Arts & Crafts Camp

We're behind on our posts! A few weeks ago, Taite attended Creative Arts Camp at FUMC. It was really awesome! Taite's 'core' class was mosaics & she got to make a tile project every day. She also got to go to two other classes each day. Some of those classes included sketching, woodworking, cooking, jr. science & art alive. She loved the wordworking class! She was also glad she chose mosaics as her core class because she enjoyed the tiling & grouting!

Check out the things she made at camp: a tiled mirror, tiled vase, mosaic bottlecap magnet holder (very cute - made out of paper squares glued to a cookie sheet), mosaic clipboard, glass ice cream dish (modge-podged tissue paper) and glass plate. She also made an AWESOME washers game board in her woodworking class. How fun!!

Tie Dye Shirts

Even at Mema's house, the girls got to do a fun craft project. Mema bought a tie-dye kit! I hadn't done this FOREVER, so I even got in on a little bit of the action. The kit came with squirt bottles. This squriting method was much easier than the way I remember tie-dyeing. I just remember having the trays of Rit dye, and you had to dip corners in, but the colors always bled together.

The shirts turned out great. They even made a shirt for their baby cousin, Olivia. What a fun souvenir from our trip to Mema's!

Coffee Filter Flowers

This one was also in our library book. We hadn't done this one in a while, so we decided it was time to do it again. The cups are just water with food coloring. Taite & I cracked up because Paige squirted about half the bottle of green into her cup! First, we folded the coffee filters into quarters. Then, the girls dipped each corner into different colored water cups. (See how dark the green is?!) When the filters are opened, they have kind of a tie-dye look to them. Taite also experimented with dropping colors on the filters with a medicine dropper. This method had a neat look to it, too.

When they were dry, Taite stacked 3 filters on top of each other, pinched them together in the middle & wrapped a pipe cleaner around that point to create a flower.

Home-Made Tattoos

We checked out a craft book from the library & this was one Taite wanted to try. Pretty simple. Draw a picture on a small paper towel square with washable markers. Here's one of Taite's designs (all about the peace sign these days!)

Wet your hand & place the design on your hand. She counted like you do with the temporary tattoos.

The images weren't very dark, but she had fun with the activity.

Tissue Paper Stained Glass

Taite said she did this one in preschool! But, she still had fun making this simple "stained glass" picture. It didn't keep Paige's interest - she only lasted about 2 minutes.

Just cut a piece of clear contact paper in whatever shape/size you want. We made a construction paper frame to go around our creation & just stuck it to the contact paper before they began.

Then, Taite just started cutting & tearing random shapes of tissue paper & stuck them to the sticky side of the contact paper. Keep sticking & overlapping shapes. When you're finished, you can cover the 'back' with another sheet of contact paper or just leave it as-is. The non-sticky side becomes the front of your final product.

The final product is a pretty picture that looks nice hanging in a window. I happened to take the picture in the evening, but you get the picture! ;)

Shaving Cream Painting

Okay, it's a rainy day, so we've done a bunch of fun crafts today. I told the girls we could do good ol' shaving cream painting. We did the simple version - squirt some shaving cream on the table & they finger 'painted' away to their heart's content. They've always enjoyed this activity & it was no different today.

We invited Grace over to play with us. She is almost 2. She did not want to get her hands messy, but enjoyed watching Paige & Taite make a mess with their shaving cream! It was funny to watch Grace's reaction to this new activity. I also let Taite make a marbled picture. It was pretty neat. (I didn't have a chance to take pictures of the process since I was busy helping.) We squirted shaving cream onto a jelly roll pan. Then, I dropped random drops of food coloring. She took a fork & spread the colors around. We continued with more colors. After she was done, we pressed a piece of carstock onto the shaving cream & it made this really cool print:

The directions we read said to scrape the excess shaving cream off of the paper. But, Taite liked the texture it made, so we left it on. It'll be interesting to see what it looks like when it's dry.

Oh, what fun a $.99 can of shaving cream can provide!!

Sticker Collage

Okay, this one was fun for the girls to work on together. First, think of a shape or object you can cut out of a piece of cardstock or heavy paper. Taite's new favorite thing is a peace sign, so that's what we did. Cutting that out was trickier than I thought, but we figured it out! She drew it & I cut it out for her.

Then comes the fun part. We took our large stockpile of random stickers and stuck them, overlapping on a second sheet of carstock. Taite & Paige BOTH put the stickers on. I helped, too. We filled up the entire middle of the paper, trying to leave the least amount of lavendar showing through.Next, we just glued the top pieces (peace sign) on top of the sticker sheet. Check out the end result! I think it looks pretty cool! Fun, simple little project for a rainy day!