tutorials

Last year, Julien and I made a piggy bank for him out of paper mache. It was, of course, in the shape of a pig. This year, I decided it was time for Noah to have one of his very own as well. Then I decided it was a great gift for two of our favourite 5 year olds. So, armed with a Sunday edition of the newspaper and a glue recipe from an old issue of Living Crafts magazine, we set to work.

There is nothing particularly special on how we did this and most people have done paper mache work in school at some point, but if you are like me and have never really done it before, you can google it and there are lots of glue recipes, instructions, and helpful tips to get you going in the right direction. We made our basic body shape using a balloon that was only partially blown up. We put a good base layer down before adding legs and snout to make sure we had something to attach said legs and snout to.
 

Speaking of legs and snout, we used a plastic egg carton in which we cut apart the little cups. They work perfectly for the shape and size. Just make sure you put enough layers on them so the plastic doesn’t show through anywhere.

Next you need ears, and for that I just took a strip of paper and played with it until I got the look I wanted. After they were added, we did another good layer all over again just to make sure they were solid. No one wants a pig that falls apart or worse yet, wears through and looses all your money!

The last thing to add is a tail. For this I just sandwiched a twist tie between some of the newspaper, then coated it with glue, folded it up length wise and then wrapped it around my finger to give it its twisty shape. Attach it with a few strips of paper and there you have it.

Ours took about 4 days to dry completely but it all depends on weather and humidity and all that. Expect it to take at least 3-4 days. After they are completely dry, you can paint them. Now I just let the kiddos do whatever they want with them, but if you want them to be fancy, I would suggest putting a base coat or two to help hide the newsprint underneath.

As I said, these are their pigs and they decide how they are painted so we didn’t put a base coat on. These are quite big and the painting also took a few days to do. They came back to it when they felt like it and if your children are like mine, they are a bit Van Gogh-ish with the paint so that will also factor into drying times. Last thing to do is to cut a slot in the top to put your money into.

And there you have it, your very own “money pig”.  Simple, easy and a fun way to clean up all that loose change around your house!

Last week we finally got around to making paper. I had borrowed the paper making kit from a friend and it has been sitting here for a week or two now. J was very excited about it but I think that was because we got to use the blender and really, the promise of using an electrical appliance goes a long way for a kid of 5.

It was relatively easy. We had just shredded a bunch of old paper over the weekend so we used that for our pulp. (Extra points there for recycling!) Pretty much you puree paper and water to make a pulp and then pour it in the screen box that sits in water. This was a big hit.
 

The sensory aspect of this was addictive for both boys. It was thick and goopy and very weird and they both loved playing in it. Next you strain it and then begin pressing.

This was less fun as it was real work but they both did a nice job getting the water out. J decided he wanted to add some flowers and lavender to make it smell nice so we had picked up some things from our local health food store earlier to use. We should have put it in during the initial process, but it worked out in the end, and it did smell really nice. It looked pretty too.

The end result? It was a bit too thick. I think we used a bit too much paper for the size of the screen, but it was a good learning lesson. We are going to make some more this week and hopefully make some cards out of it to give as gifts for Christmas. Both boys had fun and it didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would. Overall, a good project and once again we spent the day with our hands in warm water. Perhaps we should just do warm water based projects all winter to prevent any illnesses!

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.

One of our favorite projects here at our house involves little more than a shallow plate of milk, some food colouring, and dish soap. The experiment can be found all over the Internet but I found it one night while stumbling. Yes a useless activity, but hey, sometimes you can find some good stuff! I love how it is a teaching thing, but my kids just think it is a fun project. They can tell you how it works and why, but really they just think it is cool and that is the best kind of learning.
Here is what you do.

You get a shallow plate or tray and fill it with whole milk. No using skim or 1% here, you need the fat to create the surface tension.
Next place a fairly good pool of food colouring in the middle, close but not touching. (Or at least try not to touch too much.)
 

Then we use a q-tip soaked in dish soap because it is easier for little hands to control as opposed to the drops that is recommended in the video I found here.
Hold the q-tip in the milk for a few seconds and then watch the magic.

Seriously, my little guys can watch this for an hour. They keep asking for clean milk to do it again. The reaction lasts for quite a while and it is fun to see what new patterns erupt over time. Why the heck didn’t my science teacher use this to teach us about surface tension? This I would have remembered.