Joyfully Weary

This week the kids did a simple craft and made a nativity silhouette to hang on our windows.  The materials needed for this craft are: vellum, watercolors, a paintbrush, a glue-stick, scissors, and a nativity silhouette cut out of black construction paper. I found our silhouette through Google images and then Jer tweaked it a little bit and used a laser cutter to cut all the details - there is no way I would of been able to cut this out by hand.  😬 A simpler nativity would work just as well.  The first step to this craft is to paint the vellum. I cut the vellum a little bit larger than the nativity silhouette to make gluing easier. Vellum won't work for detailed paintings, but is great for skies, etc. Little Lady was the inspiration for this craft; she's currently very into painting sunrises and sunsets.  Once the vellum has dried, use a glue stick to attach your nativity. Then you can trim around the edges to make the final product look a bit nice...

I've been wanting to add some art to our "guitar wall" for awhile. I also knew I wanted to use some pages from our hymnals. I like the look of sheet music and have been pleased with how it's turned out in other crafts ( here & here ). I originally thought about trying to recreate these flowers .  Which I still may do someday, but since time if very precious right now I decided to go with windmills instead. They add some fun texture but are easy and quick; all 5 took about an hour to put together.  Supplies: old hymnal, scissors, glue stick, super glue, and coins/buttons Step 1: each windmill requires five hymnal sheets, rip them out and then trim to desired size. For the larger windmills I trimmed about 1/2" off the edges. For the smaller windmills I trimmed about 2" off the edges.  Step 2: accordion fold all of your sheets. My folds were about 1/2" wide. If you end up with extra at the end just trim it off.  Step 3:...

One of my children's favorite art activities is to make collages. About once a week I pull out the scraps box and they glue whatever/however they want down on a piece of scrap cardboard. It's an open ended activity and it's fun to see their creativity go in different directions. Last week however, an activity from the book   Arty Facts Weather and & Art Activities inspired us to make a more specific design: strormscapes.  i think they did a pretty a great job.  Our Supplies*:  various paints (acrylic grey & silver, glitter glue, and grey & black puffy fabric paint), white glue, foam brush, scissors, foam board, aluminum foil, silver tissue paper, gold pipe cleaners, cotton balls, and tape. *our supplies are a bit different from the ones listed in the book because we improvised and made do with the items we had on hand.  Step 1: form storm clouds by gluing cotton balls, foil, and tissue paper to the top of your board. Be...

As part of our weather unit we've been talking a great deal about clouds and thunderstorms. Which is perfect because the last couple of weeks have been filled with rain - in fact it's thunder and lighting outside as I type. Luckily, all my kids are more curious than scared of storms. There have, however,  been a few instances of thunder that have caused Little Lady to jump. When I was packing up our Christmas decorations I noticed I had some icicles/tinsel I had never used and decided to leave them out since they reminded me of rain - I was already planning on doing a weather unit.  With a few other odds and ends from our craft supplies an idea for creating some storm/cumulonimbus clouds was formed.   Our Supplies: icicles/tinsel , gold pipe cleaners ,  styrofoam  packing peanuts, cloud shapes cut from a cereal box, scissors, hole punch, tape, glue, grey  acrylic paint, foam brush and ribbon/string.  Step 1: punch hole in top of t...

We have yet to see any flowers in our neighborhood but I'm anxious for their arrival. While we wait I thought it be fun to craft some of our own.  I spied  Sugar Aunts' tulip craf t on Pinterest  and knew my kids would enjoy creating something similar. To get them inspired we read one of my favorite children's books, Planting a Rainbow by Lois Elbert. Our Supplies: scissors, egg carton, acrylic paint ,  foam brushes , sharpened pencil, green pipe cleaners , white glue, & basket filler/shredded paper . You can use tempera paint but when painting on cardboard  I prefer to use acrylic because it provides a better coverage and the color is much more vibrant. Using a foam brush also helps produce better coverage.  *you'll noticed our basket filler changed from brown to green. i couldn't find the green when we started and then discovered that one of the kids had hid it in their drawer.  Step #1: remove and discard lid of...