Category Archives: Crafts

Silk Tie-Dyed Easter Eggs

I hope it wasn’t irreverent to be sifting through ties at the Goodwill on Easter Eve at ten ’til closing. Because there was the lot of us, concerned, suddenly, that we hadn’t done a single Easter craft, holding up into each other’s faces splotchy ties, ties with paisleys, ties with zig-zags. Until we had two we could collectively shrug weren’t that bad.

It was then mentioned on the ride home that we had no eggs.Which turned into a stop at Fred Meyer. Which turned into buying more than eggs “since we’re here.” Which turned into rolling home after bed time with wired children and zero time for an egg craft anyway.

Which is how it happened that we remembered our ties on Thursday–four days after Easter–which, was just as well.

If you’ve done this before–dyed eggs with silk ties–then you know that you don’t need much in the way of tangibles. A couple of 100% silk ties, an old t-shirt, scissors, eggs, twist-ties, vinegar, and a pot of water. But add to that list a hefty dose of patience and perseverance and this could actually be fun. With children. Heh.

04 04 13_2904

Alright. Here’s one of our sweet purchases.

What we’ve got to do first is take the tie apart. A pair of sharp scissors makes this easy.

If the tie’s got a piece of fabric on the inside, toss that. Or give it new life by handing it to someone who can recycle just about anything.

Double check that the tie is 100% silk. Then clip off that little tag, too. The dye for the eggs will come from the silk. Which means that if you’ve got something else that’s 100% silk–a blouse or underwear, ahem, those would work too.

Now we’ve got to wrap the UNCOOKED eggs in a piece of silk. Which is about as easy as tearing open a bandaid with one hand. Nothin’ hard about that. Until that’s you with the bandaid. And one hand.

The problem is that the egg is happy being mostly covered in silk. It’s getting the whole thing dressed and ready that requires a bit of perseverance and a few wrestling moves.

Here’s our first egg wrapped in silk and held with a twist-tie.

And here’s our second.

A thing to note is that the ‘good’ side of the tie–the most colorful side–is what we want to wrap the egg in. The darkest print should be against the egg.

04 04 13_2913

The eggs get wrapped one more time. This could mean using old dish towels or sheets. We went with an old, white T-shirt.

And there it is. All ready.

Since we’re down one egg to a ‘woopsie,’ we’ve got eleven eggs all double-wrapped in our basket. We’re just going to carry those right into the kitchen.

To our pan of water, we’re adding 1/4 cup of white vinegar.

Then we’re adding our eggs and bringing the water to a boil.

When the water boils, we’re turning the burner down to low and letting the eggs simmer for 20 minutes.

Then it’s time to pull the eggs from the water and see what happened.

And the coolest thing? It’s usually nothing we expected.

Brown and pink? Um…okay.

Here’s our whole batch.

From the blue and gold tie, we got this design.

And from the dark-purple and blue, we got this. Wild.

So what do you do with a bunch of pretty eggs?

Well…

You set up shop in your living room.

And you sell them to your sister.

Easter eggs for sale.

Pretty Easter eggs.

DrTroy Munson, Kari Morris, Jennifer Eilers Mahlum liked this post

Scrap Houses

1 Reply

On Monday night, for the price of nothing, we emptied our pantry of forgotten graham crackers and wrinkled marshmallows. We dumped a medley of cereal into small bowls. And sampled pretzel sticks we hadn’t seen for months.

We had no blue print in mind. No template, either.

Just a glue gun and an overwhelming desire to use it. On something.

At which time we got busy framing our crumbling crackers…

Adding a chimney and a walkway.

A second floor.

And a porch.

We didn’t worry about structure soundness.

Or lopsided snowfall.

It just made sense to build.

No matter the outcome.

John Kathy Koester liked this post

Cinnamon Applesauce Ornaments

Leave a reply

I tell ya. I can almost handle a craft that has three ingredients. And about as many steps.

Which is how we ended up making Cinnamon Applesauce Ornaments on Monday.

A couple of Christmases ago, we’d tried these with just applesauce and cinnamon, and they’d turned out great.

We went ahead and messed with perfection this time and added glue to the batch. Not that it made any difference. It just seemed that as many recipes as not were adding glue. So we dumped the stuff in, too.

Here’s what we used: 1 1/2 cups of cinnamon; 1 cup of applesauce; 1/4 cup of glue.

And after we stared at it…

We did the only step there was, which was to stir the stuff…

Until we had a brown ball that smelled like Christmas.

It was all play dough skills from here.

And so while he hurried to finish first…

She meticulously stamped each candy cane.

Then together, we turned them into ornaments by twisting a straw through each top where we wanted them to hang.

Here’s our whole batch. Mostly finished.

What we had to do now was walk away–pretend for a couple of days that we never made these, so that they could air dry in peace.

After two days on the counter, they’re a lighter brown and able to withstand a trip down the hallway when a little boy slides in his socks with one to show his dad.

The last step is as simple as taking each ornament…

And threading it with red raffia.

Or green.

And hanging it on the tree.

Kari Morris liked this post

Swab Skeletons

Leave a reply

Yesterday, with a box of Q-tips and a glue gun, we ended our craft slump.

At which time my daughter soaked up inspiration from the October 2012 issue of the Family Fun magazine where swab skeletons grooved on the page…

And then started sticking together swabs of her own.

Like so.

In minutes, this skeleton had six ribs…

mittens…

and a puff of hair.

As noted then, some skeletons did not need necks.

Just vitamins.

A mother, perhaps?

What’s greatest about this craft is the originality of the product. Ain’t nobody’s skeleton gonna look like anybody else’s.

Because there’s no need. Nor expectation.

Not when there are a thousand ways to do it right.

Paper Love

Leave a reply

There was a time that I wished I could make these.

Little paper square things. With notes written under the flaps. Paper squares that you push and pull with your thumbs and first fingers.

Well…

Yesterday wasn’t exactly that day.

But it was the day my daughter learned how. And the day she was certain I should learn.

And so we did.

We made ‘em.

Little paper squares.

And…

And we loved it. The simplicity. The accomplishment. The power of words.

Which is why if you’ve got young kids or small peeps hangin’ on your waist, and especially if you’re hurtin’ to fill an hour or a half hour in the afternoon, you should try these.

Here’s how they go.

We need a square piece of paper. If you’ve got one already, you’re in business. If not, fold your paper like we’re folding ours.

Like so.

And then scissor off that extra strip.

Here’s our stripless paper.

Now we fold our paper diagonally in both directions.

And then unfold our paper, so it’s just a square with diagonal creases.

Then we fold the first corner into the center.

And we do the same for all the corners.

Here’s what the front looks like now with all the corners folded in.

And here’s the back.

Now with the front face down, we’re going to fold each of the corners into the center again.

I’m tellin’ ya…even small fingers and short attention spans can do this.

Then once each corner is folded to the center for that second time, our square should look like this on one side.

And like this on the other.

That’s nearly it.

All we’ll do now is fold our square in half in both directions–hamburger—and then the other hamburger…

to make creases.

Then we can open the thing.

As soon as we figure which direction that is…heh.

And put our fingers inside.

Here’s the paper square my daughter made at Vacation Bible School. This is sort of what we’re after.

Hers has numbers (1-4) written on each top flap. Pictures, too. If we want, we can do the same– jot numbers–put pictures. Or get wild and do both. We just want to have some way to identify each flap, so that when we say to our friend, “pick one,” he can say, “airplane” or “number 4.”

Now as we pull open the top “airplane” flap, there are two words written there. (Instead of words, there could be colors, names or pictures of animals, numbers, words…whatever we want. This one has words.) We get to pick one of those two words.

So here, I chose the word ‘amazing’.

Underneath ‘amazing’ was written my special message, “Pray for a family member.”

And so I did.

I prayed for her.

These are the words I markered on the inside of mine.

I read the choices to my son.

And he chose ‘kindness.’

“Here’s your special message,” I said. And I lifted the flap and read…

“You’re a good friend.”

At which time, he smiled at me like this.

Because there’s something about kind words that everyone likes to hear–

“We can trust you!” ”You care about others!” ”You’re fun to play with!”

–That makes these more than just paper squares. They’re…

They’re paper love.

DrTroy Munson, Jennifer Singh liked this post

Paper Stars

Leave a reply

I’ll warn you now–this isn’t the best star making tutorial. But it was a craft. A doable one. And despite the necessity to ban my son from the scissors…for life, the things turned out all right.

So…need a craft? This might be one to try.

Oh…and if you want to follow along on your own, then whip your June/July 2012 Family Fun magazine open to page 20.

We’re making paper stars.

For each star, we need two, same-size, square sheets of scrapbook paper. What we do to one sheet, will be the same thing we do to the second.

So first, with the pretty side down, we fold the paper in half across one diagonal and then the other.

Then with the pretty side up, we fold the paper in half–like a hot dog–in both directions.

This is about the extent of my son’s contribution.

Then with the paper open, we use the scissors to cut just under half-way to the center down each of our hot dog folds.

Like so.

Now, if you want a nice looking star, then this is the part that takes a bit more care–the folding of the points. It’s also the part where my son claimed he didn’t care about nice points and started folding on his own.

That is, until he did care.

And we folded together.

So, for the points, we start with the paper, pattern side down, and fold in each side until it meets the diagonal line.

It’s trickier than it seems.

For small hands.

But eventually, it looks something like this.

And this.

At which time, we take each point and glue one flap over the other.

Only–it’s important to do it better than we did. What we didn’t realize is that both the front and back of the star will show.

See the problem?

What we should have done was glue one flap completely over, so there was no seam like the one I have here.

Uh…next time.

Here’s the star–half completed.

And here it is after folding the second sheet of paper following the same steps.

See the seams of the second sheet? Ech. Ah, well.

Now to connect the two star pieces, place the backsides of both together. And either glue them, like we tried. Or use something far more effective and sane. Like sticky dots

Here’s my daughter’s finished star.

Seems she hung in there just fine.

Now if you’re wondering what you’re going to do with a star in the middle of summer, yeah…I can’t help you there. I’m just here to help you fill an hour in the backyard with your kids.

I hope it works!

Making a Memory

2 Replies

If you’ve bought or been given a game of Memory in the last ten years, then you know there’s something lacking.

It’s called ‘fun.’

Last year we pulled out Dora Memory and tried to match Dora wearing her backpack and smiling behind her with another Dora wearing her backpack and smiling behind her. Which wasn’t to be confused with Dora in cowboy boots, Dora on a unicorn, Dora holding an apple, Dora in an Indian outfit or Dora doing something else.

We asked ourselves what the point was of a preschool Memory game if every piece was nearly the same.

Uh…right.

Which was how ours ended up at the Goodwill stacked beside someone else’s.

This morning seemed like a Memory day, though. And whether it was or not, the four of us sat around the table, deep in colored pencils and white index cards, drawing in silence whatever fell out of our brain.

Which might not have been all that much.

But here’s the pinnacle of homemade Memory–all the finished pairs lie face down while two kids hem and haw about which card has the other centipede.

Then our son turns two over.

And…

they’re not a match.

Nor are these.

Or these.

But, hey…two lollipops…now we’re talkin’!

And two similar scribbles…sweet!

I’d say what hardly mattered was our five minute game.

But rather the Memory of making it.

Origami Paper Cups

Leave a reply

The hard part isn’t finding a craft to do.

Or even the time to do one.

It’s finding a craft my son can do…

all by himself.

Amen.

Well…we did a little paper folding today. Nothing radical. Nothing every kid hasn’t already done, except mine.

But it was the process that mattered. My kids, um…followed directions.

And consequently, were so proud of what they created.

And we’re talkin’ a paper cup.

Here’s how we got started. We wanted to make origami paper cups. Which meant all we needed was a square piece of paper and five folds.

Only we didn’t have special square paper…so we made our own…

by folding the corners of our paper together until it looked like we had a triangle and a rectangle.

And then since we didn’t need the extra rectangle piece, we just cut it off…

in whatever form our scissors would work.

Were we to open our triangle, we’d have had our square. But since our first fold was to create a triangle like the one we had, there wasn’t any need to open our triangle to recreate the square.

So…first fold is done.

For the second fold, we need to make sure the open edges of the triangle are at the top.

Then, picking either the left point or the right, we fold the point to the opposite side about 1/3 the way down the paper.

Here my daughter has brought the right side point over until it just touches on the left side.

The second fold is done.

The third fold is identical to the second. Just from the opposite side.

Here my daughter is folding the left side point over to the right side, lining this fold on top of the other.

Fold three is complete…

and looks like Chinese take-out.

For the fourth and fifth folds we take the pointed flaps on top and pull them down–one in front and one in back–creasing them where they meet the second and third folds.

And that’s it.

At this time my daughter squeezed her cup and watched it open.

And my son…well…

he didn’t hurt anybody.

We didn’t make anything more than a paper cup x thirty.

But what I loved about it was this:

his folding…

his focus…

his fun.

Her patience…

and product.

Paper cups, anyone?

Kari Morris liked this post

No Sew Lion

2 Replies

Several weeks ago our September 2011 Disney Family Fun magazine came in the mail.

And sat somewhere. Like in a basket.

Which wasn’t on purpose. I just couldn’t gather 30 minutes together to look through the thing.

Until Wednesday night when I was willingly confined to a chair while someone cut my hair and turned it brown again.

I brought my magazine.

Which did more than bide time with me– it planted the inspiration to try the No Sew Lion craft on page 10. With my kids.

Here’s what Thursday afternoon looked like.

The directions said we had to cut out two 20 inch fleece circles from maroon and yellow fleece.

Which I took to mean I shouldn’t free-scissor the thing and hope it was twenty inches, so I made a pattern.

Technical. Ahem.

And then I cut the thing out.

About this time I mentioned to my kids the idea of making pillows.

Which promptly made them start pinging off the walls, the couch and the back door while asking 85 questions I didn’t know the answers to.

Next time…I’ll get everything together first.

Here’s what we needed: Different colored fleece, sewing scissors, sewing pins, a 20″ pattern, polyester fiberfill, and an extra day’s worth of patience.

The lion on that page right there. That’s what we’re aiming for.

There wasn’t a lot my kids could do just yet except pick out their fleece colors and hand me the sewing pins.

My daughter went the semi-classic lion route and chose orange and yellow fleece.

And my son chose pink and black.

His lion–were we to make it that far–would be unique. Or sunburned.

Okay…so here are our circles.

They’ve got one more prep stage.

All the way around the circles we’ve got to make a 3 inch-long fringe–about an inch wide.

Until we’ve got a sunshine.

Now we’ve got to tie each fringe pair–a yellow and an orange fleece strip–into knots.

Same as if we were making a no-sew baby blanket. Just knots all the way around.

My daughter loved this part. She tied knots around hers and then tugged her brother’s fleece from my hands and volunteered to finish his.

Hallelujah.

Here are both ‘lions’ mostly knotted. We’ve left about a five-inch gap in each to stuff them with the fiberfill.

Now stuffing his fleece was something my son could do. Easy. Messy. Lumpy.

Here’s my daughter stuffing hers.

And here are both pillows–stuffed and knotted. We finished knotting the rest of the fringe after we stuffed ‘em.

Now…what turns the pillow into a lion or anything else is an assumed amount of creativity.

Which means you might not end up with a lion.

Gasp.

But rather Senor Sol.

Or his more-contented cousin.

But eventually…if you stick with it long enough, as in, you cut and re-cut fleece pieces and finally smear ‘em all with glue, you end up with something that–sort of somehow–resembles a lion.

John Kathy Koester, Wendy Parkhurst liked this post

Pony Bead Bracelet

2 Replies

I’m certainly not the person to ask about jewelry. Not that anyone’s made that mistake.

The pinnacle of my jewelry experience was having my ears pierced at the mall when I was twelve.

And save for my wedding ring I don’t wear a speck of jewelry even now.

Unless…

a friendship bracelet made by my seven year old from yarn and pony beads counts.

And it might.

Well, we made some today. Little bracelets.

Out of the bajillion ways there are to tie a knot or string a bead, here’s what we did.

We started with a stretch of yarn. About as long as both arms.

Then with the yarn folded in half, we tied a knot at the looped end…

and taped it to the table.

With the loose ends of yarn, we wrapped a piece of tape around each end. Like shoelaces. We even twisted the ends tighter with our fingers once the tape was one, as fraying yarn ain’t no fun. The real gist is that we’re trying to make it as easy as possible to string our beads on the end of the yarn.

These are the pony beads, the things that sound like rocks and broken glass when they suck up the vacuum cleaner. We don’t need many to make the bracelet. Maybe thirty.

What we did was take two beads–any color–and strung them first on the left piece of yarn. Or the right.

Then we took the other piece of yarn and pushed it through both beads as well. Only we went in the opposite direction. Criss-crossed.