Where Your Treasure Is: Crafts with Children

Showing posts with label Crafts with Children. Show all posts

Thursday, May 10, 2018

DIY Fruit and Vegetable Prints

This is a fun craft for you or the kids, that is as easy as opening the refrigerator and laying hold of whatever fruits and vegetables you have on hand. Get out the paint and paper, or fabric and you have a delightful and inexpensive piece of art. Use the base of celery, bok choy, or lettuce to make roses, slice oranges or lemons for a beautiful citrus print, carve carrots or potatoes into stamps such as leaves or simple designs, use bell peppers or squash for fun shapes, slice apples or mushrooms and stamp them on fabric or paper. Use parsley and corn on the cob for texture and repetative design, and end up with some lovely scrapbook paper, pictures, cards or fabric prints.

Supplies

Fruits and vegetables, such as:

Bok Choy, Lettuce, Carrots,

Celery, Potatoes, Apples,

Oranges, Lemons, Peppers,

Squash, Mushrooms, Corn on the Cob, etc.

Craft Paint

(if you are stamping onto fabric, use a fabric paint)

Paint brushes or sponges

Paper or Fabric

Instructions:

Slice the fruits and veggies in any manor that you wish
Brush on Paint.
Stamp onto Paper or fabric
Allow to dry
Use paper or fabric to create something else.

The base of bok choy, lettuce, or celery makes lovely roses.

Carrots and potatoes can be carved into simple designs to create a stamp, such as the leaf stamp here.

Bok choy rose, with carved carrot leaves.

Peppers make fun shapes, such as flowers or shamrocks.

Celery stems can be used separately as designs, or to add petals to your roses.

I now have a nice pile of scrapbook paper to use.

Create greeting cards,

scrapbook pages,

or picture/plaques

Have fun and happy stamping.

Monday, February 8, 2016

Valentines Marshmallow Pops

My girls and I had some fun making these Valentines Pops recently. They had seen these for sale in Anthropology for $4.00 a piece. Inspiration was born; they thought "we can make these easily". And then they inspired me as well. We shopped for the ingredients we wanted and went to work, and let me tell you they were very quick and simple to make. They made delightful Valentines presents for several of the get-togethers we had, and they also made the cutest Valentines Bouquet in our dining room. This is something that young and old alike will enjoy making. You will have to be patient to let the kids have their turn... because other wise you might be tempted to do it all yourself.

Valentines Marshmallow Pops

Ingredients:

Lollipop Sticks (found at craft stores or baking supply stores).

Clear Plastic bags (for wrapping each finished Marshmallow).

Ribbon (to secure plastic bags around lollipop stick).

1 bag Marshmallows: Large and extra large Marshmallows are what we used(in the picture above, Elizabeth is holding the extra large Marshmallows)

1 bag Melting wafers or melting chocolate of choice (we used 1 each of chocolate and pink melting wafers).

Assorted Sprinkles, Shredded Coconut or Nuts

Instructions:

Prepare a work surface, by placing Lollipop sticks and Marshmallows neatly within grasp, various sprinkles in separate bowls, 2 or 3 mugs or cups to place dipped Marshmallows in for drying, and bags and ribbons for wrapping once dry.
Heat melting wafers or chocolate in a double boiler and heat slowly and stir until melted and smooth.
Form an assembly line with melted chocolate, Marshmallows, sticks and sprinkles with in grasp.
Place a popsicle stick into the middle of a Marshmallow and dip halfway into the melted chocolate. Use a knife to help remove excess chocolate.
Use one hand to hold the marshmallow, and the other hand to sprinkle the coconut or sprinkles onto the melted chocolate covered marshmallow.
Set Marshmallow "stick side" down into a mug or glass, and allow to dry completely.
Once dry, cover with plastic and tie a pretty bowl around the plastic to seal.
Display or carry in a cute Valentines bucket. We had some Florist Foam, that we put into a bucket and covered with confetti type filler. Then each pop could be stuck into the foam and made to look like a cute bouquet; you could also use this as a way to dry your pops.

Have fun!

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Owls for Tea: A Fall Tea Party

My daughters and I are fond of the word "Cozy". There is something about that word that makes us feel safe, content, relaxed and happy. We are also very fond of the words "Tea Time", and have found that these three words do very well together as we often like to have a "Cozy Tea Time" together. It turns out that my grandsons are fond of tea time as well, and when they take a break from playing war, riding four wheelers, and digging in dirt and wrestling, being cozy suits them fine just as it does us. So we are often in pursuit of a tea party with whatever member of the family we can include. You will find many varieties of tea parties on this blog, and this particular tea party, is a Wonderful Cozy Fall Tea Party, with an Owl theme, because 3 of my grandchildren were working on a little "Owl" Study in their work this week, and Owl seem the perfect accompaniment to the theme of this Fall Tea Party. Here are a few pictures of our fun... and a couple recipes will follow; so, put the kettle on and enjoy with us.

We put up banners and decorated.

Himilce (my daughter in law), bought us these owl mugs from "Family Dollar".

So, so cute don't you think?

There were many owls at our party. This one, and the little owl rocks that we painted (as seen at the base of the table arrangement in the first picture). Himilce also checked out Owl books at the library;