A snowglobe

Okay, I did some Christmas shopping last night, and after I got home and had wrapped all my nice new presents, I had some left over containers from some gifts. (I had taken out the gift to include it in a gift basket.) Anyway, I ended up having two clear, cylindrical tubes leftover. For some reason, my eyes kept seeing them as snowglobes, so what did we make? Snow globes, of course! :) Or I guess you could call them Snow tubes? Anyway, This was a fun project that I think would entertain both little kids and big kids alike. Plus, you can recycle old scraps of paper and the clear gift boxes you may get this season. :) If you're interested, here's the materials we used and the process of what we did.

Materials:

glue (either the bottle glue or glue with a brush is best. Stick glue wouldn't work too well.)

clear cylindrical tubes

an object to display inside (such as a small, thin toy or a small picture)

leftover scrap paper or glitter (you can use any colors or color coordinate with your object)

scissors

First, here's some pictures of what we used, just incase you're like me and have to see it to understand what I'm talking about. :)

Next we picked out what object we wanted to be in our globe, plus the colors we wanted to use for the 'glitter', or confetti inside our globes. (I used the snowmen and my neice used the hearts. She wanted lots of colors in her globe, too, while I wwen to have a more traditional one.) Notice that for our object, we simply made our own pictures out of paper. But if you wanted, you could put in a photo, or a toy, or whatever. (putting a toy inside with confettit would be so much fun for a kid to open on Christmas!)

Next we put it all together...brush some glue around the top rings to hold it on and...

...Voila! We have a snowglobe! :)

Here's a close up of each one to let you have a better look. (Mine is the snowman and my neices' is the hearts. Also, I put tape on tope of hers simply to make it more durable so that she could play with it until the glue dried.)

It's been awhile...

Sorry I haven't posted anything on here for awhile, but we haven't really made anything to post. :)

But, I'll post something now anyway, just to keep everyone up to date, and so you know I haven't forgotten about this page. :)

I already posted this on my other blog, but I'll post about it again here.

I was doing some watercolors a few weeks ago and my neice came in and saw my pictures and said she wanted a ballerina. So....I made her a ballerina. I framed it just this past weekend and we hung it on the wall with our family portraits, so that it wouldn't get broken.

So, we made a book....

Okay, me and my neice made this a few weeks ago, but I haven't had a chance to post it. This was a book we made. I made the covers and wrote the words and then she colored every other page while I did the others. I titled it "Five little pumpkins" since I had done a story similar to this in elementary school. I can't remember how the whole thing goes (even though I still have the original!), so I made up my own words. :) She liked it, but I have no idea where it is now. Oh, and I've decided to nickname my neice and nephews so that they can keep their privacy, yet with a nickname, it will sound much better than saying my neice or nephews all the time. :) My neice's nickname, which you can see on the book, is Meme. My oldest nephew's nickname is Robin and the youngest I've nicknamed Pumpkin. :) So if I mention any of them from now on, I'll try to refer to their nicknames instead of just saying neice and nephews all the time.

I actually liked making this little book, but it's so hard to keep young children happy until it's finished! :) She constantly wanted to glue or cut, so if you plan to make a book with a small child, be sure you have some busy work or you'll end up with a chopped up, glue covered book instead. :)

Birthday

This weekend was my neice and dad's birthday, so to celebrate in my own, artful way (and since the little party we had didn't give me a chance to draw much this weekend), I decided to use Facebook's application, Graffiti, to celebrate her birthday, which you can you read my first blog about here. I thought this little girl would be fun to show how my neice was so excited for her birthday. I haven't done much art with any of my neice or nephews for the past week or so, so I thought this would be a bit more fun and colorful.

It's a little early...

Once we finished the hearts, our pow wow was interrupted by the nephews. Well, that just wound miss girlie up and even though we had already decided to make a bunny rabbit (which looks like it could be a duck in this picture), too, she really wasn't into it since there wasn't a whole lot for her to do. So, I cut out the pieces, colored them, let her add the grass, and that was about it. Then I glued everything down. Then, she helped me punch out polka dots for the 'eggs' as she called them. They really weren't anything but a decoration, but they do look like eggs, so I guess that's what they are.

So, I just have a before and after pic for this one. Like I said, I may not get to do these too often, so I thought I would do as many as I could at once, just in case. My youngest nephew (about a year old) seems like he'll want to do art with me when he gets a bit older. I really don't know what to make with him now that he could do himself. I have to 'help' my neice more than enough as it is on her projects. My oldest nephew, who's in school, only likes making the really boyish stuff, like trucks. And since art is like a school thing to him, he's not to fond of making too many things. However, a week or so ago, I learned how to do some Origami and made some paper boxes and paper cranes. He liked doing that because the boxes were easy to make and you got to blow them open with your mouth. (These are really fun to make once you get the hang of it, but learning them for the first time was hard. I did memorize how to make the boxes, but the rest I still have to read from the instruction manual. I got my book and paper from Barnes and Noble during their sale as well for another $1. It was a great day that day.... :)

Umm....hearts.....

Okay, last night, I let my neice choose between either hearts or Humpty Dumpty to make (don't ask why those two, that's just what popped into my head.) Well, obviously, miss girlie girl wanted to make a heart, although originally it was supposed to be Humpty Dumpty (we were even singing the song!).
So, I have the Mary Engelbreit Wrap It Up! book (which I bought brand new for $1 at Barnes and Noble during their big sale about a year or so ago. How awesome is that?!) Inside, she has these hearts you can make that are made out of suede or some kind of material. Well, I don't work much with cloth material, so we decided to make ours out of paper, since I have TONS of paper. :) Miss girlie girl wanted pink, obviously, so she had bright pink as the background, light purple as the inground, another shade of light pink for the flowers and bright green for the leaves. I chose yellow for the background, orange for the inground and a purple flower with bright green leaves.

First, I cut out the sets of hearts and set miss girlie to coloring hers. She's still young, so she doesn't exactly know to color the whole thing or to make designs or anything yet, so hers is kind of scratchy. Still, she colored it how she wanted, which I think is very important in art, and she watched me cut the design out for my background. Then, to keep her busy, I tried to let her cut out her flowers, which are just circles, but she didn't really know how to hold the scissors, so I did it for her and let her color them, too. Once I caught up with her, I did the leaves and we colored them, too.

By now, what had started out as a small project, was becoming pretty lengthy. For a girl who doesn't like to sit still, I'm glad to say that she sat it out with me. She was a bit antsy when she wasn't doing anything, but other than that, she was good. :) So, once we have all the pieces ready, we picked out buttons for the flowers and began glueing everything together. For her, once everything was glued fairly tight, I made hers into a necklace, which she seemed to like. I even put her name on the back so she would know it was hers (even though she can't read yet. :)
I took a few extra pictures of our progress to show how we made everything, but normally I wouldn't. And since my good camera is broken, my camera phone isn't exactly cutting it for me. :( I'm hoping to get a new camera soon, but I don't think it will be soon enough for me. I love taking pictures.

I want to make a girl...

Okay, I've decided to try something with my neice and nephews. I love art, as you can tell by going here. So, I want to try and give some of my knowledge and love of art to my neice and nephews. So far, my neice seems to be the only one interested, so over the weekend, and to keep her out of my mother's hair, we made a 'littwe guwl'. Translated, we made a little girl. First, we started off with a picture of a little girl, which is a calendar page from my Mary Engelbreit calendar. She said she wanted to make a girl like that, so we took her construction paper and cut out a face, and arms to start off with. Then we colored in the eyes, cheeks, and shadows for the face and arms, hair for the hair and some shadows for her dress.

Then we glued them all together, quite difficultly I might add, to make her into a little girl. Here is our final piece. (Notice we did not use any markers, which were her idea, or very much of the construction paper.

Overall, I was very happy with how this turned out. My neice loves her 'littwe guwl' and I love that she loved making it. :) Now I just have to see what I can make with my nephews....