Art Projects

Little Man and I don't do many crafts anymore.  We just don't have the time.  He's at school for six hours a day.  He naps for an hour.  (Yes, he STILL naps!).  Depending on the day, we do an hour of our own "workbook" time--which is more like learning time, but we call it "workbooks".  He also has Tae Kwon Do twice a week, gymnastics once a week, and soccer practice once a week.  Any time we have left is his "free time" to play what he wants or watch TV.  These days it's mostly play.

So when he brought some art projects home from school that I thought were sort of cute, I thought I'd share.  (Please ignore my fingers.  I was covering his name.)

As much as I don't like cats, I think this project with the yarn is pretty cute.

Father's Day Craft #2

For G, Little Man and I made a stepping stone.  This has been a project that has been in my back pocket of crafts for literally years.  I've just always come up with something different each time, so I've never had to rely on my reserves.  This year it was time to pull out the reserves. :)

Thankfully, Michaels had them on sale.

I got this box for $8.

I bought a beach bucket for a dollar to mix the cement.  Then I just threw it away when we were done.  I didn't want to risk clogging drains, nor did I want to spend the time to clean it out.  The kit came with the cement, pieces of glass, tray to set it up in, and mixing stick.

You are suppose to pour the cement in a bucket and mix with a cup of water.  Stir until mixed, and then pour into plastic mold.

Apparently I added too much water, because ours was really soupy.  Oops.
It said if it was hot you may need to add more... it was hot!

The tiles started sinking!
I left it outside in the heat... hoping that would help.
(Still wet)

After a day of drying (it's suppose to take 48 hours)

The directions said the tiles could be cleaned off with soap and water, so this is after I cleaned it.  Some of them had more cement on them. :(  Oh well... what can you do?!  It says "# 1 DAD" in case you couldn't read it.

Honestly, at this point we are doing good just to have a Father's Day gift for G! :)

Father's Day Craft

Little Man's school had a "Donuts for Dads" thing one morning before school.  (They also had one for mom's the Friday before Mother's Day).  I'm not exactly sure what they did, but the dad's did get a little gift.  Little Man made this for G and was pretty pleased with it.

I don't know why they put "Happy Father's Day" on it since it was 3 months before the holiday, but whatever.  I thought I'd share it with you.  Obviously since it's suppose to be a license plate, you'd want to put your state in there instead of Texas.

On the back was a painted hand print, the date, and then Little Man wrote "I Love You" and signed his name.  It was then laminated.

I plan on doing my own Father's Day craft with Little Man in the next few weeks... but you just never know what can happen between now and then. :)

A Gift for Daddy--Painted Hammer

I have no idea what is happening with blogger.  It went down sometime Thursday afternoon, and I wasn't able to access it until yesterday afternoon.  Some blogs are missing completely.  I usually have some scheduled to post up to a week in advance.  I had moved some around the other night and now they are back to their original dates.  If and when they get this fixed, this blog could end up with all sorts of crazy (possibly empty) posts.  Hopefully they'll get it together soon!

Anyway, G's birthday was this week, so Little Man and I set out to make him a present.  When I started working with Little Man almost 3 years ago, I sort of set myself up for this.  We made crafts for everything and everybody--grandparent's day, mommy's birthday, daddy's birthday, nana's birthday, papa's birthday, mother's day, father's day, Christmas...  So now I feel obligated to do something sort of handmade every time one of these events rolls around.

To me, it's harder to do for a dad than a mom.  Maybe it's just how I perceive G.  I know K is going to love anything--scribbles included.  I try to make the gifts for G something that he would appreciate.  Since you can't really google daddy birthday crafts, I just looked up Father's Day gift ideas.  I came across our idea here.

I picked Little Man up from school and we headed of to Lowe's to buy a hammer.  It was $5.  I've read that you can get them at a dollar store, but I wasn't trying to go that cheap. :)  Little Man was so excited.

I skipped the part in the directions where it said to sand it.  I figured it would work out alright.  So while Little Man ate his lunch, I primed with with (sorta) white paint to help speed up the process.

The directions also said you had to do one side at a time.  Wrong.  Who has time for that?  I just stood it on it's end and it dried just fine.

I showed LM the example of what we were doing, thinking a visual would help.  I'm not sure if it did or not, but it was his project and he was proud.

We had to let the paint dry while he napped.

Then we added a few more layers and used a paint pen.

I found this saying online and we made a card

I got an email saying Thank You and that G loved it.  Little Man has already informed me that mommy's birthday is in two weeks and we need to make sure we have something for her! :)  He loves this kind of stuff.

Crayon Resistance Art

This art project isn't really a new one.  It's been floating around for years.  I even had to do something related to this in college for my art education class.  However, sometimes we forget the "oldies but goodies".  This is just a reminder for you! :)  Little Man and I have done this before, but it was about two years ago.  He had no memory of it, and thought this was GREAT!

I told him to draw a "secret" picture using the white crayon.

He smiled the entire time and kept saying things like "I bet you can't guess what it is". :)

You can draw with colored crayons too.  For my college project, I had to draw an entire picture with crayons (leaving some spaces white) and then paint.  It resists either way.  I just think using a white crayon is more fun for kids.

After you have drawn your picture, paint over it using water colors.  Little Man also loved this (and did in the past as well) because the water  colors are actually mine.  He would always ask if we could use my "special" paint.  Take that as a lesson too--if you only allow things every once in a while, they become much more special.  How much are water color paints? 99 cents?? :)

Here is his picture.  It's sort of hard to see the drawing because he didn't color to hard.

It's a star wars picture...droids to be exact.

 I also drew a picture and made sure to color really hard/go over each line.

Then I let Little Man paint over it.

He enjoyed finding out what the "secret" picture was that I did.

He made sure after we were done that I wrote on the bottom "Drawn by Bethany, Painted by Little Man" :)

Just for some more ideas--when he was 3 and we did this, I knew he wouldn't draw a picture.  Instead, I drew the pictures for him.  He was really into construction type trucks at the time.  I found one of those simple books he had and then just traced the backhoe, excavator, dump truck, etc.  He was also learning how to spell and write his name, so I did one with his name written out too.  You can always incorporate learning into it.

Mother's Day Craft

It may be a cop out... I'm not sure, but this whole pregnancy business has zapped my creative "genius".  (I quote on purpose because there are many craftier people out there.  I just do basics here and there.)

I have little desire to be crafty and even less ideas on how to be crafty.  I knew I needed to do something for Mother's Day with Little Man.  I've done some pretty cute things in the past.  My head was swirling with a few ideas, but nothing was really coming together.  I felt I was running out of time, so I do what I always do in this case... roam the aisles of a craft store and grab what looks good! :)

Here's what I picked up at Jo Ann's

I've been thinking about having Little Man paint a bird house for them for a while.  I picked this one up for $5.99 (I know, shame on me for not having coupons!)  I also got this little decorate your own flower pot thing for $1.99.

The flower pot came with three choices of inserts, or you could make your own.

One was mostly big flowers and had one butterfly on it (my choice)

One was big and little flowers, a few butterflies and a few bees,

and the other had turtles and inchworms and such.

Being the control freak I am, I really wanted LM to do the flower and butterfly one.  However, I remembered that the gift was from him for his mom, so I let him choose.  I did strongly encourage him to stay clear of the frog and turtle one.  He chose the one with the bees (darn it!).

Coloring is not his most favorite thing to do.  I reminded him that this is something she would keep for a long time and would be on display for everyone to see.  I encouraged him to do his very best.

The finished product (minus the plant that I have yet to buy)

Then we got on to painting the bird house.

He was pretty happy with this craft.  

He thought the bird house was cool and he is always up for painting!  I had all sorts of paint colors and he chose the ones he wanted to use (with minimal guidance).

He was set on painting the roof cream for some reason.

He probably would have painted the whole thing yellow and called it a day.   I had to remind him there were other colors to use.  He tends to get like that.

All the sides were painted and we had yet to use purple.

Ideally, I would have loved him to do some sort of decorative work on the birdhouse, but I knew that probably wasn't going to happen.  We had this round paint dobber things that we had used in the past and he loves them.  I asked if he wanted to use it to make purple polka dots.  He was in love with this idea.

The finished product

There you have it.  Our relatively simple Mother's Day Craft.  

We will be making a card to go with it on Friday.

Both K and G have a birthday this month. Plus, Father's Day is next month.  I'll have to be pulling out more craft ideas soon!

Easter Crafts

While roaming the aisles of Hobby Lobby a few months ago, I decided to pick up a few simple and easy Easter crafts.  I've noticed that places like Hobby Lobby, JoAnn's and Michael's are good for pre-packaged art projects.  However, you have to be on top of your game!  You can't go in the week of a holiday and expect to find something.  After many failed attempts, I think I've finally learned my lesson! :)

I like Hobby Lobby.  There stuff is always on sale, and since they are a Christian company, there are always religious choices for the religious holidays.  Unfortunately, sometimes the cutest stuff comes in packs of 10.  That doesn't help me much.

I picked these up

Little Man loves Easter.  He thinks little chicks are "so cute", so I got the sun catcher.  It wasn't quite as easy as I was thinking.

You had to use a little tool to spread the paint.  It was very difficult and Little Man was not impressed.  I'm glad I only bought one... there were butterflies and eggs and other such fun and I thought of getting multiple ones.  This was somewhat of a fail.  Here's the best we could do:

I don't mind egg hunts, baskets, cute little bunnies and chicks, but I wanted to make sure there was a balance with what Easter is really about.  I didn't think Little Man really knew, so I thought using an art project would help.  As we were starting the project I asked him what Easter was about and he said "Uh... the Easter bunny?"  I said, "No, it's about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins".  He knows about God and Jesus, so this actually interested him.

As he colored, I started explaining what each piece was that he was coloring.  He really was into it.  He was asking questions and putting it all together.  Technically he's Catholic, but I didn't figure I'd get in trouble. :)

(Sorry, I didn't realize the picture was blurry!)

After he was done coloring it all, we went through the story again.  If nothing else, he's at least heard it.

Spring Flowers

I was roaming the aisles of Hobby Lobby about a month ago and decided it was a good time to pick up some spring and Easter crafts.

I picked up these flowers for a dollar a piece

Yesterday was the perfect time to paint them.

We started with painting the stems green.

They ended up like this

Not bad for a $3 craft, huh?

These aren't the best pictures because of the sun, but I thought the flowers looked cute on the window sill.

Happy Spring!