Crafty Kid Fun: Eric Carle Collages

Months and months ago, my kids and I decided to try a craft from one of our favorite books, Best of FamilyFun Crafts and Boredom Busters.

It was making our very own Eric Carle Collages. Eric Carle....wow, right? Illustrator of Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? (which has always been a favorite of my children) and author/illustrator of The Very Hungry Caterpillar as well as many many other books. I've always been fascinated with his technique. What a brilliant man!

I couldn't find the craft on FamilyFun's site to link to, but here's a video to help explain it....

We used white printer paper instead of tissue paper. But I'd like to try the tissue next time. It'd be fun to see how this changes the texture of the collage. And I also think it would be easier to layer pieces. I wonder if it would rip easily though. Especially with kids in on the process.

So, anyway....like I said, months ago we started this project. We gathered the paper and the paint and then we rummaged around the house for all sorts of things we could dip in paint and stamp on the paper. We drove trucks through paint and onto paper. We tried old spools. We stamped with the green plastic flower part of fake flowers. We found a star foam shape and tried that. We went wild with paint brushes, letting ourselves splatter the paint in every which way we wanted onto the paper. 

It was quite a bit of fun.

Then we let the paint dry. And we kept meaning to get back to this project. And then....the papers got moved to the basement. 

And forgotten. 

Until Tuesday night! I pulled them out and Sam, Zoe and I got busy (Weston was elsewhere and Emmett was in trouble, sadly, and had extra chores). 

Zoe is struggling to finish her dinner there in the
background so she could get in on the collaging fun. 

It took her awhile to choke down dinner though.
So, she had to finish her masterpiece the next morning.
And for some reason she likes to wear her brother's
old tie-dyed t-shirts for jammies. 

Sam had a great time making this rockin' awesome robot....

Apparently he is mad because another robot pushed him in the back. You think he could just get even with his Laser Eyes of Death....or maybe one of those handy buttons on the front there?

Zoe made a princess.....(you, of course, recognized what it was right away. It's not like I needed to tell you , right? Of course not.) 

And I couldn't be left out of the fun....

I probably should have been doing something useful like dishes or laundry or discovering the kitchen counters I lost 3 months ago....I know they're around here somewhere. I just can't seem to reach them because of the massive piles of junk in the way..... But who wants to tidy things? Nah, cutting paper and gluing is way more fun.

This was a great way to spend the evening with my kids (well, a couple of them anyways....).

I'm planning on putting the kid's pictures up on our museum wall (that's where our artwork goes) and I just might put mine there, too! 

Here's another video about Eric Carle and his fun artistic technique...

Fun Craft for Kids: Bead Buddies

(Alright, I'm moving some of my posts over from a previous blog that I abandoned....poor sad blog. This was originally published in November 2010) 


I had never heard of bead buddies until a few years ago when my oldest came home and showed me a cute lizard he made at his friend's house. A new craft? Well, we just had to try that. Since then my boys have made many many bead buddies. This last weekend we printed out some new patterns and the boys got busy with this fun craft again...



Sam (above) was VERY proud of himself. This was the first time he made bead buddies (mostly) by himself. He made up his own pattern for the snake and corn.



(Some of those still need to be tied off or have the strings trimmed.)




Want to try making some with your monkeys? We get most of our patterns from the Making Friend Site. These are great gifts kids can make themselves. We usually put keychain rings on ours and the kids pop them onto their backpacks. But they could also be ornaments (there are a lot of Christmas designs).

Tomorrow, while my sweet mom makes all the yummy food for Thanksgiving, I will be entetaining the horde of children with crafts. This will be one of them. Hopefully I'll keep them busy for...maybe 10-15 minutes? We can only dream.


ETA: Nope. The cousins didn't even try them last year. *sigh* Hmmmm....and I can't even remember what we did instead....maybe this year I'll trap all the kids at the craft table....Mwhahahahaha!

Recipes {Sidewalk Chalk & Caramel Biscuit Ring}

I love General Conference weekend. We have a lot of fun sitting around in our comfy clothes, listening to the brilliant speakers and laughing and spending time together between sessions.

Saturday evening, while Ryan was at the Priesthood session with our oldest son (it was Weston's first time going....pretty cool) the rest of the kids and I whipped up some Sidewalk Paint and colored our driveway. If you ever want to see what if feels like to have about ten children, do this activity! It draws the neighbor kids in like nothing else! 

Sidewalk Paint

1/2 cup cornstarch

1/2 cup cold water

6-8 drops of food coloring (or more....just be careful! Once I made a pink and added a lot of drops and we had a hard time getting the color off our cement!!) 

Mix up and start painting. I always have to tell my kids, "Not in the garage. Only on the sidewalk and driveway. And not on the house!" You'd think the fact that we made SIDEWALK paint would be enough of a clue. But, of course, it isn't.  

I stripped Molly down to her saggy diaper so she could get in on the fun. And, boy, did she have a good time!

Don't you love the paint-splattered legs and toes? By the end she had it literally from her head
to her toes! 

Emmett and Sam were having a fabulous time splattering the paint all over the place in dribbles and dots. 

I told them about the painter, Jackson Pollock and how he'd stand on a ladder while doing similar paintings. Well, this sounded like a marvelous idea, apparently, and they had to get as high as possible to try it out. 

Unfortunately this was only about a foot off the ground. 

As you can see, Molly was completely disobeying the "Only on the Sidewalk" rule. In fact, she took to applying a bit of "Sidewalk Paint Make-up" to anyone she could get to sit still long enough. 

This wasn't very long. 

During some of conference we played Bingo with these printables and M&Ms. 

The kids love that. And....mmmmm, I don't mind it myself. 

For breakfast on Sunday morning we had Caramel Biscuit Ring, which is one of our conference traditions. The kids love this and often request it for birthdays, too. And it's super easy. 

Caramel Biscuit Ring

2 cans pillsbury refridgerated biscuits

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup butter or margarine

2 Tablespoons water

Cut biscuits in half and roll into balls (this is a great thing for kids to do...I let them use my kitchen scissors and they love it) Melt butter in a small saucepan on the stove, add brown sugar and water. Let it come to a boil and then remove from heat. Drip some of the caramel sauce into the bottom of a round bundt pan. Layer half of biscuit balls and then half of caramel sauce. Repeat. Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes or until nice and golden brown. Invert onto a serving plate and let your family devour them!

Last night we all sat around and each shared something we enjoyed from the talks. I'm surprised by how much the children absorb. They truly are little sponges. 

Wonderful, messy, lovable sponges.

Some of my very favorite talks were (it's hard to choose though)...

Elaine S. Dalton's talk about the importance of fathers in their daughters lives. "The most important thing a father can do for his daughter is love her mother."  Love it. 

Elder Tad R. Callister's bold discussion of the Book of Mormon. Love his frank talk. Really great.

And, of course, I loved all of President Monson's talks. I loved hearing that Star Valley is going to have a temple. I have a lot of family up there. And I can't imagine how happy they were at that news. And I loved his talk about the power of prayer, especially the story about the the lost $5. What a wonderful and amazing man.

What a great weekend. 

Now back to the regularly scheduled program!

Sure you could eat the paint...

Yes. My kids like knowing they have the option of eating the paint should the desire to do so arise.

A week or so ago...you can figure it out. I hadn't figured out how to turn the date off on my son's camera, yet (my camera is being a beast.)....anyways, I made some Salt Paint for the kids while searching for something fun to do with the kids left at home.  My husband made a trip with our oldest son over to Tropic to help his father haul and bail (bale?) hay on the farm.  So, we needed to do something fun. 

Salt paint....yay!

1/4 cup salt
1/4 cup warm water
3 or 4 drops food coloring

Mix up with paint brushes in small containers or paper cups. I posted about this on the Cheap Cheap Chickadee blog, but I thought I'd share here, too.

This wee girl was not happy one bit until she was part of the action. 

And, yep, she did indeed try eating the paint. 

Mmmmm, salty.  I don't think she cared for it much.  But, of course, this did not stop her from trying to eat more of it.  Maybe I should make a yummy paint sometime, eh?  Like, pudding paint? Mmmmm, that could be good.

Well, the fun did not stop with the painting.  Oh, no.  We also made homemade pop-tarts. 

And a pop-tart is not a pop-tart unless there are copious amounts of sprinkles, right?

You can find multiple recipes for these on-line.  We used this one.  It was pretty good.  I like the idea of mixing the cornstarch into the jam to make it less runny.  That worked really well.

And there you have it. A sweet & salty day with us.

Funday Monday: It takes a village...

Funday Monday Idea #6: Design your own paper bag village

Emmett was in charge of Family Night and he wanted to make a paper bag village.  He found the idea in a Family Fun Craft book.  I tried to find it on their site but couldn't.  But it's a pretty simple...you color lunch sacks (or a big paper sack cute down a bit like my fancy shmancy hotel up above) to look like buildings.  Then you take another bag, stuff with crumpled newspaper and then put your "building" sack around it.  Easy, right?

We had a great time designing our village.  The kids loved choosing a store or place to create...

 We have a toy store...

A grocery store topped by some colorful apartments...

A school...

A fire station, bakery (according to Zoe) and a book store...

A sporting goods store from my handsome cowboy (with a little help from Molly)...

And even a movie theatre.  Let's check out what's playing....

Oh, wow. Look at that! My books have been made into movies?!  Score!  heh heh.

The kids have big plans for this village.  Lego men will be visiting soon.  And after a bit, when they're tired of their town and have squeezed all the play out of it, they're planning on unleashing Molly-zilla on it.

I have got to see that.   

Linking up to...

Funday Monday: Take a Rock Walk

We had the missionaries over for dinner last night (I belong to this church) and my husband got to be their chauffeur for the evening so the rest of us decided we needed something fun to do.  We talked over our options and decided to do a craft. 

So, we gathered up some plastic bags, walked to a big empty lot nearby criss crossed with bike paths and collected a bunch of rocks. 

Zoe had a great time filling her bag.  She said, "Here is a little one! And another little one! And another little one!" Yep.  She likes little things. 

But even little rocks start to get heavy after awhile.  And they can make a hole in your bag when you get too many!

We had great fun chatting and laughing.  The boys pretended to ride imaginary bikes on the bike paths.  heh heh. I have the funniest kids. 

Back at home we pulled out our crafting tablecloth, grabbed a bunch of paint and brushes, unloaded our rocks on the table and set to work. 

Think we have enough rocks? Hmmmmm, I don't know...

Sam made a turtle who has become his little pet. And a ghost and an ice cream cone and an egg. 

Emmett made a chair and table and also his name.

Zoe made a lot of little faces. 

Weston started on a field full of a herd of cows.

I made some wee cute strawberries (snagged the idea from google images). 

We put the rocks together with a hot glue gun, but it doesn't work very well.  I'm going to try using E6000 glue.  I have some of it...somewhere.  I might have to face The Pit of Despair (otherwise known as my craft room) to find it.

Sam's turtle got hungry....