DIY Archives - Page 7 of 8

Spring Crafts: Pipe Cleaner Flowers

To continue the Step Into Spring series, I’m excited to bring you super easy spring crafts to do with the kids. Many of us use the arrival of spring to clean up our lives; to re-gather and re-order. But I also see it as a great opportunity to revamp some old craft projects, to go about your day at home with the kids with renewed energy. This Pipe Cleaner Flower Craft from Mums Take Five is exactly the kind of step into spring crafts I’m after these days – pretty, creative, engaging, but also easy! And with the toddler almost ready to enjoy a few more craft activities, it’s also safe and relatively young toddler friendly.

Pipe Cleaner Spring Flowers

These are quick, fun and mess free! They’re also perfect for some easy kiddy entertainment – a big win in my books. Plus, you only need pipe cleaners!

YOU’LL NEED:

Pipe cleaners – really, that’s all you’ll need!

TO MAKE:

Petals | start my making the petals of the flowers by wrapping one pipe cleaner around your finger. Careful, not too tight!

Stamen | next you’ll want to make the centre Stamen part. For this, I use half a pipe cleaner. You can wrap it around your finger and it fits neatly in between the petals. Or you can wind it up like a snail. To attach the snail to the petals, leave the end unwound and feed it through the middle and tie on.

Leaves | make a stem and leaf by folding a loop into a green pipe cleaner 2/3 of the way down, and then tie onto the back of the flower.

| “Pop them into a little vase or glue them onto paper and you have some lovely spring flowers!”

step into spring, pipe cleaner flowers, mums take five

For more spring fun, Mums Take Five has a great spring Chick Pea Zucchini and Mint Pattie recipe over on their blog. #stepintospring

At Mums Take Five, they’re all about taking five minutes for themselves. Which as busy mums, this can be easier said than done. But if you’re looking for something to cook, a quick answer, a craft to do with the kids or somewhere to spend a few minutes with a cup of coffee, Mums Take Five is the place for inspiration!

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The Step Into Spring Series:

Welcome To Spring
5 Ways To Spring Clean Your Finances
5 Easy Ways To Sort Out Your Superannuation For Spring {Money Mummy}
Spring Crafts: Pipe Cleaner Flowers
Chick Pea Zucchini & Mint Fritters {Mums Take Five}

We’re celebrating the arrival of spring all week on the blog. Featuring some great “step into spring” articles to ease you into the new season, with favourites from Money Mummy, Mums Take Five, Sheridan Anne, and Hunting For Lady Bugs. You’ll surely be inspired to put a little spring into your step! Join us, and tweet your favourite spring themed posts using #stepintospring.

Book Week 2014: DIY Book Parade Costume

PINKY PICK DIY BOOK PARADE COSTUME

Even though Book Week is now over (official dates were August 16-22), I’m not really ready for it be over. Book Week is perhaps one of my most favourite times of the school year, because I just love getting the kids so enthralled with the magic of reading and the wonder of a good old-fashioned book. But I do know some schools have delayed their Book Week a and will be enjoying the events over the next few days.

Last Friday, Miss 7 had her book parade at school for Book Week. And as I had predicted early on here, I was still up late the night before trying to pull together an appropriate costume, despite my best attempts to get us all ready with a little Book Parade Costume inspiration.

In the end I managed it, and Miss 7 was more than pleased with the result. Given she’d chosen to dress up as Pinky Pick from her current favourite book series, Geronimo Stilton, it was not an easy feat at times. Much red wine was consumed on thursday evening in the vain attempt to become less of a perfectionist – not sure if it helped.

So today I’m sharing my hot tips for how to pull together a DIY Book Parade Costume. It’s got all the fun things; fabric dye, squiggly scissors, paints, cardboard cutouts and even wire coat hangers twisted into tails. It’ll be even more helpful if you ever find yourself in the position of being required to pull together a mouse costume last-minute – because that’s a likely occurrence and all.

HERE’S HOW YOU MAKE THE DIY MOUSE MASK + TAIL

YOU’LL NEED:

1 Large sheet of cardboard or card stock
An idea of what a mouse looks like
^ or use pinterest, I found a pattern {here}
3 Pipe Cleaners, light pink coloured
Paint, grey & pink colours
^naturally, I mixed a little black with a lot of white to make grey
Paint Brushes
Scissors
Wire Coat Hanger
Crêpe Paper, light pink coloured
Elastic
Pink Ribbon
2 Safety Pins
Hot Glue Gun
Sharpie

TO MAKE:

1. Assemble all the items that you’ll need to make the mask and designate a clear work space.
2. First off, you’ll want to decide on how big you need the Mouse Mask to be. Then trace your shape onto the card-stock. When you’re happy with the design, use a Sharpie to go over the edges.
3. Mix up your paints to get the shade of grey that you like, so long as its not 50, and paint your mask. Then paint small pink triangles into the hears and a black or dark grey nose. Set aside and leave to dry.
4. Whilst the mask is drying, grab your wire coat hanger and carefully untwist into a straight line. Be careful when doing this, it’s sharp and may snap if twisted too far.
5. Using the pink crêpe paper, wind around the wire coat hanger really tight; overlapping in parts to give it that rubbery mouse-like look. Secure at the ends with sticky tape or masking tape. Then gently twist the wire at certain points along the length to make it curly.

| At this point you can turn on the hot glue gun and leave resting on a sheet of aluminium foil – this is so the hot glue doesn’t stick to something it shouldn’t.

To attach your mouse tail:
6. Cut a small length of pink ribbon and lay flat. Place a small bead of hot glue onto the middle of the ribbon and stick the top end of the mouse tail onto the bead of glue. Press down and then tie the ribbon in a not around the wire tail. Fasten a bow to make it pretty.
7. Pin two safety pins through the back of the ribbon and the wire tail – this will be used to attach onto your child’s outfit to secure the tail.

To finish the mask:
8. Once your mask is dry, cut it out from the sheet of card stock. Then cut two eye-holes.
9. Grab the pipe cleaners and cut in half. Using the glue gun, carefully pipe glue onto the bottom side of each pipe cleaner and stick onto the mask as whiskers.
10. Using a hole punch, punch a small circle at both sides of the mask near the edges and thread through a string of elastic (or ribbon) that will tie together and work to hold the mask in place.

NOTES:

To pull together the entire costume, I repurposed some old pink ballet “moon boots” and used white masking tape to make a line of white along the bottom. I then had to use green fabric dye to re-colour a pair of white tights (I couldn’t find green tights). To make the top, I bought a yellow hoodie and using 2 pieces of orange felt, I cut out circles and then glued onto the hoodie using a hot glue gun. Note, be careful with the glue gun. Late nights and red wine make using a hot glue gun risky – believe me! To finish it off, I sourced a black long-haired wig from the Dollar Store to complete the Pinky Pick “look”.

Has your child already had their Book Parade? Did you have a late night trying to pull together a costume last-minute? Ever attempted a DIY costume?

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BOOK WEEK 2014 SERIES:

Book Week 2014: Connect To Reading
Book Week 2014: Best Book Parade Costumes
Book Week 2014:DIY Photo Bookmarks
Book Week 2014: Press Here by Hervé Tullet
Book Week 2014: Geronimo Stilton Review

pinky pick image source

Book Week 2014: DIY Photo Bookmarks

When young kids graduate from reading shorter books to “chapter books”, they do so with a vengeance. For many it’s a grand achievement, a sign of getting older, of moving up a level, and of kicking it in the big leagues.

For us carers and parents, we notice a difference too. Suddenly bed time stories become longer, and although more enjoyable, we’re often making bargaining agreements.

| “If you don’t hurry up and brush your teeth, you’re only getting one chapter tonight!”

Of course 15 minutes later, you’re onto the 3rd chapter because, “oh please, just one more chapter” is simply a request too good to refuse. But if your child is enjoying reading so much, and so involved with the story that they can’t put it down, it’s really not a bad thing is it?

Given we want our children to connect to reading, to enjoy reading, and to willingly participate in the process, allowing one more chapter at night is really the benefit of achieving the outcome.

Of course, graduating to chapter books does bring a slight downside. Because when you do finally call “lights out” and put the book away for the following night, you now have to remember your page. And if your memory is anything like mine, you’re going to want to write it down.

Plus, whilst a dog-eared book is a sign of a well read book, many of us don’t like folding our pages. So today I’m sharing a fun craft activity to do with the kids to make these DIY Photo Bookmarks. No more forgetting page numbers!

DIY PHOTO BOOKMARKS

YOU’LL NEED:

PVA glue
Coloured card stock
^we used a mixture of glitter card, ribbed card and plain card stock
Scissors
^make sure they’re kid-friendly scissors
Photos
^i used photos from @hopefornannies on instagram and the kids chose their own photos (not pictured). We had them printed at Office Works
Stencils
^we used heart-shaped stencils but any shape would work

TO MAKE:

1. Gather your items on a nice big table and let the kids pull up a stool.
2. Carefully cut our your desired bookmark shape from the coloured card. You can get creative here and cut a few different shapes and sizes to layer onto your bookmark.
3. Glue the coloured card together to assemble the base layer of your bookmark.
4. Whilst the card is drying, select the photo you’ll be using on your bookmark and trim to fit to size.
Tip: you’ll want to cut your photo to be smaller than the bookmark.
5. Offset your photo and glue onto the coloured card, leaving half of the photo free to be flipped up. This will be the “clip” that slips over the page of your book to mark the page.

A dog-eared book is a sign of a well loved book! #reading

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NOTES:

We used coloured card and shapes to make these fun photo bookmarks. However as always, it is open to interpretation. You could easily go without the photos, or make traditional rectangular bookmarks to slip among the pages. For a further embellishment, you could punch a hole in the tip of your bookmark and thread through some ribbon.

>>> Are you a page folder or a bookmark-er?

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For more in the Book Week 2014 Series, check out:

Book Week 2014: Connect To Reading
Book Week 2014: Best Book Parade Costumes
Book Week 2014:DIY Photo Bookmarks
Book Week 2014: Press Here by Hervé Tullet
Book Week 2014: Geronimo Stilton Review

DIY Fun Kids Craft Activity Ideas

Kid Friendly and fun Craft Activity Ideas

Seeing as we’re well into the school holidays here in Australia, and those in America and Europe are enjoying their long drawn-out luxurious hot summer holidays, I thought I’d share a collection of kid friendly diy craft activity ideas here on the blog.

With four kids at home at the moment, I’ve been plucking at random ideas (and consulting Pinterest pretty heavily) for appropriate and fun things for the kids to do. Taking into account we’ve been staying indoors as it’s super cold outside and we’re trying to keep costs low as school holidays are expensive! Luckily, being all girls, we’re all pretty happy to spend a good chunk of the day with squiggly scissors and glitter!

Then again, these holey moley gooey chocolate brownies are pretty much the mother of all chocolate goodies and highly requested by all kids. Including 14month old bub who’s just discovered a hunkering for chocolate and treats! Plus, we re-worked a classic yummy berry muffin to incorporate some mushed bananas we found at the bottom of the fridge crisper and some Brookfarm muesli to make über rich caramel banana muesli muffins.. because hey, why not?!

For more fun craft activity ideas, you can check out my fun kids craft activity boards on Pinterest. There’s Working With Kids, Cooking For Kids, and DIY Craft For Kids. And if you’re not tuckered out by little hands and feet and want to get some super fun DIY crafting happening, there’s also a DIY Craft For Big Kids. Some great home, house & kitchen DIY tricks and neat ideas in there!

What have you been doing these school holidays? Do you have any tips, recipes, craft activity ideas or stories to share? Oh, tell me, muffin or cupcake kind of lover?

10 Birthday Party Essentials

I know I’ve already talked about the birthdays here, here and here. But when you’ve got a family of four kids, numerous pets and your own personal lives; birthdays are a dime a dozen around here! So as it’s birthday week here again, (yes I had a little birthday yesterday) I thought I’d share with you these 10 birthday party essentials I found on Pinterest this week!

This post is linking in with Essentially Jess for #IBOT.