Merry Christmas in August!

I love these cute little popsicle stick ornaments. I've been making them every year for as long as I can rememver with whatever kids I happen to be with. You are suppose to use a red puff ball for the nose, but last year we didn't have any puff balls, so we used a piece of paper and covered it with glitter. The eyes are google eyes (Rudolf is a little cross eyed on this ornament) and the popsicle sticks were painted with crayola washable brown paint. You can use whatever string you have on hand to make a hanger. These look really cute hanging on a Christmas gift in the place of a bow.

Candy anyone?

This is a cute little homemade valentine I had one of my kids make for her teacher. We cut a large circle (about the size of a paper plate) out of a piece of poster board and put it in a pizza box. Then I put a couple dabs of red paint and a golf ball in the box. She wiggled the box around causing the golf ball to roll through the paint and make cool designs on the paper. When it was dry we wrapped it in plastic wrap and tied the sides off with ribbons to make it look like candy.

Baby's first Christmas

This is a cute little ornament I made for a baby's first Christmas. I stamped his hand print in red paint and let it dry, then cut it out. Next I wrote his name and date on the back of the hand print and used contact paper to laminate it. Then I punched a hole in the top and added a piece of pretty silver string to hang it. You can buy contact paper at most office supply stores. It comes on a role and tends to curl up while you are working with it, so make sure you have an extra set of hands to help with that part.

Pop

One day when we were practicing letter sounds, one of my kids said "p is for pop" which got me thinking about popcorn. So I cut out the word pop from construction paper and had the kids glue popcorn on it. Then we ate the rest of the popcorn which was really my motivation to do this craft.

Fabric Paint

One year for Father's day, we decided to make a tee-shirt, bag and hat. you could make these for someone special any time of year though. The white smudges are where I took out the names. The bag, hat, shirt, stamps, and fabric paints were all from the craft store. The hardest part about this craft is keeping the fabric paint on the intended fabric. I always strip the kids down when using non-washable paints, or have older kids put on an old shirt or a smock. Before diving in with the paints, you'll want to make sure to have a piece of card board in the bag and shirt to keep the paints from bleeding through. We started with the hand prints, then I did the writing, and then the kids did the stamps, with my help. This isn't just one of those things where you can set the kids loose with the paint and stamps. You really have to work with one child at a time and hold their hand while they're stamping. I'm all for creative expression, but I'm not about ruining anything with fabric paint. Believe me, it's hard to get off of any surface...protect yourself! The hat gets a little tricky with the stamps. You have to put your hand inside the had and make a flat surface under where the stamp is going. Overall this wasn't too difficult and I think it turned out to be a really cute gift. Oh yeah, don't wait until the last minute like I tend to do. The paint takes 24 hours to dry.

Rudolf the red nosed reindeer

Here is a cute little Rudolf I like to make every year. The head is a foot print and the antlers are hand prints. The nose is a puff ball and the eyes are google eyes. It's cute to make one every year and see how the kids have grown. It always makes me sad to see these though, because I think about my favorite boys in the world and how they used to call reindeer ringdings. :( Why did they have to grow up?

Halloween is coming

With Halloween right around the corner, I thought I'd share an awesome Halloween snack/craft. These are hollowed out oranges filled with fruit cocktail. You just cut off the top of the orange (like you would a pumpkin) and carefully scoop out all of the insides. This took some time to get it all cleaned out, and was wasteful, but was really worth it to see the look on the kid's faces when they saw their snack. When it is hollowed out, you simply fill the orange with fruit cocktail and draw a pumpkin face with a sharpie. These are definitely not something you want to try to make for your child's whole class, but for just a few kids, these are really fun.