Lunches: Pumpkin, Doghouse, Crab

Pumpkin:

Turkey and cheese sandwich, cut using a large pumpkin cookie cutter.  Lines drawn with edible markers.  Stem out of Dots candy.

Grapes on witch hat picks.  Sitting on a bed of pretzels.

Apple wedge with vampire teeth made out of mini marshmallows and peanut butter.

Doghouse:

Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich using the dog house sandwich cutter

fruit salad with watermelon, blueberries and strawberries

dog bones: Scooby Doo Graham Sticks

Crab:

Peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Cut in a circle with just a knife.  Eyes are from a ½ big marshmallow with black frosting.  Mouth was cut from fruit strip.  Claws are pieces of watermelon chunk connected with fruit strip.  Legs are tootsie rolls cut and rolled thin (they did not stay in the sandwich well).

Apple chunks with a big of chocolate whipped peanut butter.

Goldfish crackers.

Happy Creating!

Lunch: Frankenstein, Ghost, Doghouse

Frankenstein:

Peanut Butter and Honey sandwich.  Cut of crust and used a knife to cut the mouth.  Carrot for Hair.  White and black frosting for eyes.  

Square pretzels and a few candy corns.

Apple slices using mini cookie cutter. 

Ghost Lunch:

Grilled Quesadilla with food markers for eyes and mouth.

Yogurt with raisin pieces for eyes and mouth.

Pretzel rods and cheese stick with food markers for face.

I was getting a little tired of Halloween themes, so we changed it up for this 

Doghouse:

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich using a dog in a dog house sandwich cutter

Dog Bone graham crackers (Scooby Doo Graham Sticks)

and Chocolate Pudding - because it looks like dog poop :)

Happy Creating!

Star Wars: Thumb and Finger Print Art

Have you seen this book?!  It's pretty cool.  Star Wars finger/thumb print art :)

My husband wanted some wall art for his office at work.  At first, I thought I could have the kids make some sort of ships (container ships, sail boats, tug and barge, tanker) out of their handprints.  (His work is all about large shipping vessels!)

But, there are not too many ideas out there to do that.  Which meant I would have to get pretty creative.  And at Christmas-time:  creative I am not.

Then I found this book.  Or rather, refound it.  I had saved it to one of my amazon wish lists, because it's pretty freaking awesome!  

Here's what I came up with for the wall art:

It's pretty awesome, right?!  

All the characters are made with the kids fingerprints.  Isaac is exclusively the Death Star scene and the Rancor.  I did the green music men and Princess Leia.  Maureen did just about everything else.  I, of course, did all the drawing since this was a little beyond what a 4 year old and not yet 2 year can handle.  

I found this massive Star Wars Collaboration on DeviantArt by Zimeta (link here).

I cropped and photoshopped the crap out of the background to get rid of all of her characters so that I could add my fingerprint characters.  It was a lot of work to digitally edit my two scenes!  

I got a 16x20 inch frame from Target for about $30.  I'm sure I could have gotten one cheaper if I had waited for a sale, but I got lazy in my Christmas shopping and went for convenience.

Michael's Craft Store custom cut a 16x20 mat into two 15x5.5 inch rectangles to fit my artwork.  The mat ended up costing ~$34 and it took longer than the originally quoted 2 days - over a week, but I wasn't ready with the art so it wasn't a big deal.

I was planning on printing the backgrounds on my home printer using 8½x17 paper (that would be 11x17 cut to size) but my printer started leaving streaks and was a complete mess.  I thought there was a blockage and tried everything, but nothing worked.  Turns out Office Max/Office Depot can print 11x17 color copies for about $1.23 + tax.  

I thought I would be all awesome and upgrade to the nice paper.  But....the nice paper would NOT hold the fingerprint ink.  It never dried and just rubbed away.  So I went back to the store and the guy was SUPER helpful.  He pulled out all the different paper types in that size available and let me touch them and stamp on them to see what would work.  

In the end, I used regular 'ole 20 pound copy paper.  The cheap stuff.  My inkjet printer ink at home was the best (dried the fastest) and then OfficeMax's cheap paper.  Go figure.

I did all this two days before we were leaving for Christmas at the in-laws.  I was kind of freaking out.   

Thankfully, I was slightly prepared in that I knew the layout I wanted.  I had used all my streaky at-home printer copies to lay down characters and figure out sizing and practice stamping with the older child.  By the time I got the paper figured out, I was good to go with everything else.

Once the stamping started it was one long day of stamping with the kids and drawing.  

I used stencils to do the rancor with the under 2 year old, I used paper to block off the entire image except the rancor and helped him go to town with his finger prints.  He had some fun with that!

The Death Star was a little more problematic since the entire background was black and dark grey - what was I thinking?!  I ended up using more stencils and white paint for a background.  It worked out b/c the stencils made it so much easier for me to work with the younger one and not worry about getting stray ink EVERYWHERE!

I'm really happy with how well it turned out. The Husband seemed to like it too - although he would rather hang it up in the house and not at the office!  Oh well, at least I try to decorate his office walls :)

If you got the book and tried out some Star Wars fingerprint art, I'd love to see what you've done!!

Happy Creating!

Bendy Dolls: Monarch Butterfly

Have I shown you any of my bendy dolls?  

Here is the most recent - a monarch butterfly!  She lives with a friend now :)

Posing on the mailing envelope.

And here is her back.  It's a little more detailed than the front, which I thought hair and clothes would cover most of!

and here's one I made for a traveling journal.  Her name is Pherneice (pronounced fur-niece)

She has a little tin to hang out in, and book for pictures and memories.   I mailed her off in July and she's visited 4 - 5 friends so far...she's never going to make it home at this rate!

I made the journal with some pretty colored copy paper using a coptic stitch.  I think it came out pretty good.

and this is Pearlina Wishwater.  She was part of a traveling journal project.  I made her and kept her for the summer, taking her on journeys around town and on car trips then sent her off to her new home.   

You can check out the whole project on this post.

Have you ever made a bendy doll?  Check out this post to make your own! 

Happy Creating!

Christmas Santa Thank Yous

In case you haven't got some thank you's out for those Christmas presents yet, here is a printable template. 

They will print to fit inside of a 5 ¼ x 7 ¼ inch envelope.  

Get the pdf version here (should take you to google docs), will print 2 per page.  Fancy cut out around the curves, if you don't have too many to do.  Or let it be an exercise in cutting for your little one.  

Check out snowman thank you card template from a few years back.  Find the original post here (with link to printable)!

Happy Creating!