Eggs are finished, branches found and the living room is ready for Easter. Honestly, I expected this to be a “mummy do it” craft, but the boys loved every step of it! Especially arranging eggs on the branches :)
Over a month ago I bough a pack of polystyrene eggs, (the same size as normal eggs) to make some Easter decorations. For days I was searching my head for ideas- pinterest and everywhere else for inspiration but couldn’t come up with anything that I really liked… And finally on Friday morning – a week before Easter- I got it. Keep it simple- use PVA and water mixture and pieces of tissue paper. Then I spent over an hour trying to locate polystyrene eggs, searching every craft box and every cupboard- they just VANISHED. How very annoying! Even more so that I already told my boys we could make an Easter egg craft together.
After a quick-ish trip to the craft store we came back with tiny polystyrene eggs-because that was all they had a week before Easter! Huh. Still. Nothing is a problem. At least we had something to decorate:)
This is what we did:
We picked the colours of tissue paper we wanted to use (light blue, yellow and bright green) and cut them into pieces.
(we hoped that some of the hearts would show through as a pattern- on finished eggs…and in places they are clear but next time I would use plain tissue paper)
In a jar I mixed some PVA glue with tap water in 1:1 ratio – stirring well to combine. Then we used cheap paint brushes to apply glue mixture onto polystyrene egg and covered with pieces of tissue paper.
Coating generously with glue mixture we covered each egg with two-three layers of tissue paper. Making sure the last layer was also covered in glue (the glue mixture turns clear when dry).
We finished of with a piece of ribbon and a pin.
So far we only have blue eggs, but hopefully in the next two days we will be able to add yellow and green eggs and decorate our house.
..it was a day of construction…
Jonah woke up in the morning and found a wrapping paper tube. He immediately put it into use constructing tunnels for tiny cars and skateboards. It was great to watch his little imagination at work.
Then I gave him masking tape and more tubes…and new construction followed…
…it was a day of lots of cups of green tea and crochet…
..trying out new watercolour paints (they are so brilliant and mess free)..
…and sharing some lovely creative time..
and we even had some snow!
The boys have been more tear’y the last two days, so a relaxed day was what we needed… well, what I needed:)
Patterned tapes and washi tapes are brilliant! They make simple, mess-free, quick to prepare craft that children LOVE.
My little boys are too little to cut their own tape, so I pre cut a lot of different length pieces and stuck them around the table (or sticking them around a plastic tray works too). It made it easier for them to choose what they want and to create whatever they feel like, from shapes- to cars, houses or even just sticking lots of pieces on top of each other.
Jonah likes to finish his pictures with felt tips…
…and voilá:
Yup, this time it’s a typical boy-kinda-art.
On Christmas Eve we introduced our boys to “the Snowman and the Snowdog”- it’s a lovely story with beautiful pictures and great music and my boys loved it straight away. We bought the soundtrack from the film and Jonah loves to talk about what goes on in the film as we listen to the songs. That’s how I got the idea for this craft…
On the tray I set up black colour paper, some self adhesive googly eyes, white chalk, pva glue, cotton wool and tiny silver stars AND I played The Snowman and the Snowdog music in the background.
Later on I gave them a piece of green foam to make a hat…
…and the focus shifted to the joy of using scissors and learning to cut…
Noah decided to make the blue glue spreader part of his work..
Ahhh…it will be sad to put “The Snowman and the Snowdog” DVD away in our Christmas box…but we ll all have something to look forward to in 11 months:)
I tend to keep my children’s arts and crafts to the earlier part of the day, when minds are fresh and bodies are full of energy… Though today I thought I’d try a little after nursery art for a bit of relaxed time while waiting for dinner.
I set out two of the same trays with paper, pencil crayons and a few things like magazine snippets, cotton wool, glue, stickers and, glitter…and this is what happened:
Clearly they weren’t influenced by the colours blue and green… and here is their finished work:
by Jonah
and by Noah.
I wanted to try out air drying clay for ageees. Having little children gives me opportunit to try new things :). I didn’t have much of a clue how to use it but I assumed it would be pretty easy because the clay I bought didn’t have any instructions. Being over familiar with playdough, I expected it to mould easily in our hands, which it didn’t, but once we got the idea it was easy to make basic shapes. Adding a tiny bit of water made the clay easier to work with.
Od dluzszego czasu chcialam wyprobowac glinki ceramicznej. Nie mam pojecia jak sie jej uzywa, ale wyszlam z zalozenia, ze nie jest to skomplikowany proces skoro glinka ceramiczna która zakupilam nie posiadala zadnych instrukcji. Bedac nazbyt przyzwyczajona do ciastoliny, myslalam ze bedzie sie ja bardzo latwo modelowalo. Jest to calkowicie inny material, ale szybko mozna sie polapac w jego modelowaniu, uzycie malych ilosci wody pozwolilo nam na wygodniejsze uzywanie.
My idea for this craft came from something I saw on pinterest ages ago. Someone made a big leaf print in concrete to make stepping stones for their garden. I thought that making a leaf print in clay would be simple enough for Jonah’s first clay project. I used a redcurrant leaf from our garden.
Pomyslalam ze odbijanie liscia czerwonej porzeczki, bedzie latwym I ciekawym pomyslem dla maluchow jako ich pierwszy projekt z glinki ceramicznej.
Jonah enjoyed pressing the leaf down and together we used a plastic knife to cut out the leaf shape from the rest of the clay. Two favourite things that Jonah can make very well out of playdough are snowmen and snails. So using his super snail making skills I though that adding a snail onto the leaf would make a good finish for this little project.
Air drying clay can take a few days to dry, depending on the temperature. Jonah’s project took about 40 hours on a hot sunny windowsill, with the wind blowing through. Then Jonah painted it with acrylic paint, he chose his favourite colour blue (ignoring my strong encouragement towards at least a bit of green colour on the leaf!). We let it dry for 24 hours and then I painted it with a clear glaze, which required another 12 hours to dry. Finally Jonah’s handmade present for Granny was finished.
A candle holder.
Our Creative Life 