Rock Painting with Triton Paint Pens -The Kindness Project (sponsored)

My girl and i had some fun with paint pens yesterday.   We are painting rocks for the Kindness Project again this year. These #Triton paint pens are great for Rock Painting - Ceramic, Wood, Metal and Glass. They come in a set of 12 vibrant colors and are easy to use. They have a .7 mm fine tips for details and are fast drying. The super fine tip is good for dotwork. They are waterbased and non-toxic.

 They have a .7 mm fine tips for details and are fast drying. The super fine tip is good for dotwork. They are waterbased and non-toxic.  We decorated quite a few rocks, but my rocks are a bit rough and it was hard to make nice lines.

So i had the idea to try applying vinyl decals, and then using the paint pens to color them in. i pained a base coat over the rock first, but i'm not sure if that's necessary.  i cut out my vinyl decal using my Silhouette cameo 3 and weeded it so it was ready to transfer.

Then i used transfer tape to lift the decal off the carrier paper and transfer it to the rock.  It stuck really well.  i rubbed it good before removing the transfer tape. 

Once the design is transferred to the rock, you can begin painting it.  

The paint pens work great with the vinyl, and if you accidentally get a little paint on the vinyl it's easy to wipe off without effecting the design.  We really loved working with these paint pens, the fine tip is really good for writing and for the details. i just need to find some smoother rocks.  Once we have these finished we'll put a layer of  Mod Podge Outdoors over them to seal them. We are looking forward to hiding a few rocks around town this summer. 

You can find more info about the paint pens we used here https://amzn.to/2IGBLov .

disclaimer. i did not receive compensation for this post, however i did receive a free product to review in exchange for my opinion. My opinions are my own and are not influenced in any way. This post may contain affiliate links

Milkweed pod babies- Nature crafts revisited

i recently had the opportunity to re-visit these milkweed pod babies crafts.  My daughter and i had so much fun making them a few years ago, that i thought i'd share them again. We first came across the idea on www.ecomilf.blogspot.com.  The original tutorial is no longer there, so i thought i'd post one for anyone interested in making them.  They are very easy and so adorable!

All you need for this craft is some milkweed pods, pipe cleaners, wooden beads, wool roving and acorn caps.  One pipe cleaner makes 3 babies.

Cut your pipe cleaner in three equal pieces, that are approx. 4" long. Fold in half, and slide your bead on. Then fold down the very ends of the pipe cleaner and and add a bit of glue. You can glue your acorn cap to the top of the head now.

i used a small section of wool roving that was about 12" long.   Place the end of the wool on the pipecleaner, and begin wrapping the body.  Once you get to the bottom wrap it back toward the top, and finish it off by wrapping the end tightly at the neck or base of the bead.  Now you can add a face if you want, or leave it without.  

My daughter wanted to glue a little of the milkweed fluff inside our milkweed pod to make it more comfy for the baby. :) 

These are a great project for almost any age, and look lovely as part of a nature table or in a dollhouse with a bendy doll family. They would make a great project for a waldorf class or girl scout craft. 

Hopefully the tutorial is easy to understand, let me know if anything is unclear. Have fun!

Elsa's Door Paper Craft Tutorial (Frozen Inspired)

My daughter asked me to make her door look like Elsa's from the movie Frozen.  i did a quick google search and found this picture. My first thought, sure we can do it! Looks easy enough...ha ha. Not sure what i was thinking, it was actually a huge pain. :) 

 i didn't want to paint her door because her interests change from week to week, so i figured we could create something with construction paper which we already had at home.   Took me forever just to draw up the templates, but since i put all that time into making them i thought i'd share them in case anyone else is crazy enough to do this. :)  

This my template for the star design.   You may want to increase the scale on this if it doesn't print big enough.  When you arrange the pieces, you'll put them a little closer together.  The image should be around 6" tall.  i didn't include the diamond that is at the top and bottom of the star, but i'm sure you can figure it out. It's basically just a 2" square.  You need two of the stars for the pattern.  You can either use this as a template and cut your star out of construction paper, or use adobe to color this one in and print your pages in color. 

So i drew this free-form (obviously). ha ha.  This is my interpretation of the design on the door. (don't laugh!) It looks much better when it's cut out of construction paper:)  Once i outlined it in pen it got a little messy.  You can print this up right on the construction paper, then cut along the lines.  You can easily clean it up a bit, straighten crooked lines etc as you cut it out.  You need to print 4 of these for the design on Elsa's door. We created our door in dark and light blue.  You can use green or teal, what ever you have or whatever you think looks best. 

i think if you click the images you should be able to print them full size, but blogger is always changing things so i'm not positive. If you can't get them to print from the blog, let me know and i can email you the full size templates.

This should be about 3" tall, so again you may have to adjust the size. These are for the side borders of the door.  We didn't cover the entire door, so i only used 6 for each side of the door. You can do any many as you like.

 

Again, this isn't perfect. i didn't measure anything, i just grabbed a ruler and drew it out. So it's not quite even, but it's a good template to get you started. If you need it even, i'm sure you can straighten it up a bit after it's been printed. We cut these out of the blue construction paper and added strips of blue paper to connect them.

After cutting out all the pieces we used a glue stick to glue them onto white paper and then used two sided tape to stick the white paper to the door. i didn't quite get everything lined up correctly, but my daughter loved it anyway and that's really all that matters.  

We put this together before the movie was out and i could only find one little picture online. As i was putting this together i found this picture, which better shows the door.  If we wanted to do it correctly, there should be 4 of these full panels. Two at the top of the door and 2 at the bottom, and then the borders goes all the way down both sides.  i just did the two and put them right in the middle of the door. It's good enough for us. :)  i have a feeling once my daughter watches the movie a few times, i'll be adding the missing panels. lol. 

i also hung snowflakes in her doorway to add to the 'frozen theme'. You can check our snowflakes tutorial here.  My daughter loves her 'Frozen' room. 

Hope you enjoy these templates and are able to print them up correctly. i figure you can look at the images to see how to arrange the pieces.  Have fun with it! 

Patchwork Bird House Craft Tutorial

We love to make milk carton bird houses. We usually paint them, but i wanted something different to do with them. When i was a kid i remember making patchwork flower pots. We used terracotta pots, coated them in glue and covered them in scraps of fabric.  i thought we could use a similar technique for our birdhouse. 

All you need for this project is a clean/empty milk/juice carton.  Scrap fabric cut into squares or rectangles. i used pinking shears to give them a zig zag edge but you don't have to. You also need Mod Podge and a paint or foam brush.   You might also want to have some newspaper or a table cover to protect your work surface. 

First thing we did was mark where we wanted our bird house opening. We wanted a bluebird house, so i followed the measurements for a standard blue bird house the best we could. The entrance hole needs to be between 1 1/2" and 1 9/16" across and it should be 6"-10" from the bottom.  You can really make your entrance hole and size/place on the carton any where you want if you don't care what type of birds nest in it. 

After drawing on where we wanted the hole, i used a pair scissors to puncture the center, and then carefully cut around the hole. Older kids can probably do this step themselves, but if you have younger kids you'll want to do it for them.

Next dip your brush in the mod podge and apply a liberal coat of mod podge to one side of carton. Then arrange your fabric squares on the carton.  You will have to continuously add mod podge to get them to stick well, and coat them in mod podge as you are adding the patches. Straigten them out as you go, and get rid of any bubbles under the fabric.  Don't worry it will dry clear!! Once they are stuck where you want them, coat the entire side in mod podge again. Do the same thing for all four side. You'll have to stand up the carton to avoid the wet sides from sticking to the newspaper/table.  

Continue to add patches. You may have to cut a few curved pieces to fit around the hole or just arrange your patches so that they don't cover the hole. It is fine if your patches overlap. 

 We overlapped patches along the endges to cover the corners. Continue adding patches and covering in mod podge until the entire carton is covered. 

Then apply another liberal coat of mod podge and then let it dry for a few hours. 

Once your birdhouse is finished, you can hang it outside by attaching a rope or wire through the top of the carton. You could easily make this a bird feeder instead of a bird house, by making the opening much larger and farther down on the carton. This is a great way to recycle your milk/juice cartons and  use up small fabric scraps. It's a super-fun craft to do with kids of all ages (just a little supervision required).  Mod podge is non toxic and water soluble, so it is safe and it cleans up easy. 

Snow Queen/ Queen Elsa Printable Crown and wand Craft

A few weeks ago i took my kids to see the movie frozen. We absolutely LOVED it. It is defintely not your typical Disney princess movie.  Both of my kids, 12 year old boy and 7 year old girl enjoyed the movie immensely. i liked that it had two strong leading females, and unlike most Disney movies there was no Prince rescuing a princess.  It was a wonderful movie about the importance of family, sisters and not being afraid to be your true self.

 After seeing the movie my girl began to sing the lyrics to the movie everyday.  She told me she wanted an Elsa costume so we went to closet to see what we had that would work. She didn't have a light blue dress, but i found this off white sundress in my closet. After tightening up the straps on it, it made the perfect Snow Queen dress.  The we used a turquoise/blue cap from Sarah's Silks. We purchased ours from Imagine Childhood.  We love Sarah's Silks they come in handy for all kinds of different dress up costumes.  You could also easily use a regular blue or white play silk or even just a scarf or light fabric.

All we needed now was a crown. i headed over to one of my favorite printable craft sites The Whimsical Realm of Phee Mc Faddell.  On the site you can find all kinds of free printable fantasy coloring pages, and craft projects.  We printed up the snow flake fairies crown and wand on white cardstock. Then my daughter decorated them with blue colored pencils and gem stickers. 

Then my daughter decorated them with blue colored pencils and gem stickers. You'll also need some ribbon or yarn for the wand. Instead of a stick, i rolled a piece of paper around a pencil as tight as i could and then glue it in place and slide the pencil out and wrapped it in ribbon.  There are directions for putting it all together in the Phee Mcfaddell site.  You can use ribbon to tie on the crown, but my daughter wanted it to just set on top of her head so we made  band out of cardstock and glued it together. The hardest part of the project is cutting out all those snowflakes, which i ended doing.  It's a still a great project for almost any age.

My daughter was thrilled with the costume. She spent most of our snowed in week in costume, dancing and singing the songs from the movie.

There are many other fantastic printable winter themed crafts over at Phee Mcfaddell, including icicle fairies, snow fairies, ice princess and winter sprites and more.  Be sure to check the coloring pages  and the Puppet crafts.  Have fun exploring this fantastic site!

Growing Borax Crystal Hearts.

Growing Borax crystal is a really fun and easy experiment for kids. We were looking for some Valentine crafts to do and decide to make crystals again because it's been a few years since we've made them.

What You Need

• string
• wide mouth jar (pint or quart)
• white pipe cleaners
• borax (sold in the Laundry soap isle)
• pencil or chopstick
• boiling water
•  food coloring (opt.)
• scissors

The first thing you need to do is to boil the water. You can make shapes out of the pipe cleaners while you are waiting. We made hearts, and then connected them together with string. Your shape needs to be small enough to fit inside the jar without touching the sides or bottom. basic shapes lie stars, spirals and snowflakes work well. 

We usually use about two cups of water per pint jar.  Our heart design was so long we had to use a quart jar, so we used 4 cups of boiling water for it.  

i added the boiling water to the jar and let my daughter add the borax. You add 3 Tbsp per cup of water. We used 4 cups of water, so we added 12 Tbsp of borax powder.   Stir after each spoonful of borax so it is mixed well. It's okay if some of the borax doesn't dissolve.

Then we added a few drops of red food coloring. You can add whatever color you like. 

We tied our pipe cleaners hearts to a chop stick, so that is was suspended in the liquid, but not touching the bottom or sides. You could use a pencil or stick what ever you have on hand. 

 Then we waited.

The first time we made these the crystals began appearing almost immediately. Within a few hours the pipe cleaners were almost covered. This time we waited, but nothing happened. i was afraid we'd messed up the measurement, but i put it aside and left it to sit until morning. 

When we checked it the next morning we were excited to see that it was covered in beautiful shimmery crystals!

We hung them in the window as a lovely suncatcher.

So how do the Borax crystals grow?

Hot water holds more borax crystals than cold water. That's because heated water molecules move farther apart, making room for more of the borax crystals to dissolve. When no more of the solution can be dissolved, you have reached saturation. As this solution cools, the water molecules move closer together again. Now there's less room for the solution to hold onto as much of the dissolved borax. Crystals begin to form and build on one another as the water lets go of the excess and evaporates. 
*taken from britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/snow/boraxsnowflake.html

Bread Bowls

This is an old post from several years ago. i decided make bread bowls today and since my pictures in the RV didn't come out that well i thought i'd just copy the old blog post.

 i've played with a couple different bread bowl recipes, and this is my favorite.   They are very easy, yummy and hold soup well.  They are not your traditional bread bowls that have to be hollowed out, they are literally a bowl made of bread. 

Bread Bowls

*Ingredients:*

1 cup warm water (from tap)

1 package active dry yeast

1 TBSP sugar

a pinch of salt

2-3 tablespoons vegetable oil (i use olive oil)

2 1/2 to 2 3/4 cups flour (i do half whole wheat/half white flour)

4-6 small pyrex bowls. You can use 6oz custard cups or the 8oz size

preheat oven to 385

Measure water into large bowl; sprinkle in yeast and stir until dissolved. Add sugar and let sit a few minutes, until frothy. Add oil, salt and 1 cup white flour; beat until smooth. Add 1 cup whole wheat flour. Mix well, begin to knead and add enough additional flour to make stiff dough. i usually add 1/4-1/2 cup white flour. Knead well for a couple min, and then slowly add more WW flour until dough is soft, but no longer sticky and is smooth and elasticy, 5-10 min. Set aside and let rest.

Grease outside of 6 pyrex bowls (pan spray works well). i like the little custard size bowls. i think they are 6 oz. You can use the bigger 8 oz bowls, you'll make 4 large bowls instead.

Punch dough down; divide into 4-6 pieces. Spread each piece into a circle about 6 inches in diameter. Place over outside of bowl, working dough with hands until it fits. Set bowls, dough side up, on greased baking sheet. Let them set for a couple min. they'll rise just slightly.

Then bake them about 8min. Use an oven mitt to flip bread bowls right side up ( They're HOT!) and remove the pyrex dish.

Now bake them right side up an addition 8 min. until they are golden brown. In the pictures, i use 3 of the small glass bowls, and two of the larger size. Fill with a thick soup and enjoy!!

Broccoli cheese,veggie chili and corn chowder are our favorite soups to eat in a bread bowl.  

Acorn Cap Toadstool Ornaments.

For the past few years, we have decorated our yule tree exactly the same. We decorate it in blue and silver. Our ornaments are very simple.  Pinecones painted silver, blue bows, silver bells, blue glass balls, gingerbread and hand blown glass icicle ornaments.

This year i wanted something different. i wanted something even more simple and rustic.  i decided a  woodland theme would be perfect.  Later that same day i headed over to the Martha Stewart website to snag the gingerbread recipe we use every year. Apparently Martha has been reading my mind, on the homepage was a photo gallery for a Woodland Christmas at Martha's house.

The photo gave me so many ideas.  One of my favorite of course were the toadstools. The wool ornaments in the photo gallery were made fom wool felt and are needle felted. i wanted something a little different, and came up with these acorn cap toadstool ornaments.  They are really easy to make and look wonderful on the tree.

All you need for this project is some acorn caps, preferably the flat larger ones that measure around 1" across.  Red and white paint, clean carded wool, and some white embroidery floss or string. Hot water, a drop of dish soap and a needle.

 

i let my daughter paint all the caps red.  Then we added all the white dots. 

 

To make the stems we wet felted some white roving.  It was very easy. We just pulled off a piece that was 3-4" long and dipped it into some hot water that had a drop of dish soap in it.  Then we rolled the wool between our hands the way you would roll clay to make a snake. We had to dip it into the water  few times, and continue to roll and squeeze out the water until we had a felted tube. It looks very similar to a dread lock. We cut the tube into 1" pieces, and then wet felted them a bit more (rolling them in our hands) so that the edges rounded off a bit.  They looked a bit like cigarette butts before we softened the edges.  Then we let them dry.

i apologize now for my bad pictures. :)  These are very easy to put together.  All of our acorn caps had a natural hole right in the center where the stem had been.  On a few of them it wasn't quite as obvious, but we were able to create a hole just using our needle. We didn't have to drill them at all. Depending on the type of acorns you have you may get lucky, or you may have to use a dremel to drill your holes.

To put them together. i used white embroidery floss on a needle. i ran the floss up through the bottom of the wool stem (1) and through the bottom of the acorn cap.  Then i brought the needle back through the top of the cap, leaving a loop. (2).  i tied a knot at the base of the loop, to keep it from slipping through. Then i bought the needle through the top of the wool stem, out the bottom and tied another knot. (3)  i put a dab of glue on the knot and snipped off the extra string.

 

Here are our finished ornaments.  We have made a dozen so far, and need to go out gathering more acorn caps.i love the simplicity of these, and plan to make some that are natural colored as well.

We have not dug our tree yet, so i am still coming up with ideas for decorating it.  i'll be sure to share them, and pictures of our finished tree once it is decorated.

If any thing is unclear in this tutorial let me know and i can try to explain it a little better. :)
Enjoy!

Show the birds some love....Bird Seed Hearts :)

Homemade Birdseed Cakes. (vegetarian suet alternative)

1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter

1/2 cup vegetable shortening

1 cup cornmeal or cracked corn

1 cup bird seed/sunflower hearts/oiled sunflower seeds

1 cup whole wheat flour

* When using cornmeal and whole Wheat flour make sure it is NOT self rising, and does NOT contain baking soda.

Optional ingredients: chopped raisins, dried blueberries or cranberries.

place the shortening and peanutbutter in a saucepan and heat on med. low until melted. Stir in other ingredients until well mixed. Then place in molds of choice. Last year, we made traditional suit style cakes by using a 8x8 casserole dish.

This year we decided to make heart shapes for Valentines day.



This is the heart pan i used for the crayons. It works great for so many things.
To make the hanging heart feeders, we (the kids helped) half filled each heart mold with the birdseed mix. Then we added a ribbon to each one. The ribbon is tied on one end, and we placed the knot in the center of the heart. Then we added enough mix to fill the molds.
Place them in the freezer for about 20 minutes or until firm, and then pop them out of the pan. Place them in a freezer safe container and return them to the freezer until frozen solid (a couple hours).



We made these small birdseed feeder ornaments to adorn our Yule Tree that has been planted back outside.


We also made some of the larger suit cakes. i used a large heart shaped cookie cutter to make these. First, just line a pan with waxed paper. Then we placed the cookie cutter on waxed paper and i let my girl scoop the birdseed mix into the center of it. We pressed it down into the form and placed the entire thing into the freezer. It only takes a few minutes for the mix to set in the freezer, so once the shape is set you can slide off the cookie cutter and make another.
When you have them all made place in the freezer and let them freeze solid (a few hours.)

Now you can set them out in your suet feeders and provide the birds with a nutritious treat during these cold days. Be sure and store any unused cakes in your freezer. These are great for the freezing winter months, but the heat from the sun will cause them to melt during the warmers days.