Crafty hours

I try to do some craft with the kids every week - but there are times when weeks go by without us working on something together, and I don't like that. We seem to get out a lot during the weekends and in addition, these two days of the week are the only time S gets to spend with the kids. I am left with the weekdays when it is hard to schedule anything between tennis lessons and homework and playtime.When S travels and is out over the weekend, that's when we are able to do crafty-artsy stuff together and this weekend was one of those.

It actually started with Y's school teacher sending me a note informing me that the end of the year class party was going to have a 'Garden' theme and Y needed to come to school in a homemade costume. I figured a flower was the easiest thing I could rustle up with the stuff I already had at home. I used thick card stock (I had pink), cut them into petal shapes, glued them together onto a green band of chart paper and decorated the 'petals' with floral patterns (bought from my absolute favourite shop in the whole wide world - Michael's!). Y wore a green t-shirt and leggings and I pasted 2 green leaves onto the front of her t-shirt. The 'flower' was turned into a crown to wear on top of her head. I didn't like to make petals framing the whole face because I think that's too uncomfortable for a small kid to have stuck to her face for several hours.

This is the floral 'crown'.

I don't suppose she looked terribly like a flower but I guess the basic idea was communicated :)

Yesterday, Ads had his end-of-year PTM and we wanted to give his teacher a small gift. Of course, it had to be handmade. I had a couple of glass bottles (in which we get scented candles?) with me. I got him to stick strips of glaze and crepe paper and decorate it with a bead bracelet. We placed a tiny scented candle inside, and packed it in a pretty bag.

Today, we've done Tape-resist painting which is very easy and a whole lot of fun! I have been meaning to do this for months ever since I read Rashmie's post over here. Ads and Y loved yanking the yellow tape out once  they had finished their artwork :)

This one is done jointly by Y and me.

And this one by Ads, a mixture of superheroes and abstract doodlings :)

A batch of shells and pebbles picked up from NZ beaches were painted.

And, finally, a really cool project - to make cute plastic lanterns from mineral water bottles. I saw this on Mindful Meanderings recently and it really appealed to me. We didn't use glass colours but regular acrylic ones. I cut open two bottles and gave 2 pieces each to Ads and Y. Later I added some beads from a couple of broken anklets we had lying around, and voila!