Our after-nap craft for the day

I think I've created a monster. Every day when Brooke wakes up from her nap she asks what art project we are going to do! I'm a sucker for her blonde hair, blue eyes, and persistence! So.. today I pulled out some odds and ends and the kids decorated little paper people. I was quite impressed with their creations!

Ben would NOT sit down and pose for a picture with his creation. A cat was on our porch. We do not have a cat, so this was a big deal apparently.

CAT!! CAT!!

Another puffy paint craft!

After seeing my homemade puffy paint post, my friend Jessica told me about another way to do a homemade puffy paint activity with the kiddos that she uses with her first graders. She said it was much easier than the one we did! So.. I had to try it! Tons of fun and yes, a little easier, and plenty messy!

We did this right after nap time and SOMEONE woke up on the wrong side of the crib. I won't tell you who.. I'm pretty sure you can figure it out on your own!

Supplies needed:
Shaving Cream
Liquid glue
Food coloring
containers to mix the "paint" in (I used a metal muffin tin from the dollar store)
something to paint with (I used foam brushes)

1. Using a half and half mixture, squeeze some glue into each mixing container. One bottle of glue gave me a good amount of three different colors. Oh, and UNSCREW the lid of the glue and squeeze. Don't try to fill the container by squeezing the glue through the little pointy tip you unscrew. Not that I initially tried that. No way, not me.

2. Pick your colors and squeeze some drops into the glue. However much or little you want. The more coloring, the darker or more vibrant the color will be, obviously.

3. Use your brush and stir the glue and coloring together so that it incorporates well.

 4. Add a big 'ole dollop of shaving cream, roughly the same amount as your glue. Although really how does one measure such a thing? Glue is a dense liquid and then the shaving cream is a puff of fluff. I really don't think this matters much. Squirt away! :)

5. Use your brush and mix, mix, mix.I scooped half of it out and put it in another container so it was more manageable.

6. Mix up the other colors the same way.

I love the smell of shaving cream. I also love that it reminds me of Reddi Whip. Reddi Whip pretty much makes the world go 'round. I want some Reddi Whip.

Clue #1.

 

Well, at least she is quite excited to get started!!

This looks cool. All tie dyed looking and stuff.

Ready. Set. GO!

I have made super cute aprons for both kids, and they wear them for cooking/baking with me... but I don't want them to get ruined, so I picked up these cheapies from the dollar store as well! 

I mixed red and blue (on the left) to get a purple....ish color. Yellow and blue on the right gave me green.. duh! I just wanted to see how it looked! 

Brooke's masterpiece!

 Clue #2.

I LOVE this!

Mr. Ben is quite the little artist!

This was a total hit! Another keeper art project! You can do this with plain white glue and shaving cream, with no coloring added on black or blue paper for snow men and snow in the winter! :)

You will need to set your papers aside to dry for a full 24 hours. The next day they look pretty much the same - they are puffy, but dry! :)

Happy handprints (and footprints)!

I have to first say that I LOVE that my children LOVE doing arts and crafts as much as I do!! Thank goodness, because my heart would be sad if they didn't! Today, for example, we colored a little, played with the window markers (great things, until your 17month old decides to eat them...), finished up the melted crayon canvas art in the oven, then did a bunch of handprint art, and just as soon as we finished Brooke asked if she could color! Whew!

Both Brooke and Benjamin love hand print and foot print art, and I do as well, so today I wanted to try MY hand (har, har) at replicating some of the super cute ideas I have seen online lately!

First up: BUTTERFLY!

Okay so to make the butterfly you need a footprint from each foot. I thought I'd have her stand on the counter and lift her foot while I painted it, then have her hold on to the cabinet (or my head...) and I'd put her foot down on the paper... Would have been easier on the floor, but since I'm popping a baby out in less than a month I'm not *quite* as flexible at the moment! Brooke loved standing on the counter anyway! Okay, so it worked, but was awkward and one of her prints was wonky, so I went to plan "B".

I had her sit on the counter, put the paper on a clipboard, propped it up against my belly,  and pulled her foot towards it, pressed and then pulled it off. MUCH. better. idea.

Luckily Benjamin was perfectly content playing in the kitchen and laying on the floor (???).... while I worked with Brooke.

Up next: LOBSTER!!

The lobster requires one footprint and one of each hand. I did Brooke's first and then did Benjamin's. He was so super cooperative (yay!).

Love his cute, squishy foot! 

I'm telling you, I have the BEST helper!!

So, this is NOT how you need it to look. the footprint here should be pointed the other way (toes down). Oops! I did Brooke's correctly and did hers first, but um... brain fart on this one?

I didn't throw it away. Nope. I cut them out and glued them onto a new piece of paper, the right way! :)

Final one: PEACOCK!

For the peacock, you need a LOT of handprints, all around the middle (do the handprints first). Then, the body of the bird is supposed to be ONE footprint, toes pointed down. In doing these things with footprints, I quickly realized that my my little lady has a very high arch! Our first attempt on the "body" was horrible. There was too much wet paint and her foot slipped, so it looked crappy. I tried to fix it by doing a print of her other foot next to it (there's fat people, so why not fat peacocks?). See that white shape in the middle? That is b/c of her arch.. so it still looked lame. I set it aside to dry and my final attempt at fixing it was to use one white footprint for the body.

Here are the final masterpieces! I just LOVE them!! 

Lovely lobsters!

Beautiful Butterflies!

And um...... Pathetic peacock?!... 

(I think he is cute!)

MORE Melted Crayon Craziness!

Well, we did it again! I knew I wanted to make more of these canvases and I wanted to try a couple of other techniques to see what else would work! Brooke and I spent a little time yesterday sorting out the colors from 4 boxes of crayons. FYI- for my 11"x14" canvas 40 crayons fit perfectly. So, I chose 10 different colors and used 4 of each one. (In case you missed my first post on how to do this, you can find it here).

This shows you how I laid them out. I would put one down of each color in 4 different areas, then put the next color down beside it..

and so on, until I had 4 like groups of 10 different crayons.

As I said in my original post, I'm in Texas and hell has nothing on the heat we are experiencing. SURELY I could use the sun to melt these puppies. 

My other idea was to put them in the car to melt. Again, SO stinking hot, surely this would work.

However, we have SO many trees that we do not get steady sun in any one area of our yard (front or back) for more than about an hour or so. I had to move this canvas down after about an hour, but no melting had occurred yet.

This was the car canvas, and although it looked like it was starting to sweat/melt, again no drips (after about an hour).

Okay, so no steady sun in the yard or car (I wasn't going to keep moving the canvas from place to place and the car from driveway to street, and all around) = a no go for melting the crayons. So, I put them on the counter and came back to them this afternoon. I was talking to my mom on the phone and she suggested trying them in the oven... brilliant! So, I did. And it worked. Beautifully!

Here was my first set up. Since I'm "with child" those beer mugs sure aren't getting any use (but boy howdy, I would KILL for an ice cold brew!!). I put some foil down on a cookie sheet, propped my canvas up on the mugs, and placed the whole set-up in the oven.

I set mine to 250 (wish I knew how to do the little degree symbol thingy!).

 

I took a peek after about 1 1/2 minutes and WHA?!?! Drippy?! Yay!

 But, the angle they were at was making the tops of the crayons melt over the wrappers and I thought that looked messy. So.. my anal retentive self took them out of the oven (while Brooke asked, "What's wrong, Mama? Why are you taking them out already?"). I told her I was fixing them and so I did.

Like so. I put one in front of the other to make the angle more steep.

Then I put them back in to get their melt on.

Definitely put down some foil b/c they will likely melt off of the canvas a bit.

This is the finished product for Brooke's canvas. DONE in 5 minutes!! :)

Here is Benjamin's (also after just 5 minutes!)!

These have a different look than the first one I did, since the colors dripped straight down and didn't bleed or blend in with the colors beside them.

Love these colors too!

I love how they turned out and how I did the different color groups.