Craft

Last week was jam packed with crafts and projects. Even with two days out sick for the littles, we still completed everything I had written down as ideas for the week. Not bad! The most successful project was our winter paintings. I wanted to do something that we could leave up beyond the holidays, that would reflect the next few months instead of the next few weeks.

This is what I came up with. We started with canvases of various sizes found at our handy Dollar store, then with two shades of blue and some white we started layering the colours. The boys love to do this, the mixing of the similar shades and the wonderful patterns that emerge always fascinate them. This time was no different.
 

{“Why is Noah all blue Mama?” Hmmmm, I wonder...}

Then we let them dry. In the waiting period we made some salt dough ornaments to be hung up for Christmas. What is that?? Two crafts at once?? I told you it was a good week. Anyway, the ornaments were a good “waiting” craft as they played with the dough for a long time and then set to work cutting shapes. We had trees, snowflakes, gingerbread men...

a Christmas moose

a Christmas hedgehog

What? You don’t have a traditional Christmas hedgehog? You don’t know what you are missing then. Anyway, these were set to bake and by then the paintings were dry.

Next we cut snowflakes from paper doilies.

Then armed with glue (we used both Mod Podge and regular white glue) we set about making our pictures. We painted the snowflakes on, one to make sure there weren’t any major lumps when dry and also to give us a good coverage to sprinkle on some glitter. We stuck with silver and clear just to make sure we didn’t over do it with the glitter. They were surprisingly restrained with it.

The nice thing about this project was that they kept coming back to it. They would work on one then go off and play, then come back for another. It took the whole day to complete all of our paintings. The result?

Beautiful! We have them grouped together in a big open wall space and they look festival and seasonal and lovingly made and exactly what I was looking for. Both boys love pointing out which ones they made and are so proud of their work. So while we are STILL waiting for snow here, at least we have some on our walls!

So today was a perfectly fall day, cold, wet, and rainy. A good day to stay inside and get some things done, which for the most part happened. After lunch, my oldest asked for a craft project. I suggested some things but he shrugged them off. I asked him what he wanted to do and he asked if we could make our lanterns for next Friday’s lantern walk. I agreed but it was then revealed that he was actually listening last week when I was talking about different ways we could make our lanterns this year. I had mentioned felting a lantern and this is what he wanted to do. So, taking inspiration from my friend Fiona, we brought out our wool rovings and got to work.
 

I will not pretend to be anything even close to an expert at felting, so I suggest if you are new to wet felting you find help here or just google it and there are tons of sights that come up.
We used a bit of double bubble insulation stuff to use as our pattern/resist. I made it about 2in bigger than the jar we were using for the inside. Then to make it a bit easier for the littles, I used some pre-felt to wrap the resist so that we had a secure base to build on. You can just wrap it in roving or batting but I had some pre-felt kicking around so I used that. Then we set to designing.

J did his own and I worked on N’s. He was into his cars and didn’t really feel like helping. What is really great about this is nothing is set until you start felting. J changed his picture/design about 4 times before getting it just right. It is perfect for kids as they get to play and experiment before anything becomes final. At one point though, I had to remind him that we did in fact have to start felting if we wanted to eat supper that night. So we added a bit of hot water, some soap, some bubble wrap and away we went.

Now, my son has a bit of trouble with patience and this is a wonderful exercise in it. After gently pressing on our creations for about 10 minutes we could finally begin “having fun” as J says. This means we rub with the bubble wrap or our hands and really get the soap going. We had so much fun, N decided he wanted to help as well. I should mention that this is a fantastic craft for cold and flu season as you spend the whole time with warm soapy hands!

After a while, we cut out the resists and rolled up the shapes into a log of bubble wrap. The little ones wanted to help, but that only lasted about a minute.

Then I took over as you really need to work the last little bit. After 10 minutes or so of hard work I revealed our finished product. They were beautiful. I rinsed them and sewed on a ribbon handle. I made the handles quite long to avoid the heat from the candle while holding them. Then I inserted a glass mason jar and put a tea light candle in the bottom. I think I will put a drop or two of beeswax to fix the candle in for next week.

The boys were really anxious to see them lit so I waited a bit until the sun was setting to light them. It wasn’t really dark enough but dinner was calling so this was the best I could get.

Oh they are so beautiful! I can’t wait to see them in the darkness glowing with their soft light as we walk through our neighborhood next week.

We are also going to be making two lanterns from our watercolour paintings next week. More on those then. What a great day, I think I may just keep these up for the entire holiday season.

Thursday is usually our sewing/knitting/weaving day, but this week we had such incredible weather we spent most of our time outside which left little room for some of the projects I had planned. So instead we sewed on Saturday. I taught J to sew when he was four and I was then, and still am today, amazed at the dexterity and ease that little hands have with a needle and thread.
 

Sewing is part of the handwork used in Waldorf to not only teach vital life skills but also as preparation for writing and more formal thinking. Sewing is great for hand eye coordination as well as working those fine motor skills. Later when patterns are used, it teaches measurements and how to follow directions. It also teaches self sufficiency and self confidence. Think how great it must feel for a child to be able to sew the button that just fell off their sweater back on!

Back in the Spring, J sewed N a tiger, mimicking his own beloved Tiger for N’s birthday.

He cut and sewed it then needle felted the face on and when he finally presented it to him, he beamed with pride. Many would be fearful of handing a small child a sharp needle but I think you need to introduce real tools and teach them how to be used safely.

For this weekend’s project we kept it simple. I had some red and burnt orange felt left over from a project so we made some simple gnomes. I used the trusty pattern from All Year Round. You simply fold and sew and then stuff them with a bit of wool roving. We worked on our blanket stitch and needle felted the bottoms to make them flat. We also added a beard, because really, what is a gnome without a beard! That’s it. It took us 15 minutes, just long enough and we have some very handsome gnomes to add to our table.

Saturday was Apple Day for the Scouts here in Canada and my little Beaver Scout ventured out in the cold autumn morning to help raise money for the Scouts. We took the Farmer’s Market as our station and in the 6 degree (celcius) temperature, and he went to work. I have no pictures of this because it was cold and we were not really ready for the sudden drop in temperature and my hands were frozen and the toddler required constant snuggling and dancing in order to keep warm. He did great and had fun and we returned home and made hot chocolate to warm ourselves up.

In keeping with the theme of the day, I decided to do some apple crafts. I wanted to do something simple so the little and the big could both do it together without frustration from one or boredom from the other. The solution.... apple printing.

Easily set up with some long paper, plates of paint and of course, apples. We had a few that were destined for applesauce due to a few too many droppings from the toddler, but they were spared from their fiery death to be used for artistic purposes. We also did the story of The Little Red House. Actually, we told it a few times, as my little guys like a good story. After, we went to work.
 

pure cheek this kid...

They had fun stamping with the the “star” cut and the vertical cut and making pictures with the 2 of them combined. It was all good fun, and then of course it evolved as projects often do in this house. Toothpicks were called for and before I knew it there was a jellyfish....

a horse....

and a dog or deer or something, I can’t remember what the final verdict on this guy was...

All in all it was good fun for a blustery Saturday. We rounded out the day with a delicious Applesauce Cake. Apple Day was a success in our house, I hope it went just as well for the Scouts!