Christmas Cards 2014

 

 

I love the idea that we make our own cards. The boys aren't always as keen as I am. :)

This year we went for something more arty looking. 

Long time ago, we made our own Eric Carle style paper. To see what I mean, you can read this post. There was still lots left over over in the craft cupboard and it came in very handy for the idea I had.

    So to make these, we used our own handmade paper. We cut out the background scene and the trees. We then used a punch (Little One loved doing this) to make the decorations and the snow. We had a small production line going on the dining room table, with each of us doing a different "job". 

I love how they turned out. 

Till next time, enjoy this wonderful season. 

Design your own T-Shirt

I had seen this idea in our local ideas magazine and have always wanted to try it.

I found a fairly easy and cool picture to copy, a Star Wars Clone Trooper, via the  Coloring Pages for Kids website and printed it out. I used an inexpensive white T-shirt and a fabric marker/pen,
which is available at most craft stores. 

A white T-shirt is the best way to go if you are going to trace a design and not do it free-hand. Remember to place a thick piece of cardboard into the T-shirt and underneath the picture you are copying, otherwise the pen will go right through and make marks on the back of the T. You also need a fairly steady hand and good light.

Little One likes it!

If you are wanting more inspiration, I'm posting almost daily on Instagram. I would love for you to follow along.
http://instagram.com/loveandlollipops/

Till next time.

Making Art for your Child's Room

It's been almost a year since we moved to Pretoria, but I wanted to share this post with you, as old as it is. Before moving out of our home last year, I did many things to fix up the house. One of those chores was to finalise a nice wall of art in Little One's room. His room was definitely one of my favourites in the house. The light in this room was beautiful and of course, who can resist children's decor?

So using the art work from free printable packs, provided by the wonderful blogs Homeschool Creations and 1+1+1=1, as well as some other ideas, I made all the art for the wall myself.

  

One very easy idea is to cut out the first letter of your child's name from black craft paper and then using Tipp-Ex or white paint, turn it into a road. Stick on some toy cars, preferably plastic ones if you can find them, with a nice strong glue. I used light plastic cars from a popular old game. I took the glass out of the frame, so that I could stick the cars directly onto the cardboard. The poster next to the "S", as well as the two yellow framed pictures, were made from the art work in the printable packs, as mentioned above.

In this picture below you can see how I created the Bus and Taxi. Adding photo faces of our family members made it fun and personal. 

I love how it turned out and Little One and I spent some great creative time sitting at that little white table.

I also love that it didn't cost lots of money to make a great wall of art. 

Do you have some personal walls of art in your home?


PS. Here's a link to all the other posts I've written about homemade wall art - Wall Art Ideas. Just in case you like the topic. :)

U is for Umbrella

Another in my "I'm-very-behind" alphabet series.

In South Africa our children learn the phonetic pronounciation of a letter, so "u" as in "umbrella", not "u" as in "unicorn". 

  At the blog 3 dinosaurs you can download some super alphabet printable packs. I used this great picture of an umbrella to do our first craft. Little One had to decorate the umbrella with fingerprints. 

(The link to this printable is not working at the moment. I will try to fix it.)

This cute umbrella cupcake idea comes from a Woman's Value magazine party supplement, April 2004. In their version, they used blue and cream icing (half/half) to represent the sand and the beach. I went the easy route - my cupcakes came from Pick n Pay. :)

"If all the raindrops were Smarties and Jelly Tots, Oh what a rain that would be! "

Using bendy straws and paper cupcake liners, Little One created some cute umbrellas. And the rain... well that was Smarties and Jelly Tots of course.

As you can tell in that last picture, the sweetie rain went down a treat. You think he may have some in his mouth? :)

Till next time, have fun.

C is for Car

Earlier this year I kind of promised you an alphabet series. One should never promise such things. The year has raced on and Little One will be going into his last term of the school year tomorrow. The spring holidays are over, sniff, sniff. On the upside, it's count down to the Christmas holidays. 

I have shared these in the series so far:

A is for Astronaut

O is for Octopus

S is for The Very Busy Spider

I'm not very far, am I.  

Let's see if I can catch up a bit.

Little One won an awesome prize at his school carnival and this week we went down to the Zwartkops Race Track and both boys got the opportunity to race around the track with racing driver George Smallberger. It was such a cool afternoon.

Perfect timing for this post. So here I share not only our car activities, but also some pictures of our afternoon.

This cute letter "c" idea is from this post.

These are inspired by these Teddy Racing Cars. 

(I used small Bar Ones, Smarties and some icing.)

A chocolate traffic light treat, or robot, as we call them here in South Africa. 

(Kit Kat, small Bar Ones, Smarties and icing.)

Both my boys (aged 6 and 12) loved creating this car banner for the bookshelf.

If you children love drawing, creating a banner is a great boredom buster.

 

Little One in the car, all ready to go. 

  

Those little fingers make me smile. 

 Can you spot him?

Another alphabet post coming up soon. 

Till next time. 

Ten Super Bottle Top Crafts

My passion for bottle tops has been a longstanding one (sounds a bit weird I know), but somehow on this blogging journey, I was introduced to the concept of these being a creative tool and I was changed. I could never throw them away again. In fact, when we relocated up country earlier this year, my husband had to convince me that I could not allocate precious moving boxes to my collection (my big collection) of recycling. Bottle tops, milk bottles, egg cartons - I keep these!  Hehe, okay, perhaps I am a bit strange. Please don't unsubscribe. :)

Today's post is a little trip down memory lane, sharing some of my favourite bottle top creations from the past few years with you and a new one! 

1. I think my very first inspiration for bottle top crafts came via the lovely Silly Eagle Books blog. Vanessa created some wonderful bottle top animals. Pop on over to this post (Bottle Top Animals) to also see a caterpillar, dog, cat, bird, bunny and spider.

2. A pretty "you are the apple of my eye" card. 

 

3. More wonderful inspiration came from the very creative Amanda from Crafts by Amanda. I loved and made her bottle top ladybirds and ladybird jar. (Bottle Top Ladybirds and Jar)

4. I enjoyed making these bats with Little One. They were a great fine motor activity too. They looked spooky and cool when put up on his cupboard door. (Bottle Top Bats)

5. Bottle tops and stickers make for great stamps. Add play dough and you have a fun activity for a little one. And a cute gift! You could also use these to do some printing of course. (Bottle Top Stamps)

6. Bottle tops, glue and sequence make for some fun easy art. 
(Bottle Top Art)

  7. Who doesn't like Dr. Seuss? This bottle top town was Seuss-inspired. (Seussville Bottle Top Town)

8. A fun Christmas Craft... 82 days and counting down... bottle top snowmen. (Bottle Top Snowmen)

9. Here's a great craft to do at a girl's birthday party. Make some designer miniature cakes using bottle tops,  play dough and pretty beads. (Designer Bottle Top Cakes)

  10. And last, but not least, a new bottle top craft for you, croaked up recently and not shared before. I give you... Bottle Top Frogs! Easy to make, by simply adding pom poms and googly eyes to bottle tops (the star of this show).  

My all time favourite bottle top picture must be the one at the top of this post.  Those were bottle top cards I made some time back for a children's home party. 

PS. And that's not all folks! If you click on the "Bottle Tops" tag in the sidebar of the blog, you will find even more cute bottle top crafts. (yes, more I tell you!)

Till next time. 

Instagram

I'm on Instagram now, if you would like to follow. I've been there for a short while, so there's a bit to look at. Sometimes I share a Love and Lollipops post, but I also share other ideas that I haven't blogged about. 

You can find me here:

http://instagram.com/loveandlollipops

If you do follow me over there, please say "hi". I'll "hi" back!

Till next time.

14 of the best Shaving Cream activities ever!

I cream, You cream, We all love Shaving cream! 

(sorry, couldn't help myself) :)

What can you get up to with Shaving cream? Well, it's definitely more than just for shaving. Before writing this post,  I had not let my kids play enough with this stuff , so after finding two big cans for under R35 at Discem Pharmacy, I grabbed them (with a smile) and came home ready for some shaving cream fun. And you get the benefit of me having scoured the web for the best ideas and sharing some of them here.

But first off, here's a couple of quick and easy activities we got up to.

1. Shaving cream and paint play. I gave Little One a brush and water and told him to wet the water colours and to mix it into the shaving cream. He loved it! You could use tempera or acrylic paints too.

2. Shaving cream, toy cars and a spray bottle of water to wash them off. The full post is here. We did this back in 2012. (If I had a little girl, I'd still do this, but substitute the cars for small plastic bath toys or dolls perhaps?)

3. Earlier this year we made shaving cream puffy paint to create a lunar landscape. The full post is here.

4. Ocean in a bag. I saw this neat idea over at Pink and Green Mama and adapted it a bit. Take a big zip lock bag, fill it with shaving cream, some blue food colouring and add some sea-themed stickers. Seal the bag and let your kiddo explore. I loved how the shaving cream in the bag felt... I couldn't help but play with it too. I think this is a great activity for a younger child and if you added different colours, you would get a lovely rainbow effect. We'll try that next time.

5. Shaving cream in the bath is a blast. I purchased a nice old-fashioned razor (no blade) from Checkers and Little One shaved just like Dad - I loved his expressions.

We are lucky enough to have a mirror running the length of the bath, so Little One can smear shaving cream all over and use it as a canvas to draw and do letter practice. If you don't have a mirror, smearing it onto the bath sides can work just as well.

6. Shaving Cream Desert. Another great bath activity, although no bath required. Provide silicone cup cake holders, shaving cream and sparkly beads and some spoons. Let the fun begin. (Honestly, not a hit with my Little One, but I think that little girls would love this.)

Here are some other wonderful ideas I haven't tried - yet!

Shaving Cream Painting (Mom it Forward)

Shaving Cream Balloons - you read right! (Aluminum Foiled)

Erupting Sensory Shaving Cream Snow (Growing a Jeweled Rose)

Shimmery Shaving Cream Paint Recipe (Growing a Jeweled Rose)

Shaving Cream Dough (Growing a Jeweled Rose)

Make Indoor Snowmen (Modern Parents Messy Kids)
Teaching spreading skills with shaving-cream and foam blocks (Happy Hooligans)

And last, but not least, Shaving Cream Bath Paint (Meet the Dubiens). This last idea looks fantastic and I'm dying to try it, BUT I'm not brave enough to use food colours in the bath. What if it stains? Those who've tried it, claim it doesn't and perhaps it depends on what type of food colouring you use. Of course you can purchase coloured shaving foam, so that's perhaps the "safer" alternative.

And if after all this, you are actually really worried about letting your kiddos play with shaving cream, here's the infamous shaving cream article (a lengthy read). 

I know this goes without saying, but Shaving Cream should not be eaten, so please don't leave your very little person alone with it. 

Till next time, have some super shaving cream fun! 

Please come back and tell me what you got up to.