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. :)

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.

Paint Chip Robots

I have been very inspired by the many crafty uses for paint chips that I've seen around lately. So when I was brainstorming for some robot crafts, I had one of those happy crafty AHA moments (do you have those?) - why not Paint Chip Robots? The chips are suited to robot shapes and of course you have lots of lovely colours to work with.

I decided to add some photos to make these more personal for the boys. I didn't have any recent ones printed of Big One, so I raided an old photo box and found this picture of him - he was about 4 years old.

Little One also loved the idea of being inside the robot :).

More robot fun coming up..:) 

Sharing this at:

For the Kids Friday @ Sun Scholars 

The Sunday Showcase 

Teacher Gift {Little Yellow Bus}

School's Out! 

We have six wonderful weeks of Summer holidays ahead of us!

The rest of this month's posts are sure to be dedicated to Christmas, so I thought I must slip this one in quickly, before it's forgotten.

Little One started play school in July this year and he has been blessed with two amazing teachers. For end of year gifts, I bought some big Cadbury slabs and wrapped and decorated them to create these American style yellow school buses. Cute hey?

 

Inspiration from here (Katherine Marie).

Christmas Crafts coming up...stay posted :). 

PS. Shared at:
For the Kids Friday @ Sun Scholars
Show and Tell @ ABC and 123 

Magazine Cover

Do you have a favourite baby or parenting magazine? Well here at home, the Your Baby  magazine has always been a huge favourite of mine.  I was buying them long before I had children and continued to buy them long after it was necessary. With it's informative and well-written articles; the beautiful photography that one finds in their pages; and, not to mention, the most gorgeous cover pictures, it is really hard to resist. I hang onto mine, and even though I do regular cupboard clean-outs (I'm quite good that way), I find it nearly impossible to throw these mags away.

So having said this, you can well imagine my great delight when I heard that Little One was going to be a cover baby (squeal!).  And to make it just a little more exciting, the shoot took place at my home and I had the real treat of having tea with the editor and her team. It was an experience! The shoot actually took place in November 2009 and Little One was the cover baby for the March 2010 edition.

So this got me thinking about how much fun it could be to make your own magazine covers and print them. I found this website, MagMyPic, where you can download a photo and create a cover in minutes. It's really very easy to use, with the only downside being that you are restricted to their templates.

You could of course also create one in a software package like Photoshop, or in my case, Picasa (I'm not yet a Photoshop girl). You could then personalise these and make the titles of the articles applicable to your little one's personality or developmental stage. If you did one a month, you would have a quick fun overview of your child's year, nicely summarized in twelve mag covers that you could frame or put in a mini photo album. These would also make fun birthday invites. This one below was created in Picasa and it shares a little of the prevalent topics in Big One's life at the moment.

Let me know if you make any :). 
Have fun!

PS.  It's Love and Lollipops' birthday today! It's been one year since my first post and it's been such an awesome ride. Thanks to you all that come and visit and leave such lovely warm fuzzies for me!

Colour Fun #8 - I like Stars

I like Stars is the sweetest little book written by Margaret Wise Brown and even though it's not a book about colours per se, it mentions different colour stars in the first few pages...

" I like stars. Yellow stars. Green stars. Red stars..."

We (Little One and I) really like this book. I have been asked to read it over and over, all in one sitting :). It also inspired this lovely art and I thought this would be an easy project to repeat, whether you have this book or not. I found a photo of Little One, where I could cut out his whole body and glued it onto a big black page. I punched out stars in different colours and explained to him that we would stick the stars onto the page (in the night sky). He wanted to hold the glue stick (and do the gluing), which wasn't ideal, so I made little glue circles on the page and then encouraged him to stick the stars to the glue spots by punching them with the side of his fist. This worked nicely!

I wasn't crazy about the end product, so  I decided to paint a different background and we re-did the stars...I think our second project came out better. (top picture)

This art project has so many possibilities. A colourful starry night (like ours); a flower garden; a garden filled with butterflies; an ocean scene with lots of different fish; birds sitting in a tree; washing hanging on a line...these are just a few ideas. Remember to add a photograph of your little one to the picture for great effect and to make it special! Remember too, that this is about colour, so name them while you do your art. If I have inspired you, please come back and let me know what colourful photo art you got up to.

I have two more "Colour Fun" posts coming up and some more fun books to share with you. Till next time:)

PS. I am linking this to Kids Get Crafty

Colour Fun #7 - Colour Photo Book

If you know me, then you will know that I don't need an excuse to do a project involving photographs! So what could be cuter than personalised colour cards, using photos of your little one and of outings or items that they are familiar with. I searched through my pictures, chose some photos and then using Picasa (a free photo-editing program), I added the colour names. I had these printed and created a little picture book, putting the photos in an inexpensive photo album. You could also laminate the photos and turn them into flashcards. (I added the "spots' and "stripes' pictures just for fun.)

Little One really likes his colour photo book and asks me about every picture. I managed to get these cute pics of him reading his book on my bed. I could just eat him up!

I plan on doing something similar for numbers and the alphabet too, but that's for another post.

PS. I'm linking this to Tot Tuesdays and Show and Tell.

Colour Fun #4 - A new twist on a Posting Game

I made this simple posting game for Big One about 8 years ago...and he loved it! I kept it and introduced it to Little One before his first birthday and he enjoyed it too. It's a sure winner with any baby and so easy to make. If you don't have any baby jar lids, the flatter, wider bottle tops, like those on milk bottles, work just as well.

I am a little more creative and innovative now (thanks to all the inspiration on the internet), so saw the possibility of putting a new twist on this old game. One twist is to add punched out circles of colour to the jar lids to create a colour posting game. The other is to add photos of family members and friends, to teach your little one their names. I also added a deeper ice cream container for a longer drop, which is a little noisier - just for fun!

Some more super colour fun coming up this week. Stay tuned.

PS. I have linked this to ABC and 123 Show and Tell and Tot Tuesdays @ My Delicious Ambiguity.

Photo Stickers

I have a passion for photo-related art/crafts/projects! I simply cannot help myself and am always thinking of fun things to do with photographs. I have always wanted photo stickers and lucky for me, my father owns a business that does printing, so I asked him to whip me up some personalised photo stickers. I love these and think that they make super convenient, super special gift tags.

Matchbox Fridge Magnets

I love photos; I love fridge magnets and I love convenience. These are all three in one! I really like the idea of a matchbox on the fridge. I also like pretty, so these are my pretty, super convenient, photo matchbox fridge magnets. The bonus is that they are really easy to make too.

I had small photographs printed onto matte paper. I then cut them to fit my matchboxes. I used modge podge to paste them onto the boxes and then painted a layer of modge podge over the pictures to protect them. Once dry, I stuck a strip of magnetic with glue to the back of each matchbox. All done.

These would also make super Father/Grandfather's day gifts and are easy enough for the kids to make. Have fun!

PS. I have linked this to Show and Tell @ ABC and 123

Mosaic fridge magnets

I wanted to share this easy project. These were my Mother's day gifts to the Grannies and they both loved it. 

I used a small square piece of hardboard (available at my local craft shop), modge podge, glue, small mosaic tiles, magnets, paint and photographs. I used the modge podge to glue the photos onto the wood and then used it on top of the pictures to give them a protective layer. Once dry, I carefully glued the mosaic tiles around the photos. I glued some magnets on to the back of the hardboard and painted the sides to match the tile colour. All done!  A super fridge magnet. Now I just need to find the time to make some of my own :).

Fun with Photos : Photo Art

I just LOVE projects that involve photographs and so I thought I would share this very easy idea with you. I wish I could say that I did this art work, however all these pictures were painted by a very creative friend of mine and given to me as a gift. This first picture is one that was framed in Big One's room when he was a little younger. The rest are pages from two books that start at his birth and share moments of the first two years of his life.

first smiles...

first funnies...

first steps...

first friends...

Every page of these two dear-to-my-heart books has a different feel and theme and is as gorgeous as these I have shared with you. 

This is really a project that anybody can do. Paper, paint and a matt photograph is all that is required. I have also added some embellishments (as you may have noticed) to some of the pages, just to add some more fun!

You can also do bigger pictures using more than one photograph. Paint a boat and have the children looking out of the portholes, a train with them sitting in the carriages, or a big bus or house with lots of windows and their faces peeking out...there are so many possibilities. Just remember that when working with more than one photograph on your page, the pre-planning of your picture is a bit more important.

So here is one more from the book, one of my favourites, a special Big One-Mommy moment.

If you do decide to do this art project, please let me know. I would just love to see your masterpieces!