Toddler Group Tuesday - Melted Snowmen

We actually had to cancel Toddler Group this week because of the snow. The ground was pretty icy especially on the small side roads through the village, and we didn't want to encourage any accidents. A few of our older volunteers felt a lot happier not having to drive to the hall, and in this sort of weather we are often very quiet anyway because people are not that happy to venture out in the yucky conditions, and with quite a few schools closed, some would have older children at home too.

But, I can show you what we got up to last week at the craft table (having been entirely rubbish and not done my job properly and shown you last week!). We made melted snowman pictures.

To make your own you will need:

- A sheet of coloured paper
- Some white paper
- Glue
- Scissors
- Cotton wool
- A pipe cleaner
- Black card
- Silver glitter
- Orange and red paper or card
- Snowflake confetti

First of all cut a random wiggly blob shape out of the white paper and glue onto you sheet of coloured paper. This is your snowman's melted body.
Glue a ball of cotton wool anywhere you like onto the white paper shape. This is your snowman's head.
Cut a black circle big enough to cover the top of your snowman's head, and a small rectangle of black card that can be rolled to form the top of the hat. Glue the rolled black card to the black circle and allow to dry (we had these ready prepared for our toddlers)
Glue the hat to the top of your snowman's head.

Wrap the pipe cleaner around the snowman's neck and twist at the front to form the scarf.
Cut some small circles from the black card and glue in place as eyes and buttons.
Cut an orange triangle and a red crescent shape from the paper/card and glue in place for a carrot nose and a mouth.
Add glue and glitter where you see fit, and decorate the rest of the coloured paper base sheet with confetti snowflakes.

All finished!

And here's the Smaller Person's finished snowman (stuck on the fridge!)

You can see, his snowman has melted so much, his face has slipped down onto his body!

You could also gather some small twigs from outside and glue to the melted body for arms. Your snowmen could take any form you like, so perhaps it is a snow-woman? You could make a family of melted snowmen.  You could even take ti further and create a little 3D scene next to an iced over pond made with tinfoil or metallic card cur to shape. Melted snowman can also turn up on the top of your cakes and biscuits: use icing as the melted body, a white marshmallow for the head, liquorice laces for the scarf and mouth, biscuits or wafers with sweets to form the hat, and other sweets or icing for the features and buttons. Yummy! Again, the larger scene or family of snowmen could be made on a larger cake.

Christmas OU Crafter Swap

I'm part of a facebook group that is full of nothing but OU students who like to craft. It's a great place to show off what we're making, discuss crafts, techniques and materials and help each other out if we're getting stuck on something (there's been a fair bit of first time crochet going on over there) and it's also just a nice virtual place to socialise with people who have things in common with you.

A couple of people on there got together to arrange a Christmas Swap. Strictly handmade, but no restrictions on what, how or colours etc. Mine arrived and is patiently waiting in a hiding place for me to open on Christmas morning, yay! I can't wait to find out what someone has made especially for little old me.

I'm hoping that my handmade offering is with it's new owner by now. I'm fairly certain that none of the OU crafters come and read this blog, so I think I'm safe to show you what I've sent.

I crocheted a simple soft white cowl in a mock moss stitch with an eyelet edge.I crocheted two different style of snowflakes and layered them as a decoration.

I also made a set of three tree decorations from calico. They are heart shaped and also have a snow theme: 'Frosty the Snowman', 'Treetops Glistening' and 'Let it Snow'. The words on each of the decorations are made using mini lettering stamps and some black fabric ink. Each heart is hung by a ribbon loop fastened to the top of the heart with a button.

Frosty is made using buttons and a small piece of dark brown felt.

The snowflake is embroidered on top of a circle of white felt, and then beaded with silvery white bugle beads at the centre.

The tree is embroidered with a few strands of brown embroidery floss. The thicker parts of the tree are chain stitch and the thinner branches are back stitched.

Each has an added shimmer from some iridescent glitter glue added in a few spots on the main image.

I copied my Frosty the snowman for a couple of gift tags and a matching card. The card base for each is plain white card, then I have cut some red patterned paper, mounted it onto green sugar paper for a thin border, and fixed my Frosty to the centre of the red with some strong glue.

I hope she likes what I've sent. I definitely enjoyed making them. I'm already making another cowl as another Christmas gift for someone!

Toddler Group Tuesday - Cone Santas

This week at toddler group we made Santa models with a cone shape.

To make your own you will need:
- Plain paper in festive colours
- Glue
- Scissors
- Cotton wool
- Glitter (red, gold, green, silver)
- Skin tone paper/card
- Pen
- Foil confetti/craft pom pom/any other decoration you would like

To begin with you need to make your cone base. Draw a semi circle on your plain festive coloured paper. We used green and pink sugar paper for ours (pink? I know, not really festive, but it almost looks like faded red in the right light!)
Cut the semi circle out and roll the sides round on each other to form a cone, then glue in place.
Cut a small circle from the skin coloured paper/card, then using a pen draw a little face. I drew 3 different designs for toddler group today so that the children had a choice.

Glue your face onto the cone, close to the top, but leaving enough of the point to act as the hat.
Glue cotton wool to the tip of the cone, around the cone above the face for the hat edge, around the sides and bottom of the face for the beard, down the centre front for the the fur coat trim and a tiny little bit on the face for a moustache.
Glue you decorations on where you like and draw patterns with glue,then sprinkle with glitter.

All finished!

And this little guy is the Smaller Person's creation.

You could add sting to the top of the cone so that you can hang it, you could make a larger version using card as the base, and attaching some elastic for a chin strap so that you make a Christmas party hat. for extra detail you could cut some little mitten shapes out of coloured paper, stick them on and trim the cuff with  more cotton wool (I was a bit too short on time to cut out the little gloves this time). This would also work for Mrs Claus, Elves, Reindeer, Angels, and Snowmen. You could even make up an entire Nativity scene!

Toddler Group Tuesday - Gingerbread Christmas Cards

Christmas is getting closer and closer by the day (sorry if you hate being reminded!) especially now that we are officially in December!

This week we've been make some lovely gingerbread stamped cards.

To make your own gingerbread cards you will need:
- Plain card in festive colours or white
- Gingerbread coloured paint
- Sponge
- Christmas Cookie cutters
- Gold glitter
- White ric rac or yarn
- Coloured sequins
- Pen
- Scissors
- Red/green paper
- Metallic pen

First fold your card in half to form your card base.
Take your chosen cookie cutter and place it on the sponge. Drawn around the shape with your pen, then cut out. This creates your own Christmas sponge stamp.(If you're lucky enough to have christmas stamp shapes that are big enough, you can skip this step!)
Using your Christmas stamp and the gingerbread coloured paint, stamp your shape onto your card.
Whilst the paint is still wet, stick your white yarn/ric rac as icing, and your sequins as sweets. The sprinkle all over with glitter for some festive sparkle!

Cut a strip of red or green paper (I cut ours in a curved shape) and write your message in metallic paper then glue onto your card to finish.

All done!

Here's the Smaller Person's finished Gingerbread Snowman :)

This works well with any Christmas shape, but especially well with Gingerbread man shapes. Ours today were Christmas Trees, Bells, Snowmen and Angels. You could make your own gingerbread stamped garland in the same way, by cutting your Gingerbread creation out once they are dry, punching holes along the top and threading on a ribbon to hang up. You could cut out 2 of the same stamped shape and sandwich a loop of ribbon between them to make a double sided hanging tree decoration. Make one side plain, and you have a lovely gingerbread gift tag. You can also stamp your gingerbread shapes onto plain paper gift bags or repeatedly onto larger sheets of paper for wrapping. There are so many things you could do!

Big Sister Card

I almost forgot to show the little card I made for a new big sister. (I showed the gifts I made in a previous blog post)

It's just a simple pink card blank with a white silhouette stuck on. The silhouette is of two little sisters cut out of self-adhesive glitter paper. I hand sketched the silhouette onto plain paper after looking for ideas on google images, then I transferred the outline to the glitter paper, and carefully cut it out. Then it was just the simple task of peeling the backing and sticking it in place.

The new big sister is only a tiny little dot herself (she's 22 months old - or thereabouts), and is friends with the Smaller Person. We think she'll make a great big sister (she already knows how to handle all her little guy friends!)

Princess Birthday Invitations

It doesn't seem that long ago that we were organising the Smaller Person's Muppet Rainbow Party, and yet here we are again, this time planning for the Small Person's 7th birthday party.

She has requested a Princess Party, and I guess I'm secretly pleased. I'm not big on lots of girly things (the difficulty in getting any clothes in anything other than pink up until she was around three drove me nuts!), but I'm thinking that this might be the last opportunity for something girly and not too grown up. 7 is a proper school girl age, my little baby is stretching out and growing up before my eyes, and the sulky teenage years seem so very much closer. To be able to do something so very 'little girl' like for her birthday, seems like a very lucky thing for me to be part of :)

We've kept it smaller this year so that we can hold it in our tiny shoe box house. I made the invitations this week, and the Small Person took them with her to school this last Friday.

I pre-stained the paper with tea and let it dry. I think I would iron the paper with a cool iron if I did this again, because although I like the crumpled look, it didn't like going through the printer.

The invitations reads:

HRH Princess Alexandra requests the pleasure of the company of

'PRINCESS NAME' (WRITTEN IN METALLIC SILVER MARKER )

To celebrate her 7^th birthday

On Sunday 9^th December

Please arrange for your coachmen to drop you off at 1pm.

Carriages should return to collect you at 5.30pm

Please wear your finest royal robes (Princess fancy dress or best party dress)

Unfortunately, as the castle is being redecorated, we will have to make do with the servants quarters located at:

[our address]

At 2pm we will make our way to The Oak for a Royal Banquet

(Please select dinner from accompanying menu and include choice in your reply)

After  dinner, we will return to for a private royal screening of The Brave.

Please RSVP to the housekeeper, Vicky, and the butler, Rob, in writing, or on [my number] by Friday 30^th November.

We have booked a table at The Oak pub and restaurant located down the road from our house (so no clean up or food preparation) and have asked that children choose in advance from a selection from The Oak's children's menu. (No messing around with decisions at the restaurant, no major waiting for food).

What do you think? Does dinner sound good?

The invitations are nice and simple, with the menu choices located at the bottom of the page. After printing on the stained paper, I have then used some gold peel-offs to decorate the corners and a strip of gold peel off to separate the main invitation from the menu.

The papers have then been rolled and tied with a blue satin ribbon (the Small Person's choice) to form a lovely little scroll.

Now, we just have to wait for the replies. More information will follow on the party planning and the party itself. Not long now!

Happy Birthday Steph

It was my sister's birthday yesterday, and as you might have seen from other posts, she enjoys baking, particularly cupcakes.

For her birthday I put together a little cupcake kit for her:

The basket/container I crocheted from string. The book is 10,000 Cupcakes which has all different ideas for the cake, the topping and the decor, and they're printed on flip sections of the book so you can flick the different parts over to make different combinations.

I bought two different lots of cupcake cases from IKEA, and I bought some square and some heart shaped silicone baking cases too. There is also a mini silicone baking tray and some small cutters )Circle, Heart and Star). The final thing I bought was a jar of sprinkles.

I made three seperate kinds of cake toppers (5 of each).

Red hearts: These are simply red heart beads that I glued on to cocktail sticks. (use a strongish glue on the end of the stick and slide the bead onto the glued part.)

Double sided - different colours on each side.

Little Houses: These are made from cut outs from a sheet of scrapbook paper. I cut 10 little houses out of the sheet, glued the wrong side of one house, then sandwiched the cocktail stick between the glued house and another house. You have to press well to make sure there are no air bubbles and don't use too much glue because it will seap out the sides. Scrapbook paper is good for this because it is a heavier weight and does not wrinkle or curl when glued. Once they were dry, I trimmed any overhangs and made sure all the edges were matched up well. (I thought these would be nice if she makes some cupcakes as a housewarming gift any time).

Little bows and bells: These were a bit more fiddly. I used a thin satin ribbon to tie a small bow at the top of each cocktail stick. Using a needle and some red thread, I stitched a tiny silver craft bell to the bottom of the bow. This holds the bow firm because you stitch through the knot, and it adds an extra bit of decor with the shiny bell. To finish them off, I glued a round red bead to the top of the cocktail stick in the same way I made the red heart toppers. (These remind me of Christmas with the little jingle bells  - I could just imagine them topping some lovely white iced, red velvet cupcakes. Yummy!)

Toddler Group Tuesday - Autumn Trees

This week at toddler group we've created some mini autumn masterpieces using finger-painting and collage.

To make these autumn trees you will need:
- paint the colour of autumn leaves (think red, orange, yellow, brown, gold, or any inbetween shades)
- a sheet of A4 paper or card (we've used blue sugar paper because the autumn colours contrast really well with the blue)
- brown collage pieces
- glue
- gold glitter
- a pen or pencil

Begin by drawing the shape of your tree trunk and branches. This was pre-done for our toddlers.
Next, glue your own collage pieces all over the shape you have drawn.
Using your fingers and the coloured paint, print fingerprint 'leaves' all over the top of the tree.
Whilst the fingerprint leaves are still wet, sprinkle with glitter for a lovely autumn shimmer.

Alternatives for the colours:

• Substitute the autumn colour paint for silver paint or iridescent glitter glue for a frosty tree - include some snowflake confetti on your background and use a little white or silver glitter.
• Switch the autumn colours for fresh greens and use buttons or pom poms for fruit.
• Cover the branches in scrunched up tissue paper 'blossoms' in shades of pink and peach. (we've done thi a few time in the past)
• If you have time, you could make a tree picture for each season to make a larger piece of art, or even to use on a calendar for 2013.

Alternatives for the trunk:

• One large brown hand print with the fingers forming branches
• Drawing around your hand and arm on brown paper/card/fabric/foam etc and cutting it out to stick on
• Cutting your tree shape from some textured material such as corrugated card and printing the shape and texture onto your tree picture with brown paint.

This is the Smaller Person with his masterpiece (he was more interested in the paint and glitter). He's so proud that he can't keep still!

So here's his masterpiece in a little less blurry form :)

A Return to Regular Scheduling - Toddler Group Tuesday

This day has crept up on me pretty fast. One minute I was all ready for a jam-packed Summer Holiday of fun with my Small People, the next thing I know, I'm packing the Small Person off on the school bus to her new Year 2 teacher with newly bought and labelled uniform.

She had a great day and seems to like her new teacher (which is great, because her last teacher is hard to top!). She's already done all of her homework and practiced her spellings.

She also went to her first class with Baginton Swimming Club after tea. An hour long session at the pool she has her regular lessons at. The bonus is, she gets to play for the last 10-15 minutes on all of the huge floats. She thought she looked like she was on a boat, I think she looked more like a big smiley frog on a lily pad :)

With a return to our term time routine, we also had our fisrt day back at Toddler Group today. As expected, it was quiet, it always is for the first couple of weeks back whilst people get back into their own term time routines.

I've drawn up an equipment rota for this school year so that everything gets a fair airing! The sand table even had an outing today.

For crafts we made lily collages with tissue paper. This is not my own original idea, but came from a DK Children's Art book that the Small Person borrowed from the library.

You will need:
- a sheet of white paper
- glue
- tissue paper in light blue, dark blue, pink, white, lilac and green

You could try the same technique with different flower types, for example, a field of poppies, bluebell woods, daisies and dandelions in the grass etc.

Quick Stamped Cards

I'm just popping in quickly to show you these two cards I made this week.

The first one is an acceptance card for a wedding that Mr Bogert and I have been invited to in August.

I have used a small white textured square card blank. I have wrapped a wide burgundy satin ribbon horizontally across the centre of the card, and taped the edges on the inside. Next, I stamped a little church stamp onto some plain white card using black ink, sprinkled with black sparkly embossing powder and heated to set it. (You can't really see the sparkle or raised edges of the print in this photograph). If you can't quite make it out, the stamp says 'And they lived happily ever after'. I mounted the stamped image onto silver card, and then fixed this over the ribbon using little foam pads to raise it off the surface of the card. I used the same 'studio g' alphabet stamps and black ink as the Fathers' Day cards to spell out the word 'Acceptance', and then I used some of the leftover mirror mosaics from the Small Person's crown decorating a few weeks ago.

I finished the inside off with a piece of patterned paper that came free with a magazine. This covers the taped ends of the ribbon.

The second card is a New Baby Girl card for a friend. I have used the same type of card blank as the acceptance above, and stamped it with a large baby bib stamp in silver. I sprinkled white glitter embossing powder over and heated to set (again, you can't see it very well in this image). I then punched two small holes close together at the neck of the bib. Through this a threaded a thin pale pink satin ribbon (from the inside of the card). I tied the ribbon in a simple bow and trimmed the ends so that they don't overlap the edge of the bib print.

I finished the inside with another piece of free paper. This covers the holes where the ribbon is threaded through. I also stamped 'Congratulations on your New Baby' in black ink on the message side of the card.

These were so simple, quick and even a little bit fun to make!