Cold Weather Kids Activities: Surfing Competition

It was snowing - too cold to play outside.

We found some cardboard and cut them into surf boards. The kids painted them (which was a surprisingly lengthy project.)

Tutorial: No Sew Hanging Tent for $20

We took our basic $20 hanging tent (tutorial below) and jazzed it up into a Frozen Hanging Tent with another whopping $6!

 What you will need
- 1 hula hoop (mine is 65")  - purchased from the Dollar Tree $1
- 3 packets of Ikea Lill curtains - $12
- Ribbon (not too thin) - two lengths of around 54" - mine are from my recycled ribbon bucket - but lets assume you can find something at the dollar store or JoAnn's bargain bucket $1
- 1 yard of fabric - $6
TOTAL = $20
(In this price I am assuming you have a small amount of some sort of glue in the house at hand.)

Kids Art Quilt: Sun Paintings

I have been working on the last Kids Spin Art Quilt and a quilt made with Bunny #1's first fabric line - I should really finish & quilt them .... and I can make all the excuses in the world to why we haven't completed them yet - but it seems a fact of life these days that my personal projects seem to take a back seat these days.

So like any insane person - I decided to add another project to my 'to be completed list'. This was a really fun & easy project to do with my young bunnies. I wish that I had taken more photos of the kids doing the project rather than the end results - but between fabric dye flying around, helping them cover the fabric, food stuffs being thrown everywhere & there being 3 of them and only one of me - it was a tad hectic - really fun but a wee bit hectic.

Tissue Paper Dyed Silk Pillow

Here we decided to revisit our success as dying silk with tissue paper but this time use the technique to make a pillow. This is a super easy & quick no mess project that you can do on your own or with your little one.

Bess Beetle's Quilt

I think I have mentioned before my little blog crush on Asia & her blog Fun at Home with Kids. It is a site I can loose myself in - make endless lists of projects & ideas to do with the little bunnies.

So imagine how excited I was to get this through the post.

S is her adorable four year old girl who seems game for any messy fun project - and I love that! Bess is her pet beetle!! And I have been asked to make a children's art quilt for them.

I can not wait to start work on S's quilt. I have lots of ideas - lets hope I can put them off!

WIP: Kids Art Quilt: Turning Your Kids Paintings into Unique Fabric

Here is my 5 year old's first fabric line. We couldn't be more excited!!

Kids Art Quilt: Sharpie Art Quilt

This is an easy project to do with your little ones. You could make a simple quilt or jazz it up with free motion quilting, embroidery add notions etc. We went with something down the middle of these options.

Superhero Party Capes

This month I feel like I have been slowly loosing my mind. My eldest asked for a Superhero Birthday Party. You might remember last year I got overexcited with her Princess Tea Party - well this year I tortured myself again by deciding to make 19 superhero capes, 19 superhero belts, 38 superhero bracelets/cuffs & 19 super hero masks. I didn't realize how much all this effort was weighing on me - because after the party ended I felt a deep need to sleep for 2 days.

Each cape has a contrast lining & and emblem on the back (lighting bolts, diamonds, snowflakes. flowers, butterflies etc) all with a bit of bling of course. I worried that the superhero belts look like something from the WWF - but the kids LOVED the belts. As the girls arrived they were allowed to pick out their cape, belt, mask & cuffs.

I made everything adjustable by placing the velcro like this on the belts & cuffs.

It enabled me to make everything one size but ensure that they would fit everyone.

I recycled our pink satin chair covers which we got last year for $2 each. This year we rented some kid sized chairs and I found the covers fit perfectly over two chairs put together. I used twin flat sheets from our linen closet for the table cloths. The tulle pom poms are from last year too. The streamers, balloons, plates, cups etc were all from the Dollar Tree (love love that store - you can color-co-ordinate a birthday party for just $10!) I used 24" balloon sticks this year instead of helium balloons - much cheaper and just as cute - and the sticks are reusable for years to come as well.

Kids Painted Quilt: Watercolor Circles

If you remember this project came about as a suggestion from Asia from Fun at Home with Kids.  Asia's site is my go-to if I am ever looking for fun activity to do with my little bunnies.

This quilt is so pretty. These photos do not show what a wonderful job my eldest bunny did (not that I am biased!) The colors are all soft and sherberty. They did spread - they are not perfect circles - but I do not care.

I had so much fun quilting it with a sort of free form McTavishing style. Here it is coming off the frame.

WIP: Kids Painted Quilt - Spin Art

A good friend of mine gave her kids these really cool Spin Art Centers for Christmas. Of course knowing my love of turning any kids art project into a quilting challenge she invited me and some of my fabric over to play. We did try using a salad spinner as well - but the salad spinner did work as well as these little machines - perhaps because with the salad spinner you add the paint before you spin - as with these machines you add the paint while they spin.

Happy New Year - The End of our Tree Project

One of my favorite projects this year - and also for our family and to anyone how visits our house - has been our tree. Unfortunately just before Christmas due to the strength and persistence of our #3 bunny our Christmas tree had a nasty accident.

We only lost two ornaments and the stick snapped in several places. No small child was harmed in the accident - but we all felt a little sad.

We had all been stuck inside due to snow falling outside when the incident happened. Feeling a little sad we decided to rescue what we could of the now year long project. My eldest bunny really loves to use scissors so her paper snowflakes made a perfect decoration. The vase and branch is now on the kitchen counter - I don't put it past #3 to make it up there and demolish it some more - but so far it has stayed out of his reach.

Here is a little recap of our tree.

Valentine Tree

Swedish Easter Tree

Recycled Cherry Blossom Tree

Coffee Filter Butterfly Tree 

Halloween Tree

Thanksgiving Tree

Christmas Tree

Wish you and your family a wonderful 2014 & thank you so much for reading.

WIP: Kids Painted Quilt - 'Watercolor' Circles

When Asia from Fun at Home with Kids sent me a picture of this quilt I felt it was something we would enjoy making at home. In my obsession with recycling fabric we have used a clean twin white cotton sheet as our material. I lay down a strange (but effective) plastic Hawiian plastic table cloth on the floor to protect our home from being permanently dyed from our experiment. As it was just my eldest bunny (4) doing this project I decided to try some fabric paints rather than our usual biocolor with fabric medium.

For our colors I used Jacquard Textile Traditional Exciter Pack. I added about 2tlbsps of water to each squidge of color - I also mixed some colors - so there was a whole array of cups for my little one to pour.

Pouring neat circles onto dry fabric was problematic. 

We tried a paint brush to make the shapes. 

Would spooning the paint on work better?

Spoons didn't help. The fabric needed to be damp to enable to paint to spread in an easy fashion. Out came our favorite spray bottles.  My little one happily sprayed water all over the place.

We found the easiest way to make nice circles (and bear in mind this is a four year old) was to pour a little of the dye on the sheet and then use the base of the cup to spread the paint into a neat circle.

If you haven't seen it - here is the designer version and our still wet version beside it. I'm actually really looking forward to quilting this - I think it will be a fun project to quilt.

*****

Our other kid painted fabric projects have included:

Kid painted Teepee

Kid painted Garden Picnic Blanket

Kid painted Quilt - Blotter Art

Kid painted Quilt - Throwing Paint

Kid painted Quilt - Spraying Paint

Kid painted Quilt - Shaving Foam Paint

Thanksgiving Tree

It has become time again to change our seasonal tree. We took off the mice, spiders and cobwebs to make our Thanksgiving Tree.

I found some fake autumnal leaf vines on sale at JoAnn's and wound them around the bare branches. Then we picked out some yellow, orange, red, green & brown card and the girls mixed their own paint colors (from green, red & gold) and made hand-prints on the card. 

Once the paint was dry we cut out the hand-prints and hung them on the tree with gold ribbon.

On the back of each hand-print leaf my eldest bunny wrote all the things we were grateful for. Here is their very cute list:

the color green

pasta & meat

blankets

coloring

toys

Castro (our dog)

food

my sister & brother

my scooter

friends

color tree

blanket bunny

gold & silver glitter

TV

paint

chocolate

clothes

Mummy

Daddy

Ariel

bed

my beautiful children

garden

Cinderella

dressing up clothes

leaves

Hilda

Oma (German for Grandma)

Papa

Teddy

the whole entire world

Listening to the girl decide what they were thankful for was so cute - this might well be our new family tradition.

Take a look at the other projects we have done with our tree so far this year:
Valentine Tree
Swedish Easter Tree
Recycled Cherry Blossom Tree
Coffee Filter Butterfly Tree 
Halloween Tree

Tie Dye Sharpie T-shirt

I first saw this at Fun at Home with Kids (if you have little ones visit Asia's blog - you will never be stuck for ideas with your littles again!). As soon as I saw this idea and the results I really wanted to make a kids art quilt with this method - but first we tried T-shirts to see if we liked the results.

You draw on the fabric with the sharpies and then drizzle rubbing alcohol over the drawings - it is nothing more complicated than that. 

 

We liked the results A LOT!

The bunnies had a surprisingly long amount of concentration for using Mummy's 'special pens' and being allowed to draw on clothes (something I would never ever allow normally.)

Here are their t-shirts after they had finished drawing on them.

(Bunny #2 - 2 years old)

 (Bunny #1 - 4 years old)

Then it was time to add the magic water (rubbing alcohol - again something I would never let them get their hands on!) The colors spread so prettily - and they kept spreading & changing.  

At this point my 1st little bunny lost it completely insisting that her sister's t-shirt was much prettier than hers. She finally recovered for the photo shoot. Though I have to say - for a 2 year old I think her t-shirt more than rocks!

The dried t-shirts really are so pretty - even my husband (who rarely comments on such projects) said how pretty he thought they were.

I used a packet of (Sharpie Fine-Tip 80's Glam - pack of 24 sharpies). I have many fabric projects lined up for these guys. The project was really fun and practically no mess - only a bit of sharpie on the fingers. I would recommend this to anyone of any age!

Paper Roll Halloween Tree

We were all quite sad to take down our Coffee Filter Butterfly Tree. But we have had fun decorating our Halloween tree with paper rolls and tissues.

Creep crawly spiders live in our Halloween tree.

Mice live in our Halloween tree. 

Painted paper roll owls live in our tree. 

Twirly Halloween icicles (made from painted paper rolls) hang in our tree in pumpkin golds, purple and black. 

Strips of tissue hang in our tree while bats loom over head. 

I hope you are decorating for Halloween too!

Take a look at the other projects we have done with our tree so far this year:
Swedish Easter Tree
Valentine Tree
Recycled Cherry Blossom Tree
Coffee Filter Butterfly Tree