A "Dinomite" Valentine's Day

I came across this list at one of my favorite blogs I follow, Fun At Home With Kids. A creative, candy-free list of Valentine's ideas. I showed the list to A, and she chose to do the dinosaur and volcano one (I was excited myself to do that one, too). A is in two classes at school, so this meant 2x the number of valentine's required. This meant we needed to start early - I am SO glad that I did! All of the cutting and printing and volcano-mix making didn't seem too bad spread over a few weeks. 

Our supplies and printouts. 

Storming army of dinosaurs.

A pouch of volcano mix. 

Heart-Shaped Crayons

I saw this great list of candy-free Valentine's cards for kids on a blog that I follow on Google+. Within this list was an idea to make your own heart-shaped crayons. While we did not choose to do this for our Valentine's this year, I still really wanted to make them - what a great way to repurpose the broken crayons we have everywhere! After a trip to the local hobby store to buy a heart-shaped silicone mold we were able to try it out. S and I collected our broken crayons, peeled off any remaining labels, and then I cut them into smaller pieces. We distributed them between each heart of the mold. We put them in the oven at 200 degrees for five minutes (which was the lower temp setting and time that the person who's post I link to used). For our oven, we ended up doing another 10 minutes or so. I increased in 5-minute increments. You definitely need to watch closely - it goes from not quite melted to liquid in a flash. After letting them cool, we peeled them out of the pan and voila - we had heart crayons!

Before we put into the oven.

Our finished project. 

 

Heart Sun Catcher

S and I did a really simple, yet fun craft the other day - we made tissue paper sun catchers! I saw various posts around of how to make these (from snowmen to circles to other shapes).

We simply took clear contact paper, cut into the shape of a heart, peeled off the backing, and then applied small pieces of tissue paper to the sticky side until covered.

Ta-da!

I asked her to hold it up for the camera. It cracks me up every time - she literally holds it up. :-)

Her one lil' eye peeking through.

I used a hole punch to put some ribbon through so that we could hang them up in the window.

Starry Night Craft and Liquid Watercolors

I have seen a lot of blog posts about liquid watercolors, and I have been meaning to try them. I finally got around to buying some. I decided to try out the Starry Night craft project that I saw at artfulparent.com.

Supplies:
- liquid watercolors (we used blue and turquoise initially, then added in some yellow, green, and pink)
- star stickers
- salt (we used table salt and kosher salt)
- watercolor paper
- paintbrushes

First, we put the star stickers on our watercolor paper (I cut a full sheet into quarters). 

Next, we painted our paper. This is where you want to be sure your stickers are firmly on the paper before you start painting. If they aren't they will curl, and you will get paint underneath the sticker. 

Then, you add salt to your paintings and set aside to dry. As you can see, we did many paintings - some with and without stickers. The girls had a blast (and so did I)!

Once they are completely dry, you remove the stickers. In the cases where our stickers curled, we decided to leave our stickers on. Here are our completed works of art!

Memorial Candle

I saw a pin on pinterest awhile back of a DIY memorial candle. I really loved the way it turned out. I, however, didn't want to find branches or twigs to trim down (and I didn't want to buy any either). They also didn't really go into the how to of making the candle holder. I decided to do a Google search, and I found this post of how to do it step-by-step. I have been wanting to make this candle holder to honor my Mom for awhile now. I decided to do a test run using the steps that I found. I didn't do any ribbon or trinket yet like she did, but just wanted to see how it turned out. I had some lower quality images so I couldn't blow out to any great proportion, so I decided to do a few different square pictures on each side of the holder. I like the overall look, though, I am not sure if I had too much mod podge in places, or if I was to close when I sprayed on the sealer, but you can tell that the lighting is weird in a couple places - even more noticeable when the candle is lit.

Here are my test run photos:

Bedazzled Tree

We made another tree craft today. We actually did it over a few days. This one was a lot of fun to do, and the kids really enjoyed it. We painted a canvas, glued on yarn in the shape of a tree and a star, and then glued on the decorations to fill the tree. Inspired by this post. Funny Coincidence: I did not realize that the background color we painted was basically the same as theirs. I didn't realize it until today when I pulled the link back up to link back to it.

Supply List: Canvas, yarn (we used green for the tree and grey for the star), tacky glue or some other glue, beads/sequins/buttons/etc, paint, paintbrush, scissors (to trim the yarn), and small foam brush (optional - we used it to spread the glue out before adding the beads).

Here is how we broke it down (though you could do this in one day; you just have to allow for drying time):

Day One: We painted the canvas. I mixed green, blue, and white acrylic paint until I had a color we all liked. Set aside to dry.

Day Two: I drew a tree and star on the canvas. Then, I traced the drawings with glue and placed the yarn on the glue lines. Set aside to dry (again). I drew the tree freehand and I used a star-shaped cookie cutter for the star at the top.

Day Three: Glued on our beads, sequins, snowflakes, and stars. We used a variety of pony beads, round beads, and various colored/sized sequins. You could also use buttons, bells, or anything that you can glue on to add dimension.  We also decided to add snowflakes around the tree to make it a more wintry feel.

Google's AutoAwesome magic at it again - making our tree twinkle!

Foam Shapes Activity

I came across this post on the Fun At Home With Kids blog. It was simple enough, and sounded like something my girls would get some enjoyment out of. We did a felt snowman last year, and they did enjoy it when it was first made, but they lost interest quickly afterwards. Since this idea clings to the window I thought that they would get a kick out of it. Boy was I right!

I made the snowman pieces first while A was at school. S had such a fun time placing the pieces - albeit it is more of an abstract snowman (I envision one that just got knocked down by some kids on a sled).

S wanted more pieces. So we decided to make a Santa (it's pretty rough, but it works - and I don't mean S's placement, I mean my shape-cutting ;-)). 

Still, she wanted more. So we made a tree with some decorations. 

It was time to get big sister from school; S was so excited to show A the activity when we got back home! They did all of the shapes again - plus we made a reindeer and a house (the wreath we had from last year, but it was also foam - A wanted a house to put the wreath on) to add to the mix. The girls have played with this on multiple occasions already, as well as used some pieces in the bath!  

Gotta love Google AutoAwesome animation!

I forgot to cut out a beard shape.