Using Photos to Make Cards

 

Using photos to make cards is probably one of the easiest and nicest ways to make a special card for somebody.

I really enjoy photographing natural elements and both my Mom and Mom-in-law's gardens offer plenty of opportunity to do this. To make a special and very personal collection of cards for each Mom, I used store-bought craft cards and I chose a selection of favourite photographs taken in their gardens. They both loved it. :)

More card making ideas:

Squeezy art cards - a fun arty way to make cards and Using your children's art to make cards.

S is for The Very Busy Spider

When I planned these "S" activities, I completely forgot about this post in my archives. Do go have a look if you want some more spider ideas. :)

Do you know the book The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle? It's a great book with lovely illustrations.  In the hard cover version, the spider web is raised, so it's fun to feel how it gets bigger and bigger in the story. It's a very simple story line, so it's an ideal book for a young child. 

I've seen so many lollipop spiders on the internet and this inspired our very busy spider lollipop . For the head you need one green pipe cleaner. For the legs cut two orange pipe cleaners in half. Simply wrap the pipe cleaners around the lollipop stick to make the spider.  The eyes and mouth were cut out from felt and glued on.

Our very busy spider also got her own real life web. Little one punched some holes in a paper plate and was then supposed to thread the string through the holes to make the web. I was told, however,  quite emphatically, that he doesn't like threading, so I did end up doing it myself. If you can get your little one to do the threading, it's really a great fine motor activity. 

We also found some Very Busy Spider activities at Making Learning Fun.

I thought it would be fun to build a "S'" with little spiders. The "S" we used was printed from Confessions of a Homeschooler. If you go to this link and look for a-z lowercase worksheets, you will find all the letters of the alphabet ready to print. Thank you Heather!

Our last bit of spider fun was a small spider building station (Idea via Fantastic Fun and Learning). To make the play dough, I used my favourite recipe - no stove required! Here it is:

1 cup flour
2 Tbs cream of tarter
1 Tbs vegetable oil
1/2 cup of granulated salt

Add some essence for a nice aroma (orange, almond, peppermint)

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and then add a cup of boiling water. Stir until combined and turn it out onto a floured board and knead until smooth. Colour can be added to the boiling water or at the kneading stage. Just a tip - wear gloves when kneading - the food colouring does stain your skin and it isn't very easy to clean off. Store your dough in an airtight container. 

To make black play dough, I combined blue, green and red food colouring. I kept adding and mixing it until I was happy with the colour. 

Here are some more fun Spider crafts on the blog:

Bottle Top Crafts

Spider Party

Till next time, have fun.

PS. Linking to The Weekly Kids Co-Op, For the Kids Fridays @ Sun Scholars and Kids Activities Blog.