Happy Valentine's: Will Zoo Be Mine?

The 4-year old's preschool is pretty strict on food items that can be brought in.  I mean, there is an approved food list (oreos, teddy grahams, 100% fruit popsicles, apple slices) and 4-year olds only need so much candy anyway, right?

I saw these posted over at Blue Robin Cottage and just HAD to make them!

I used a Safari Ltd toob from Hobby Lobby (also found at Michaels Craft Store and Amazon) with a 40% coupon, so it was only $6.  

Left over cardboard boxes from shipping boxes (not yet cleaned up from Christmas)

Letter stamps, red ink pad, and red/white bakery twine I already had on hand.

The little one signed her own name on all 11 Valentine's and colored in the little hearts I drew.

This was a pretty easy craft, but stamping each letter 11x was a bit tedious.  There was no candy involved, no wasted paper and included one small toy.   It cost a total of $6 and 1 - 2 hours of time (depending on how much your child helps).

Happy Creatin'!

Dinosaur Hoodie

I hear these things are kinda popular with the youth these days.  

and really...I kinda want one, too!

I started out with a plain kangaroo pouch hoodie from Target.  I think it was Champion brand.  AND I paid full price for it.  No sale, no clearance.  Eek, what was I thinking?  Well, I was thinking that it was for a birthday present and I was running out of time to find one cheaper.  Plus, I like that little girl, so I could afford a $15 sweatshirt :)

I ripped the lining out of the hood, because I wanted to put something more colorful in there.  I made sure to save it for a template...but don't sew it in right away.  Wait until after the spikes are added to hide a few stitching lines!

Picked out a few colors that matched the hoodie.  Proper girlie colors for a sometimes girlie girl.  This is fleece, since I had all these colors on hand. 

Measure the length from the top of the hood down to the waist of the sweatshirt.  Then laid my colors out.

Sewed them on.

Then sewed up the spikes.  And added the hood liner back in (Pretty sure I sewed it inside out to hide the seam, the I just hand stitched the hole closed).

My little is just a bit smaller than the intended recipient so I asked her to try it on.  I wasn't sure I was going to get it back from her :)  Maybe I should make another one...

If you are interested in making your own version, here are a couple tutorials that I found useful.

Dino Spikes on WhateverDeeWants

Hood Liner:  SimoneHowell

Happy Creating!

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!