Halloween Mummy Wreath

I don't know how many of you watch Craft Wars, but sometimes it can be incredibly inspiring.  There was an episode a handful of weeks back that had the participants make Christmas wreaths.  One of the ladies made a two layer wreath and that is where my idea for this one began.

I started with a styrofoam wreath, unfinished wood circle, unfinished wood letters, Modge Podge, craft paint, crepe paper streamers, scrapbook paper, and some decorative spiders (mine were actually brads from the scrapbook section.)

I took the scrapbook paper and modge podged it to the styrofoam wreath.  I painted my wood circle and my letters (B-O-O).  I used glow-in-the-dark paint mixed with white craft paint for my mummy eyes and flat black for my letters and the face of the mummy.  Then I coated the circle in Modge Podge and wrapped the crepe streamers around the circle to form my mummy head.  I hot glued the mummy head to the center of my wreath.  I used Modge Podge to attach my letters to the wreath, and then I hot glued some of the brads to the face of the mummy.  The other brads I stuck into the styrofoam around the wreath, and voila!  Easy Halloween wreath that is cute and not too spooky.... as my kids request.  :)

 

 

 

 

Wild & Wonderful Origami Book Review

My 6-year-old son has had a mild obsession with origami since we checked some books out from the library a while back.  The library books were a huge fail as they were very confusing directions for us.  Having never attempted origami I needed some pictures that showed more step-by-step instead of just a bunch of arrows and words.  When little man saw this book in the store he begged me to buy it so we could give it another shot.  Having a 40% off coupon I gave in.

First off, this book comes with 50 pages of origami paper that is already colored and with faces, etc. for the animals to be made in this book which made this more fun for them, so I give the book an A+ on that front!

The pictures in the book are MUCH more helpful than the ones I experienced from the library books.  They have a difficulty level grade at the top of each project page, too, which helped.  We started with the lowest level possible.

Even though the instructions were much easier to follow my little man was still too overwhelmed to try them on his own, so he had me make some for him.  I think tomorrow I will have him try with me.  He was so excited about the little animals that we made today that he carried them to his grandma's to show them off.

I think this book did a lot of things right in making origami more attainable to the inexperienced, and to children.  Depending on the age of your child, though, this may not be a craft you can just sit your child down with for independent play.  It would make a good family bonding experience, though.  Little man has already made requests for what he wants us to make tomorrow.  I think we will get our money's worth out of this book.

Paper Airplane Races

Do you remember flying paper airplanes as a kid?  Folding them different ways and seeing who could come up with the best airplane?  Well, me and the boys checked out a book from the library that taught us the physics behind the fun.  Today we thought we would have a little paper airplane experiment and learn the different ways that lift, thrust, drag, and gravity effect the flight of the airplane.  Of course they don't remember them quite in those terms, but they did learn what makes the airplane go higher or nose dive, what makes it loop and what makes it go straight.  Elementary physics - check. :)

Just in case you can't remember how to fold a paper airplane here is a little refresher in pictures.  I think I missed one step in the pictures, but hopefully this will get you on track so you can have your own paper airplane physics lesson fun.

Note, the pilot in my son's plane?  They also learned about how far he could fly before autoeject takes place.  :)

We made our planes out of heavy duty cardstock because we wanted to anticipate the nose dives and hopefully save the plane for a little while.  After doing several run throughs with the plane folded like the above pictures we made a few modifications including adding a paperclip and trying it closer to the nose versus middle versus rear; folding up the sides of the wings; and cutting slits in the back.  We tried the rear slits folded up and folded down for different effects.

Cheap, easy, educational fun at its best.

**Dragonfly Designs Giveaway ends 8/2!  Don't miss out.**

When Life Gives You Lemons

As some of you may have noticed I have recently added to my etsy shop.  I have been doing etched glass mirrors and such, and started doing some tree of life stuff for custom orders.  Well, I had several custom orders come in this week, and one of the mirrors was giving me a particularly large amount of trouble.  No matter what I did the thing just did not want to etch properly.  I was not very pleased with the way it turned out so I set it aside.  I somehow resisted the urge to chunk it in the garbage despite my extreme frustration at that point.  After completing another tree of life (which turned out beautifully I might add) and after letting the mirror sit for two days, I looked at it in a little different light.  Go ahead and cue the spot lights and the angel singing in the background, because I had an idea.  Shocking.  I decided rather than waste this I would just paint the frame with the off white paint I used for the Super Mario TV Stand.  Add a little scrapbook paper, and turn it into something completely different.

This is what the mirror frame looked like before...

Pretty enough in its own right, but why not capitolize on my own misfortunate.  In this case, when life gives you lemons..... make extremely early Christmas decorations. 



Some time later remind me to tell you about how God spoke to me through this incident and how I learned a little bit more about myself in the process.  In the meantime, though, I think it turned out pretty cute don't you?  What do you do when you have majorly frustrating craft disasters?