy to remove with a serrated knife and a gentle sawing motion. Then, you can smooth the cuts by rubbing on a hot piece of aluminum foil.

Done at last, you can package them in an egg carton and stick them in the Easter basket!

Like a lot of the projects I do, this one is very versatile. You can make crayon hearts for Valentine's Day (I've seen them all over Pinterest), crayon shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day. You can find a Lego figure mold and make party favors for a Lego party. Think outside the (crayon) box!

(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)


Linking up to:

we rock!

Grandpa brought an unfinished wood rocker for the bebe's first birthday present a year ago; it's just taken awhile to get these photos up . . . 'cause I'm easily distracted. :)

I stained it with green water-based stain with the letter "P" taped off. The little starbursts were later carved in with a Dremel tool.

The little quilt was made for Christmas, 2010, though I started it the night I went into labor with the bebe in February of that year. It's cut from strips of my Spoonflower fabric designs, as well as several commercial prints.


(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)