A Rainbow of broken crayons

In our house I have a giant tin of crayons. Many of them have been worn down to tiny stubs, some are broken, and some are just too thin for little hands. I hate throwing out craft items that can be used, so I set out to find a use for all of these crayon pieces.

I have to admit that it took me quite a while until I hit on the thought of melting the crayons. Christopher wanted to make a rainbow, so we sat down and grated little piles of crayons and then we made little paper funnels to pour the shavings onto the page in rows. Once the shavings were in the rainbow shape we covered the paper with another blank page and ironed it on a low, no steam setting. When we removed the blank page we ended up with 2 rainbow pictures.

Chalk Drawings

I sometimes like the idea of making a picture that is even bigger than I am. Given that I have more practice house painting than canvas painting, chalk seems to be a good choice.

Chalk has the advantage of being easily washed away. It comes in many colours and can draw on almost anything. And I don't mind the children drawing on the concrete outside as I can easily wash it away when we are done (or leave it until the next time it rains, whichever happens first)

I had the boys lie down on the ground so I could trace around them and then let them colour the outlines in. A giant colouring in project. Here is one young man. He just needs some decoration and clothes.

Before I had a chance to trace a second boy, James drew a picture of himself pulling a grumpy face. I think it is a rather good likeness! :-)

Paper Plate Ladybird

Say hello to our friend Mrs Ladybird. This is a new addition to our insect collection. I am quite fond of the lopsided nature of this happy bug.

Organising my Cupboard

My lovely friend Ani asked me to write about how I organise my cupboard. Since I collect all sorts of boxes, bottle tops, odds and ends, it is rather an effort to keep my craft cupboard tidy. I try really hard not to cram things in, but when I am in a rush that is what happens.

Here is my cupboard. The top part with the lock is for the things that need an adult to supervise or I have collected for a particular purpose. The children have the bottom part of the cupboard and are allowed to use anything from there whenever they want. 

This is inside the children's part of the craft cupboard. It does need a bit more of a tidy up, but it gives you an idea of the way in which I organise it.

The bottom shelf is scrap paper and cardboard. My mother keeps all the coloured cardboard dividers when she has to shred documents for work. They are fantastic for drawing pictures on. There are also old newspapers and foam sheets.

The middle shelf is full of shoe boxes. Each shoe box is labelled with its contents. One has cardboard rolls, another has stamps, another has egg cartons, ribbons, matchsticks and so on. It makes it easy to know where everything is.

The top shelf has bags of material scraps on the left, empty boxes on the right and a red plastic box in the middle. This is the shelf that is in daily use and the contents of it are rarely the same two weeks in a row. If I was to take a photo of it next week then I have no doubt that the boxes would have been used and most of the material scraps. Then it would be a case of the types of recyclable materials we collect to replace them with.

The red box is the children's quick craft box. It has a selection of paper, ribbons, bottle tops, interesting pictures, scissors and glue. This is what they pull out every day and the rest of the craft items are used when they are making something in particular. I find if the container is too full, then the children become overwhelmed and don't make anything. I try and change the contents of the box regularly so that the children will have different items to inspire their artwork.It is our version of Play School's useful box.

Papier-mâché Hot Air Balloon

The glue recipe I use are 1 part flour to 5 parts water. I mix the flour with an equal amount of water first to get rid of the lumps before I add the rest of the water. I then heat it up in a pot on the stove until the mixture thickens. Since we tend to complete our papier-mâché over a few days, I usually add a few spoons of salt to the mix and store it in the fridge.

This was another occasion when we found that the balloons were piling up around the house again. We decided to do some papier-mâché, and covered the balloon. We weren't really sure of what we were going to make with it, but we had a few days between covering the balloon and it drying completely to work out. It just so happened that the hot air balloon festival coincided with this project, so the boys settled on making a hot air balloon. Rummaging around in the craft cupboard turned up a basket I had started to make and was unhappy with the result, so  I had abandoned. It would be perfect for the basket of the balloon.

When the shell of the balloon was dry, I divided the balloon up into 8 segments and left the boys to paint it. They took it in turns painting their segments. Once it was dry we attached the basket with scraps of wool and the boys made little people to travel in it. The balloon has been on all sorts of adventures with the boys. 

A twist on Colouring-In Sheets

I find colouring-in sheets rather boring. Especially when it is my younger children who are unable to grasp the concept of colouring inside the lines. So today we tried our hands at sticking balls of scrunched up tissue paper inside the lines. I think it worked rather well. The picture is meant to be a whale coming out of the water. We painted the glue on to the paper and then I left the children to stick the tissue paper on.

Pasta Necklaces

While trying to tidy up the house I found some interesting plastic string that I thought would make a quick and easy necklace for Imogen. What better way to procrastinate than find something fun to do with the kids. The cleaning can always be done later, but later the children might be too tired.

A quick check of the cupboard assured me that we do have pasta suitable for threading. We could just thread the penne pasta onto a string, but that would be BORING! Why not colour the pasta first and then let the kids loose with the pasta and string.

First we divided the pasta up into 4 ziplock bags and poured in a few drops of food colouring, closed the bags and shook them until all the pasta was covered.

Then we tipped the pasta on to a tray and put it in the sun to dry. 

Once the pasta was dry, we were able to make our necklaces. The necklace is adjustable to fit over the head and then be shortened to an appropriate length. What  do you think of our efforts?