Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Today is the day it's okay to be green!

So put on your green hats and mittens and socks

and read Green Eggs and Ham (you can even read it in a box!)

To have more fun when you're done with that book

come over here and have yourself a look!

(There are more St. Patrick's Day things to do there!)

Enjoy being green today!

Oink, Oink! It's almost spring!

Spring is almost here, which means little baby animals and whatnot will be coming into the world. So since I haven't been able to post much lately of any new projects with my neice and nephews, I thought I would post one that reminds me of children. Specifically of children's stories, like Charlotte's Web. I did this picture fairly quickly as a sketch in Corel with my tablet, so it's not the best. But it reminds me of spring, so I thought I would share it until I can post some new projects. :) In the meantime, you can visit this site to do some piggy projects of your own! They look so fun and are really cute!

Magnets?

Sorry it's been so long since I last posted something on here, but I've been so busy after Christmas and we all had the flu in January, that I'm just now back to doing things again that I can post about! :) And one thing I've been wanting to make for a long time are magnets! After seeing Holli's blog, I thought they were so adorable that I wanted to make some for my neice and nephews, too.



So, here's what I started out with. (I made this project by myself since I wanted to make these as gifts for the kids.)






Some tools I used were:

Glue (you will need sturdy glue to hold it all together)

some scraps of paper or pictures of what you want your magnet to show

clear glass stones that are usually used with fish tanks and decorations (which I purchased for $1.00 at the local dollar store) *also, there were other colors that you may prefer to use, just remember that dark colors won't let you see your picture as well.

magnets with self adhesive backing (if the stones are heavy, like mine, you will need very strong, thick magnets)

a pencil

scissors or xacto knife (scissors work best with children :)

some yarn or thin ribbon (optional)

Once I had everything I needed, I set to work. First I placed my glass stone on top of the picture I wanted, drew a circle around the picture and then cut out my picture. Then I took my glue (I used Elmer's cement glue with the brush made on to the lid. Regular liquid glue would work if you use a brush to spread it out.) and spread it on the flat part of the glass stone and then placed my picture face up on that. I did this with all the pictures I wanted to make magnets out of (I only made three) and then I took my magnets, outlined the
shape of each stone again, and cut out the size I needed. Then I just peeled the back off, stuck it to the back of my picture on the flat part of the stone, and voila! A magnet is made!

This picture lets you see how big the stones I used were. They were fairly large, and very heavy. If you want them to look a little more exciting, you can add ribbon or yarn by spreading your glue around the edges, and then just sticking your accesories on.

Above are my finished magnets. The top right one does have a picture attached, but it did not show through very well, as it was a dark picture. You may want to experiment with your pictures before you do anything. The only problem I had with this project is that my magnets weren't stong enough to hold up the glass stone when I put them on my refrigerator. If you plan to give these away as gifts or something, I would recommend using some better quality magnets.

There are plenty of other things you can make with these too. I got a whole bag of them, so I may make many more things. I was thinking about making a homemade checkers game, or a tic tac toe game. They can even be used to decorate something bland, or to make jewelry with, or to set out as a holiday decoration or .... well, the possibilities are endless. :)

I hope you enjoy making these with the kids in your life!

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.