Arts and Crafts Projects – Page 5

Best of 2011: Crafty Projects

We’ve done so many fun crafty projects over the past year. Here are some of our family’s favorites, with links to the original posts.

Toddler Art Napkins (original post)

Picture Frame Decoupage Project (original post)

Sweet Dreams Felt Banner (original post)

Embroidered Portrait Fun (original post)

Felt Salad Greens, Spinach and Mushrooms (original post)

Decoupage Paper Mache Eggs (original post)

Make Your Own Literary Magnets (original post)

Poppy Flower Inspired Tissue Paper Art (original post)

Mod Podged Trays (original post)

Colorful Scrabble Letter Magnets (original post)

Handmade Watercolor Postcards (original post)

Red Glitter Clothespins Tutorial (original post)

Gratitude Leaf Rubbings Garland (original post)

Picture Bottle-Cap Magnets (original post)

Believe it or not, we’ve written about even more kid-friendly arts and craft projects. Click here to see the whole shebang — all of the crafty projects we’ve made this year!

Decorated Recycled Tea Box Gift Tags

We love creating new things out of items that would typically get thrown in the recycling bin. In this case we made some sparkly, colorful gift tags from a empty tea box.

First we cut out the sides of the box:

This tea box was a Yogi Tea that decorates the inside of their boxes with detailed patterns. (Have a plain tea box? You could always draw your own designs! Don’t have a tea box? Use a piece of cardboard or card-stock instead!)

We colored one side of the squares with watercolor pencils and glitter glue:

Then we glued the cardboard to sparkly origami paper so that the back side would be pretty too:

After the glue dried, we cut out around the tags:

We then wrote recipient names (people from our immediate family) and placed each tag on a present under the tree:

We may end up mod podging the tags to preserve them so we can use them next year too. I love the idea of a recycled project that we will be able to reuse for years to come!

Hanukkah Crafts and Activities

We’ve been getting ready for Hanukkah that begins tonight at sundown. Earlier in the month we shared some Hanukkah themed crafts we found on Pinterest. Here are some other fun crafts and activities we’ve been enjoying at our house.

We’ve been playing with the felt menorah that we made last year:

calculating how many candles we’ll be lighting this week:

assembling a paper menorah, dreidel and bowl from The Toymaker’s website:

baking star shaped gluten-free Brazilian cheese bread:

making (interpretive!) menorah collages with penne pasta candles (from Kids Craft Weekly):

and practicing lighting the menorah and singing holiday songs:

I think we’re ready for this particular holiday to begin!

Paper Fun with the Toymaker

This past weekend we attended a fantastic paper craft workshop with artist, illustrator and author Marilyn Scott-Waters of the award winning Toymaker website.

Remember these adorable paper dolls? They came from her site!

I’m excited to have discovered that the instructions for many of the fun projects we did in our class are also featured on her website, so you can do them too!

We made and decorated: fairy books, koi kites, mini books, and paper butterflies.

We even learned how to transform a single sheet of paper into a circle big enough to jump through! (More on that another time.)

Marilyn’s Toymaker website contains a wealth of other fun paper crafts. Check out her Hanukkah Crafts for a gelt box, menorah lighting activity, coloring pages, gift boxes, and more. There is also a fun filled Christmas Crafts page including beautifully illustrated gift cards, paper balls, boxes, and stars to print out and enjoy.

You can also find Marilyn’s affordable books at your local bookstore. She is the author of The Toymaker’s Workshop: Paper Toys You Can Make Yourself and The Toymaker’s Christmas: Paper Toys You Can Make Yourself, two beautifully illustrated books containing hours of paper-crafting entertainment. We’ve had such fun assembling toys from The Toymaker’s Christmas, which she kindly autographed for us!

Be sure to subscribe to her fantastic, FREE newsletter for monthly updates on new paper toy projects. We also highly recommend picking up her books, which feature punch out paper toys (no scissors involved!). We are hooked!

Handmade Ornament Roundup

We believe in crafting a handmade holiday, making our own ornaments for our tree, baking and making as many gifts as we can. The holidays feel so much more special when there’s heart involved.

I’ve been thrilled to see that our daughter remembers last fall’s activities and now sees them as tradition. Come November she eagerly reminded me that we needed to start sewing ornaments for this years tree.

And so our home transforms into a Craft House with every surface covered with holiday projects, glitter, glue, feathers, felt, string, and stickers:

Here are some of the ornaments we’ve made, some from last year, many created in the last few weeks.

I love this time of the year.

Shown above:
+ Felt Christmas Tree Ornaments
+ Bird Ornaments (from Skip to my Lou)
+ Beaded wreath ornaments
+ Felted stars, wooden stars, and felt hearts
+ Popcorn garlands
+ Popsicle stick six pointed stars
+ Grape vine wreaths with tinsel and bells

Still to be made:
+ Dehydrated orange slices (try dehydrating ruby red grapefruit for a beautiful pink color!)