Wrap it Up With Circle Paper

How special is it to receive homemade wrapping paper from a littlie. Old paintings are great for this! Both my girls were very happy to get birthday presents from their Melbourne cousins which were wrapped up in the most beautiful homemade bubble printing paper. It made my day to see it too - so creative!

We had a present to wrap for a little friend recently so we decided to make our own wrapping paper by using circle objects to print with. It didn't take much to set the activity up. We needed to do find some bottle lids, ribbon spools and other round objects and we were ready to go.

Circle Printing

You will need....

Paint - we used washable acrylic

Paper - we used white easel paper but butchers paper would work well too

Paint tray - take away lids are great for this

Pour paint into the trays and start printing onto the paper with the circle shapes. The effect that comes from the circles is wonderful.

You could extend this activity by...

• using other shaped objects from around the house

I have a thing for spots and stripey patterns so this activity really appeals to me. Could spotty paper be the thing for the Christmas presents under our tree this year?

Make Your Own Pop Up Cards

This week we celebrated Daddy's 40th birthday so with much excitement two little girls made their own cards to give to him. Miss M (4.1) and I decided that it would be fun to try making a pop up card so it would be extra special for such an occasion.

We googled how to make pop-up cards and found this great tutorial with easy to follow instructions. Then we watched this tutorial so we knew how to decorate it. Making the card didn't take long at all and the finished product was super. (I'm a bit biased!!) Instead of using the glue to make ours we used a strong double sided tape as I don't always trust a glue stick to hold cardboard in place.

As Daddy opened his card on the morning of his birthday he got a wonderful surprise - there was a picture of him riding his surfboard on a big wave and on the front of the card he found a picture of our family.

Maybe your kids could try making a pop up card for someone you know or why not try out some special designs for Christmas.

Making Stamped Cards - Creating a Gift

Yesterday I posted that we were making our own stamps to create some thank you cards for friends. At the time the stamps were happily drying in the sun. By the afternoon they were ready for the stamping fun and the girls were able to create beautiful and very colourful homemade printed cards.

Stamping Printed Cards

You will need...

Plain cards - I buy these from a craft shop, cut to size but you could just as easily use paper or cardboard you have to cut yourself.
Acrylic paint - we used Crayola washable paints
Paint trays - we used plastic plates. Take-away container lids are also great.
Stamps - we used our homemade stamps!!!

Pour the paint onto the paint trays - we put one colour on each plate and spread it out.
On each paint tray we then placed a stamp. This made sure that the colours stayed fresh.
Begin by dipping the stamps into the paint and then placing them on the card.
I lay our cards out flat so the girls would only put the prints on one side. It also gave them more space to be creative.
The folding and writing can come later when our printed cards are dry.

And here they are...

These are our homemade cards to say a BIG thank you to our very special, giving and helpful friends.

Do you like to get your kids to make gifts for their friends and family? What have they created? I'd love to hear your ideas!

Making Stamps - Creating a Gift

Recently we've had new friends and wonderful old friends (separately) do some amazing things for our family. Each act of kindness was to bless the girls but really through their kindness we have all been blessed in various ways.

Their kindess has prompted us to give a thank you back and considering that the gifts were for the girls, I thought it would be great if the thank you's came from them. We have started a two part process of making our very own thank you cards using homemade stamps. The girls made the stamps this morning and this afternoon will use them to decorate cards. I'm excited to see how they will turn out and I think the girls may enjoy using something they have designed to make other creative things.

Making Stamps

You will need....

Small blocks/ off-cuts of wood

Various raised collage items - bubble wrap, milk bottle lids, pipe cleaners etc are some of the things we used - look for interesting textures and shapes.

PVA glue

Making stamps is easy enough to do. Simply attach a collage item to one side of a block of wood using the PVA glue then repeat the process 'till you've made as many stamps as you would like. Some items like pipe cleaners may need added weight on top while they dry. This will stop them from springing up.

Here are some of our homemade stamps. I'll show you our thank you card creations tomorrow.

Making Flowers for Mummy

This morning the girls and I were busy little bees making beautiful flowers for Mother's Day. It was a special time creating together, even Miss H gave them a go. We had a few different items to put on our flowers but the three main crafty things we used to make them were coloured and spotty patty pans, sticky tape and green bendy straws. The finished flowers look great and they only took a few steps to make. (This mummy loves big bright spots so these were perfect!)

You will need....

Patty pans - big or small, patterned, pictured or plain - it's up to you!

Drinking straws - we used green straws to be the stems. (You could also use pipe cleaners, straight straws or paddle pops for stems)

Sticky tape

Scissors

Glue - we used a Bostik glue stick which worked fine for our decorations. I would suggest a mix of PVA and Cel Mix or just straight PVA if you want to use anything thicker to decorate eg: pom poms, sequens or felt.

Decorations - we raided our collage supplies and came up with confetti and crepe paper but circles of pattern paper, felt, tissue paper or glitter would work well too.

Make up the basic flower shape by cutting petals around the patty pan - rounded edges look pretty but cutting straight lines down to the base circle can also look like an interesting flower.

Invert the patty pan (if colour or pattern is on one side) and stick the plain side on to the bendy top of the straw using sticky tape. You'll have a beautiful pattern or colour on the top.

Decorate your flowers however you like. For some of our flowers we liked gluing the little patty pans (1,2 or 3 of them) to the middle of the bigger ones.

With Mother's Day happening on Sunday, these beautiful hand made flowers could be just the thing to put a smile on a mummy or grandmother's face. Now to leave this blog post open to hint to your husband!!

Before posting this I noticed that Elise over at www.etadventures.blogspot.com has also made some gorgeous white patty pan flowers with her little girl Savvy. She has many other ideas too so please make the trip over to see what they've done. Great minds think alike! Why not sign up while you're there. It's one of my favourite blog sites.

Caring With Cupcakes

This is the face of my little baker after we finished baking some chocolate fudge 'n' flake cupcakes last week. Don't worry Miss M is not allowed to lick the spatula until the cooking process is done! She loves to lick the "patula" and as she does she makes a pretend licking sound just as if she was pretending in a game in her own little kitchen. I have to giggle.

My husband and I are keen for our girls to grow up with a veiw of others in the world and the needs they have. We try and keep our eyes open for opportunities to let the girls be part of caring for others. Baking seems to be a way that we can easily help out while the girls are so little and Miss M really enjoys cooking and dropping off the finished product to where it has to go. These cupcake were for some leaders who we think are pretty special. Although they're not people in need these leaders take a week of their holidays to care for 380+ kids at a holiday program in our church so we thought they might like to eat some chocolate cupcakes and some yummy vanilla freckle ones too. Caring with cupcakes is a little ministry that our girls can do along with me. There are lots of other opportunites out there, we just have to find them. Is there something you do with your littlies to care for others? I'd love to hear some ideas. While you think, here are the cupcakes.