• Chinese lantern sun catcher
    Chinese New Year crafts - Kids crafts - tutorial

    Chinese lantern sun catcher

    January 13, 2015 - By 

    My children love to make sun catchers. They are so quick and easy to set up and they are my go to craft if one of them asks to make something and I don’t want to think about it too much. With Chinese New Year around the corner I set up a sweet Chinese lantern sun catcher activity for my 3 year old daughter yesterday. Material needed to make a Chinese lantern sun catcher: Paper Scissors Cellophane squares Contact paper How to make a Chinese lantern sun catcher: First draw your Chinese lantern. I drew mine with a black Sharpie…

  • Kids crafts - playing - tutorial

    Simple noughts and crosses with toys

    January 9, 2015 - By 

    The weather has take a turn for the worst recently so we’ve been stuck indoors more than we’d like. Over the Christmas holidays the children really started to enjoy playing family games. They don’t always grasp the rules and sometimes there’s a little cheating going on but it’s great to see them having fun with indoor games and learning new skills. Yesterday we had fun with simple noughts and crosses but we made it a little different by using the children’s toys and making a large washi tape grid on the floor! Noughts and crosses, or tic-tac-toe, is usually played…

  • paper wreath tutorial - the gingerbread house
    Paper craft - Recycled crafts - tutorial

    Recycled wrapping paper wreath tutorial

    January 7, 2015 - By 

    I’m pretty astounded by the amount of rubbish we recycling this Christmas holiday. Although we had our extended family at our house we still had an embarrassing amount of bags to put out, not helped by the fact we skipped a collection due to the Bank Holidays. I try to re-use items from the recycling as much as possible and made some sweet paper wreaths from recycled wrapping paper. Today I am going to share my recycled wrapping paper origami wreath tutorial with you. A while ago I was sent one of these as part of a craft swap and…

  • Kids crafts - tutorial

    Playdough acorns and the best posts of 2014

    January 2, 2015 - By 

    2014 was an interesting year. My 4 year old started school full-time and our crafting adventures are now squeezed into after school and weekends. Fortunately he hasn’t lost his appetite for crafting and we’ve had fun experimenting with all kinds of materials and techniques. My 3 year old also has the crafting bug and I’m so happy whenever I hear them ask to craft. My favourite post of 2014 has to be our playdough acorns. We love to craft the seasons and both children loved Autumn, watching the leaves change colour and drop. We were inspired to craft and look…

  • Paper bell garland for New Year
    handmade - Kids crafts - New Year crafts - tutorial

    Paper bell garland for New Year

    January 1, 2015 - By 

    The festivities have not dampened my children’s desire to craft. We managed to squeeze in another quick New Year craft which I wanted to tell you about. We made a sweet little paper bell garland for New Year.   Equipment needed to make a paper bell garland: gold coloured paper scissors pencil pipe cleaners sellotape twine How to make a paper bell garland: Find something large and circular to draw around, I picked an old coffee jar, and drew and cut out 6 circles. Find the top of each circle and make two folds to create the bell shape like…

  • New Year paper plate kids craft
    Kids crafts - New Year crafts - tutorial

    Celebrating the New Year with children

    December 30, 2014 - By 

    How do you explain the concept of time and a New Year to a 4 year old? He recognises all his numbers and understands days, weeks and months but not a year. I wanted to mark the arrival of a New Year so came up with the idea of paper plate numbers to hopefully reinforce the idea a little. We talked about time and how we measure it, then drew the numbers on four paper plates. We ‘coloured’ them in using some left over craft sand, covering the number with glue and then shaking the sand over each one. The…

  • New Year's confetti box
    crafts - Kids crafts - New Year crafts - tutorial

    New Year’s confetti boxes

    December 28, 2014 - By 

    Even on Boxing Day my children wanted to do some crafting! Luckily we were at home so we were able to raid our craft supplies to make some sweet confetti boxes for New Year’s Eve. There’s no way my children will be staying up to see in the New Year but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to mark it in some way. Stay tuned for a couple more New Year’s crafts I’ll be sharing this week. Equipment needed to make New Year’s confetti boxes: plain match boxes assortment of coloured paper paper punches foam stickers How to make New…

  • recycled toy decorations
    Christmas - tutorial

    Recycled toy decorations

    December 24, 2014 - By 

    As part of my pre-Christmas clear out I sorted through the toy boxes and put aside some of the children’s old toys. As I was putting them into a bag for the charity shop I had an idea about recycling them into decorations. Both children have small trees in their bedrooms and I thought we could make some decorations for them. Equipment needed to make recycled toy decorations: Unwanted plastic toys Spray paint Screw eyes Pin vice How to make recycled toy decorations: Pick a selection of plastic toys. I would love to use toys the children play with but…

  • Cookie cutter Christmas gift tags
    Christmas - handmade - Kids crafts - Paper craft - tutorial

    Cookie cutter Christmas gift tags

    December 23, 2014 - By 

    I have a brilliant craft to share with you today, cookie cutter gift tags which is a great way to recycle Christmas cards. For some reason I packed away last years’ Christmas cards, fully intending to recycle them into gift tags. Today I finally found the time to make them. Equipment needed to make cookie cutter Christmas gift tags: Christmas cards Festive cookie cutters Pencil Scissors Hole punch Ribbon How to make cookie cutter Christmas gift tags: Pick a part of each card that you want to keep and position your chosen cookie cutter over it. Draw around your cookie…