Days 139/140: Bangles and Bath

Sorry about yesterday, I didn't think about blogging until late.  Mike yelled at me about it, so I guess we're good :-p

We made toilet paper tube bracelets.  They were so simple and a lot of fun.  All I did was take about a 1/2 inch slice of tubing out straight down the center, then i cut each roll into 6 bracelets.  The girls then chose 3 colors of paint and painted their bracelets.  Once they were dry, we decorated them with beads/googly eyes/gems etc.  Whatever they wanted out of the craft box was fair game.

here is what we ended up with, they are really cute.

Today, we brought back an old bath craft.  Remember the one we did a few months ago where the kids got to use the foam and decorate the bathtub with it?  Well, I brought that one back, mainly because we were sooo strapped for time.  We were out of the house ALL day, and got home in time for the girls to eat a few bites of a grilled cheese and get to bath.  It had been awhile, and I knew that they had fun last time.  This time though, their designs were so much more cohesive.  They needed no direction or instructions and they had a lot of fun.  I was proud of them!

Call it cheating, but hey, at the Greenhouse today, they did chalk, they flew kites, played with bubbles, today was full of all sorts of different enrichment so I was ok with bringing back an old craft.

Day 138: Paper Tube Airplanes

Another craft I can not take credit for... yet again, pinterest.  However, this was cute and something the kids found fun too, especially since they are so enamored with airplanes.

The original instructions called for using finger paints to paint the tubes a solid color, i really didn't want to get the finger paints out, so we used markers, which worked well, just the kids aren't old enough to completely cover a canvas (so to speak) in marker.

After they colored their tubes as much as they wanted, we cut 1 1/2 inch strips of construction paper for the wings.  The rear wing/tail, was simply creased to make the upward fin thing.  We applied glue and here are the girls' airplanes.  oddly, Penny's is the purple and pink one and Iris' is the blue one... go figure!

Day 106: Chalk

It was a dark and dreary day today and I knew there was no hope in getting the girls outside to play, so I decided that today would be an exceptionally nice day to make sidewalk chalk.  I had a few reservations, mainly that I didn't have powdered tempura paint, but I found a blog that said you could use acrylic paint (more on that later) or food coloring.  So, I finally decided to bite the bullet and sit down with the girls to make chalk.

There is prep work and forethought that must go into this.  You need silicon molds (silicon cupcake holders work well) or toilet paper/paper towel tubes.  If you use cardboard tubes, you have to seal the bottom so that chalk doesn't leak out while it is still runny.  Well, I was being lazy the first time and didn't want to go find the duct tape, so I grabbed packaging tape from beside me and sealed the bottoms.  BIG mistake, it POURED out of the the packaging tape like a breached levy!  So, i stopped immediately, and replaced all the tape with duct tape.. until I ran out of duct tape, and covered the remaining tubes with large pieces of masking tape.  Lesson learned: (which surprised me honestly) masking tape is the way to go!

First and foremost- not for the faint of heart.  Chalk making is MESSY.  There was plaster of paris everywhere in the dining room!  It is just a powder, so as you're pouring it, dust is flying everywhere, ugh, what a mess.  But, I mixed it: 1 cup PoP and 3/4 cup water, and then split it between the girls in small Glad plastic bowls.  I gave them each a wooden Popsicle stick to let them mix their colors with.  We started with using acrylic paint for the dye, but there are 2 problems with that.  First, if it isn't super runny, it just clumps up in the PoP mixture and doesn't actually dye anything.. Second, you have to use a LOT of even the runny kind to dye the PoP, and it turned gloopy really fast and is taking a much longer time than the others to dry.  I will say this though, it is the prettiest, brightest chalk we have!  We used food coloring for the rest, and they turned out really nice, especially the Neon colors.

The blog I got the recipe out of said that hers took THREE days to dry enough to use, so I thought "ok, it is going to take about 3 days before it is nice enough to go out and play with the weather predictions right now."  Well, as you can CLEARLY see, it did not take three days to dry, it didn't even take three hours.  I think they were ready to come out of the molds within an hour.  Then, i let them dry a few more hours and rubbed the remnants of the cardboard tubes off the things of chalk.  Now I am just waiting to have a nice day to take the girls out to use their chalks.

Thankfully, clean up was not difficult with this and most everything ended up being trash.... which could be a problem since our trash men are on strike :/

Day 95: Butterflies

why is it that ALL over Ohio it was 50-60 degrees today, but in Cleveland it only hit 41??? Have I ever mentioned that I hate Cleveland?  Oh well, we had a lot of shopping to do today and then we came home still needed to do craft while dinner was in the oven.  Iris had asked to make "circle" butterflies a few weeks ago- are we noticing a trend with Iris' craft requests yet???- and I saw these really cute toilet paper roll butterflies on Pinterest earlier this week and thought that they would be PERFECT for a craft, and it fit the "circle" butterfly request.

I have been trying to break in all of our new craft supplies that I got this week- I don't think I told you all this, but I got a gift certificate to Fat Brain Toys, and I stocked up on craft supplies and musical instruments for the kids.  We got a big coloring book, new construction paper, new paint brushes, watercolors, finger paint paper, doodle paper, and maybe one or two other things, as well as some bells, and other musical instruments.  Needless to say, we have been having a lot of fun this week!

Today, my handy paper cutter was the perfect tool for the job.  All i did was slice a 4" piece of construction paper to wrap around the tubes, then four 2" pieces for the wings.  Then we used the super tiny (1/8" i think?) hole punch that I have, to make a spot for the antennas, and used a glue stick to stick everything together.  We fed half of a pipe cleaner into each of the punched holes, wrapped the tops around our fingers and then made faces on them.  Penny wanted nothing to do with craft until I had my butterfly done, at which point she decided it was HER butterfly lol.  Iris did all of hers herself, with the exception of wrapping the paper around the body.  I was really proud of her artistic license with this craft.  And I am SO proud of her artistic ability today!

I threw in a picture that Iris drew today of a Crocodile wearing a hat.  I don't know that I could have drawn a crocodile that well!!!  I have some budding artists on my hands :)

Day 11- Mess Can Sometimes Be Success

So glad I finally broke down and decided to try to painting with toilet paper tubes.  The kids had a blast, and  the proof was on their hands!  Sometimes, the best projects are probably going to be the messiest, which is what I am learning when we dye pasta at night, haha.


I pulled the muffin tin out of the cabinet today, filled all 12 tins with different colors.  The kids sat in their chairs and watched so intently as I squeezed red, yellow, blue, purple, silver, white, brown, etc etc etc into each cup and then proceeded to place a toilet paper tube in each pile of paint.

When I finally said "Have at it" they both looked a little confused, so I took one of the toilet paper tubes and started stamping on a piece of construction paper.  That was all it took, Iris and Penny went to town!  They both tried different dipping and stamping techniques and created very different works of art.
Clean up was a breeze, other than cleaning the rims of each muffin.  Everything else either sat on the table to dry or got dumped in the trash... how much easier could someone ask for???

Tomorrow, Macaroni necklaces.  Another huge shout out to my hubby, Mike, for staying up past our bedtime to dye noodles.  What would I do without him???