Category Archives: Uncategorized

Mar2

Tie Die Eggs – Easter Craft, Egg Decorating

Posted on March 2, 2013 by thestick81

In Australia, Easter in my experience at least, is all about chocolate eggs. The only time I decorated an egg was in grade 3, for a decorating competition. But apparently in other parts of the world its just what you do at Easter time. A friend showed me this idea and I just had to give it a go! I rushed out to the local Op shops that afternoon and fumbled through a rack of ties trying to find any that were 100% silk (they must be 100% silk, polyester will not work). One shop charged $1 each and the other wanted up to $5 each, I told them they were dreaming and talked them down to $2.

$20 worth of Op shop pure silk ties

You can do this with boiled eggs, but I wanted to be able to keep them for future years or at least future craft projects. So rather than using whole eggs, we blew the eggs. That was a challenge in its self, but once I got the hang of it, I cleared out a dozen eggs and away we went. Cut the stitching at the back of the tie so you can open it up, remove any lining and cut a piece big enough to cover your egg. Making sure the dark side (what was once the outside of the tie) is against the egg. Secure with a twist tie or as I did, rubber bands as tight as possible without breaking the egg. You want as much surface contact as you can get. I then removed the excess fabric to make putting on the second layer easier.

All wrapped up tight in the first layer (print facing egg)

Then wrap a layer of plain fabric (I used some flannel and calico I had in the scrap fabric bag) and secure again with another band. Fill a saucepan with water and half a cup of vinegar (I didn’t measure, but would have used more than half a cup of white vinegar) and bring to the boil. Different directions state different cooking times, from 5 minutes to 20, I went with closer to 20 minutes. Then the exciting part!

Love the colours and patterns in this one.

Remove from the water and allow to cool. Remove fabric and discover what you have created! Don’t forget to blow out the water that may have ended up inside again if you used hollow eggs. Out of the 11 we made, 3 didn’t work at all. I can’t say for sure, but I think they were ‘fake 100% silk’ ties those ones!

Easter egg decorating

So, looks like we are having scrambled eggs and omelettes for dinner tonight.

I used a small drill piece to try to make a hole in the eggs, a sharp needles works better though.

Miss 4 having a go and blowing eggs, she did pretty will for such little lungs!

$20 worth of Op shop pure silk ties

Make sure it says 100% silk, polyester will not work.

This one actually says 100% silk, but I have reasons to believe it was all a lie! It turned out to be one of the ones that didn’t work.

Cut out the liner and stitching to create a piece of silk big enough to wrap around an egg

DD attempting the wrapping

Ms 4 attempts to fasten the silk around the egg.

I cut away the extra fabric to make putting the second layer on easier.

All wrapped up tight in the first layer (print facing egg)

Miss 4 attempting the second layer, and failing, but at least she tried.

In the pot ready to boil

Weighed down the eggs with a glass bowls, because of course hollow eggs want to float!

Remove from the water and allow to cool.

Remove the bands and see what you end up with! This one didn’t turn out as well as some of the others,

Easter egg decorating

Love the colours and patterns in this one.

More lovely results.

Soem of the finished eggs.

Feb12

Valentine Heart Activities for the Kids, with a side of FAIL!

Posted on February 12, 2013 by thestick81

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Valentine Heart Activities for the Kids, with a side of FAIL!

The concept here is very simple, so the results are totally worth it. Gather up any old crayons, or you could even buy new ones if you like, but with 4 kids in the house, we have plenty of old odd sets. Let the kids remove the paper (strengthening fine motor skills for the win!) and snap or cut into small enough pieces to fit in your desired mould. *make sure your mould is heat proof!

Heat the oven to around 120c, it really doesn’t need to be very hot. Place in the oven on another hard tray (like a pizza tray) because they will be super runny before they set again and you don’t want crayon spilt inside your oven – ask me how I know? If you do happen to spill a few drops, wipe it off with paper towel straight away, much easier to remove it while its still runny.

Once they are all fully melted, remove from the oven to cool. I put them in the fridge after a while, because I am impatient. Then just press them out of the moulds and you’re done.

And now for the fail. Originally I wanted to make crayon rings, for something a bit different on valentines day. So along with my heart tray, I ordered a ring tray. We were all set to go and excitedly looking forward to the results.

But alas, this tray must have been for the freezer only. I was sitting at my desk and thought ‘what is that smell’ walked to the oven to check and holey smokes! I opened the door quickly, at which point the lot burst into flames! So I threw some water on it in my panicked state. The results?

A house full of toxic smoke and a colourful mess to clean up! Oh dear. So please, learn from my mistake, make sure you check the temperature ratings!

Fill the moulds with small pieces of crayon

Mr 8. Cutting the crayons into smaller pieces.

Ready to go in the oven.

Quickly melting,

The melted down smaller than expected, so I topped them up with more.

The kids popped the cooled shapes out of the moulds

The finished products

Ms 4 with some samples

Making shapes

The original project

Ready to go in the oven.

5 minutes later

fail fail FAIL!

Feb9

Wind Chime / Sun Catcher

Posted on February 9, 2013 by thestick81

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Continuing on from the Christmas decorations we made a few weeks back, using the same principal we put together this wind chime or out door decoration. I’ll spare too much description, as its all talked about in the previous post (linked above), and its pretty straight forward anyway.

So this time we just made all stars, the kids chose their colour schemes and I wasn’t too worried about a colour theme as such. More colour the better. Once cooled, again we drilled small holes into a corner of each one, then threaded some fishing line to hang from a branch. I used a tiny dot of hot glue to keep the fishing line in position. And that’s it! Easy peasy.

Fill the metal cookie cutters

Ready for the oven

Drilling the holes for string

Ready to hang from the branch

The finished product

Starts in the trees

Trying to catch some sun on a cloudy day

This is about the 4th time we have made sun catcher type things, and every.single.time there is no sun when I go to take photos of it. I will hopefully update this when the some decides to come out again.

Feb8

Back to School – Book covering, (without the swearing)

Posted on February 8, 2013 by thestick81

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Back to School – Book covering, (without the swearing)

This really doesn’t require a tutorial, its more of a brag than anything. There is a certain amount of nostalgia attached to covering school books. The smell of that fresh new paper, shiny new pencils, no dog ears, all your books neat in a row. Then to personalise them with pretty covers and name labels. Yes, I looooved coving my books at school – says anyone that doesn’t have school age children. That was me too, until my eldest son started 1st grade. BUT THE TRUTH! The truth is, contact is the DEVIL! Thats right folks, he walks among us, in the shape of a cylindrical role of pretty coloured sticky plastic. What was once a lovely memory of my own child hood, now just about brings tears to my eyes. I do not remember it ever being to difficult! The bubbles, THE F’N bubbles, creases, more bubbles, AHHHHHH. OMG. So, after 3 years of torturing myself, my partner, and my walls (things were thrown) I finally got out early enough in the back to school season to get my hands on clear plastic sleeves. There is a God! He was hiding at Office Works the whole time. A few rolls of gift wrap from the $2 shop and we are set!

The boys had 20, yes, 20 writing books EACH this year. The sleeves come in packs of 5, for around $3 a pack. 3 – 5 meter rolls of wrapping paper, $2 each at the Reject Shop. Scissors and tape.

Wrap the cover of the book just as you would with contact, but secure with sticky tape on the insides. It took just under an hour to cover all of one child’s books.

Slide the covers over the top, and you’re done. (please excuse the revolting nails that badly needed refilling).

No swearing, no bubbles, no torn covers, no bubbles, no books thrown, no tantrums or tears and more importantly, no bubbles. Just lovely, shiny clean covered books, ready for the new school year.

What you need

The actual covers we purchased

Wrapping with paper

Covering with paper

Fixing with cello tape

Covered with paper

The small covers came with their own sticky bit on the back, meaning they are adjustable for different thicknesses of exercise books! Brilliant!

The finished products! NO BUBBLES!

Feb2

Beaded Mobile/Chandelier/Wind chime Family project.

Posted on February 2, 2013 by thestick81

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Beaded Mobile/Chandelier/Wind chime Family project.

Sorry if the beads are getting old. I really made this up as I went along. I wanted to use the rings I had bought to make Christmas Wreaths but never got around to. I thought this was something we could all do together and the results are pretty cute, although would do it differently next time.

We threaded some plastic jewels with beading wire, to make the ends. Then created patterns with different coloured beads, around 20cm long.

Finish off the ends by wrapping the wire into a loop around some needle nose pliers. The loop needs to be big enough to not let the beads slide off, and to allow you to thread more string on in the next step.

Then I just tied them around the ring, suspended it with some gift ribbon and suspended a glass sun catcher in the middle. All pretty straight forward. Ms 4 wants to hang it from her light, but as she has a light fan combo, there is nothing to hang it from.

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What you need

Twisting off the end of the wires

Threading patterns

Ms 4 threading

The other end of the wire

Wire ends

Twist around a pencil to make a spiral

spirals

Attache to mobile frame

finished product

sun catcher

Chandelier

Jan25

Christmas Decorations, Easy Toddler Activity

Posted on January 25, 2013 by thestick81

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Christmas Decorations, Easy Toddler Activity

These really are too easy and turned out so well! I will be using this concept for some other projects as soon as more cookie cutters arrive.

We used a tupperware baking sheet under them, but I think any flexible non stick surface would do, (baking paper). Simply fill some metal or oven proof cookie cutters or moulds roughly 2 layers deep, and bake at around 180c. Keep an eye on them until they are all melted. The plastic beads we used did not emit any nasty smell and did not burn, even when I got impatient and turned the over up to 200c, however, make sure the area is well ventilated just to be on the safe side.

Try to pile the beads up in the middle slightly, but only leave them 1 high at the edges, to avoid any bits sticking to the sides higher than other areas (you can see where this happened on the small man) Once cooled, remove the cutter and there you have it. I ran cool water over them to cool them a bit faster and this didn’t damage the shiny finish at all.

The husband drilled some holes in the top for string, and there you have it.

We will make a stack of smaller Christmas coloured ones for the trees next year.

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Place the beads, trying to keep them at only 1 high around the edges

Green and red for the tree

Nice and flat and smooth edges

Once out of the oven,

Drilling the holes for string

Ms 4 showing off her man

You can see some sharp edges on this one where the beads were 2 high.

The finished 3d tree from jelly mould

In the sun

Catching the sun light

Pink baby

Jan22

Memory Wire Bracelets, School holiday and Toddler Activity

Posted on January 22, 2013 by thestick81

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Memory Wire Bracelets, School holiday and Toddler Activity

Beading is hardly new as a way to entertain the kids and improve fine motor skills, but I have never let them try it with memory wire before. For those who don’t know what that is, Memory wire is tempered wire that “remembers” its shape and retains its coiled form. You can pick it up really cheap on ebay and then just cut to desired length as required. Due to the fact its wire rather than thread, it also makes it much easier for the little ones to get the beads on.

Once cut to length, just turn the end over with some needle nose pliers into a loop big enough that it wont allow your chosen beads to slip over, or in the case of really big beads, as I have done above, making sure no sharp ends will dig into their little arms.

The kids just made single loops today. Mr 7 experimented with patterns and Miss 4 went random.

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Memory wire cut to length

Mr 7 threading some beads.

Ms 4 threading onto the wire

Mr 7s own design

Ms 4 modelling some bracelets.

Jan18

Giraffe Softie – Or at least some kind of long necked creature.

Posted on January 18, 2013 by thestick81

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Giraffe Softie – Or at least some kind of long necked creature.

Here is another. Because I had worked out the way to do the leg insert from the elephant. I figured I’d give it a go free hand.

Cut out both sides and the leg insert. Plus a leaf shape for the head insert to create a 3rd dimension.

I started sewing from under the chin and worked my way around leaving the neck open to add the mane, ears and antlers and of course stuff the body. The mane needs to be put in before turning it inside out. It was a little fiddly, but I am happy with the results. I stuffed the antlers to make them stand up on their own. You can see below where I have sewn the head pieces together with the antler (in red) on the inside, so its positioned correctly when turned in the right way.

There ended up being a lot going on in the head area. This would have been easier had I made the head bigger. He would have also ended up with a more realistic length nose! We live and learn.

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Jan17

Elephant Softie – Rainy Day Activity

Posted on January 17, 2013 by thestick81

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I dont know if I have ever mentioned here before my love of elephants? Anyway, I think they are very awesome animals, and elephant toys are the cutest. I actually made this a while ago, but never got around to blogging about it. I have been soooo slack this school holidays, so this is my token effort for the week.

I just googled elephant softie pattern until I found something that looked simple enough. I copied the image, pasted into a word doc and blew up as big as I could. Printed it out and stuck it all together again!

The kids helped cut out all the pieces, pin them to the fabric and cut out the fabric. Then it was sewing time.

I really didn’t take enough photos through this process, but it was all very straight forward. The line across the middle is the piece you need to make for the inside of the legs. You can see this piece folded over in the image below.

Now here is a hint – make sure you put the eyes on BEFORE you finish sewing it. Because this little guy is now getting around the house blind, as I couldn’t put the backs on his eyes!

Anyway, we love the little blind guy. I want to make a whole herd!

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Dec14

Easy Toddler Craft, Christmas Reindeer

Posted on December 14, 2012 by thestick81

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How cute are these? Mr 7s year 6 buddy made him one for Christmas. I had to give them a go with the little ones.

Super simple and we had everything lying around the house (I will admit I do buy wooden pegs just for craft, they are not much good for hanging out washing!)

We started off painting them assembled, but that was just silly. Paint all the bits first, THEN assemble once they are dry.

Add some eyes, a red nose and some pipe cleaner antlers.

We even made a baby one with the mini craft pegs and mini paddle pop sticks.

: What you need

: The ‘skeleton’

: painting the reindeer

: painting the reindeer

: adding the eyes

: adding the nose

: The reindeer family

: Reindeer eating some hay

: Playing the the grass

: Reindeer Toddler craft

: Reindeer baby

: Christmas craft

Dec9

Teacher Christmas Gift ideas – part 2.

Posted on December 9, 2012 by thestick81

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This year, with changing schools and doing my Ed support certificate, I spent a fair bit of time hassling the ladies in the school office. They are all very lovely and didn’t mind, but I really wanted to say thank-you. Also, there is the little 2’s day care providers. They only go one day a week, but they are great staff, so I figure they deserve some token of our appreciation. I originally thought of making some sweets and wrapping them up to share around the office/centre, but after Mr7’s teacher claiming the doesn’t eat chocolate, I am damaged. So I decided to find something small, that you don’t feel obliged to keep, but you can use and most people like – a votive seemed just perfect. I shopped around all the cheap shops hoping to find something that was affordable without looking cheap and nasty, then went to Dusk and found 6 packs of Christmas themed votives for $16.95. Which was about what I had budgeted for.

I grabbed a packet of Ferrero chocolates to top them off. Then just stocked up with some Christmas ribbons and gift tags. Not really sure what was going to work. After some trial and error, this was the finished product.

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: The votives

: Adding the chocolate

: Wrapping in cellophane

: With beads, decided they were a bit too much though.

: Finished product

: Finished prodcut

: What we used (plus clear cellophane)

Dec3

Quick Kids Craft – Christmas Themed

Posted on December 3, 2012 by thestick81

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Mr 7 actually came up with this by himself. He was not home when we did the leaf pictures, but he used that idea for inspiration.

Some craft glue, a marker, coloured paper, leaves and flowers and a brush.

I drew the basic outline for him, while he and Ms 3 collected some fine leaves and flowers from the garden.

Spread the paint into the area you want to cover.

Then he painted the glue on.

and start sticking

The finished product.

Too easy! Next time we might frame them. Or cut out the shape and put it on some different coloured backing.

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: Some craft glue, a marker, coloured paper, leaves and flowers and a brush.

: Spread the paint into the area you want to cover.

: and start sticking

: Ms 3 and Mr 7 sticking on the flowers and leaves

: The finished product.

Nov30

Christmas Gift idea – Teachers gifts.

Posted on November 30, 2012 by thestick81

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As it turns out, on of my sons teachers does not drink alcohol, so my fall back gift of a nice bottle of wine or spirits at the end of the year was ruined. Buying an actual gift for someone you know very little about, have never seen inside of their house to understand their taste, I find really really hard. I stumbled across these nifty little things at House

I grabbed 3 different colours as my eldest son has 2 teachers. Woolworths just happened to have Cadbury Favourites and Lindt Lindors half price! So I stocked up on those and away we went.

We filled them almost to the top with chocolates, then wrapped in cellophane

finished off with some ribbon and a bauble.

Then my son comes home and informs me that she doesn’t eat chocolate either… So we are back to square one for her!

Nov30

Easy Christmas Craft – Mini Christmas Trees

Posted on November 30, 2012 by thestick81

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Easy Christmas Craft – Mini Christmas Trees

Inspiration for this idea came from something I saw at Spotlight. They used buttons though, which looked good, but buying enough buttons for the project would have blown the budget. I can’t believe how expensive those things are?

Anyway, What you need.

styrofoam tree shapes, sewing pins, aluminium foil, sequins and sticky tape.

Spotlight also didn’t have any of the cone shape styrofoam in stock, so I bought that from Riot Art and Craft. They are available in different sizes, I just chose 3 small ones to avoid arguments.

Wrap the foil around the cone and secure with clear tape. I crumpled up a ball of foil before spreading it out on one, to create a more rippled affect. I actually prefer how that one turned out.

Once you have the foil secured and are happy with the finish, start placing the pins! Be careful when working at the top of the cone to point them down towards the bottom as you insert, so you don’t go straight through and poke yourself on the other side. The kids managed this fine, even Miss 3. We only had one ouchy, and that was actually me!