Red Ted had a special request for this one – a handprint GORILLA! Yikes. How do we do a handprint gorilla – now there is a challenge and a half! I think Red Ted now thinks we can make ANYTHING out of handprints. Bless him. Maybe we can… so long as we try? What do you think?

A little monkey-ish… but kind of gorilla like?

To make a handprint gorilla – we painted the four fingers black (to make gorilla arms and legs – next time, I may paint the finger tips …

I made these this little baby for Pip Squeak’s Doll’s House the other week. And she loves it so much, I had to make a second one… she adores that little baby so much, that I thought I would share the “pattern” with you. It was so easy and I used Pip Squeak’s old babygrows! Makes me smile when I think of that!

Materials: One medium size wooden bead (approx 1cm diameter), 2 small beads (3-4mm), pipecleaner, fabric scraps, hot glue gun (or other glue – e.g. wood glue), needle & …

Welcome back to this week’s kid crafts and I have a classic kids crafts for you today – our paper cup and ball game – it is a great introduction to Origami or paper folding activities for young children. I did this post for Pre K and K Sharing and you can see all the photos of Red Ted folding the cup himself there!

Print out pretty Origami Paper via the Free Printables page.
Here is a video of how to make the paper cups:

If the video isn’t loading properly, you can see …

And the handprint alphabet series continues! Only another 20 letters to go (what was I thinking?!) – but – the children are VERY happy and they are really enjoying all the print making. Today, I overheard Red Ted and Pip Squeak discussing how they could make other animals from their handprints – “This could be the tail, and these fingers could be the legs“. Ah. How cute! Today, we share our handprint F – F for Flamingo!

We really enjoyed the Flamingo, as it is bright and cheery! We used googly …

Here is a lovely guest post from the Liz over at Me and My Shadow! As you know Liz has guest posted with me before with some lovely organza flowers. And now she is back with these great dandelion soaps – what a great way to “convert” what is a weed into something useful and practical. You will find many a practical, upcycled, foraged or charity shop found idea of at Me and My Shadow, so her site really is a worth a good explore!
Over to Liz!
I’ve made some recent tentative …

I had the pleasure of attending a PictureBook Showcase with Random House Children’s Books author’s earlier in the week. It was a fabulous summary of current picture books and picture books coming this summer, as well as  fabulous interview of Louise Yates (I recommended her lovely lovely “Dog Loves Drawing”  for you recently) and Quentin Blake – who knew that they were both English Literature and not Art students – ditto Mini Grey. There is artistic hope for me yet! In fact, Mini Grey was a “newly discovered” author for me – …

With midsummer approaching, I thought it would be fun to have a special “Fairies & Elves” round up – anything impish, elfish, fairy-ish and midsummer-night-ish to get you into that whimsical magical feeling!
Hopefully the selectioin below will set you up for midsummer celebrations. When it comes to fairies, I particularly like the nature and waldorf inspired fairy crafts. Just adorable. I am pretty certain, that I will be revisiting this post myself and making things with my kids. I am inspired by all the magical craftiness out there.
I have also teamed …

Now, this is a very special handprint craft letter – the letter E for Elephant! Why, is this so special, I hear you ask? Well.. I saw the gorgeous Cheshire Mum do this exact same handprint elephant a few weeks ago and it was this handprint that may be think “of course, my kids would LOVE this”… and the Handprint Alphabet Series for preschoolers was born! Thank you Claire for the inspiration. This one is for you!

The handprint elephant is very cute indeed! It helps to show your child and example …

The kids and I love Card Making. As I have a rather pragmatic streak, I find that making cards for relatives and friends is a great way to have a creative session with the children AND to have a good “use” for the resulting craft. We do keep a lot of artwork, but we can’t keep everything. So this is a great way to make someone smile, as well as getting crafty! We usually have to make at least one extra card to keep for us!  And Red Ted usually …

Well.. you know I am on a Doll’s House crafts frenzy this year… you will found all the Doll’s House Crafts here, including the house itself and our Shell Sink… well.. we have had a bit of a FIMO crafting frenzy, after the lovely Craft Merrily and we wanted to make different things from it. If you want to learn more about Polymer Clay or get more crafty FIMO ideas, do check out their website! So FINALLY we got round to making some FIMO goodies. See our Kids Craft post for more!

(Check out all our other Doll’s …

Well… it really is about time that we a did a “How to make snowglobes” post, don’t you think? Every kids craft site worth its salt *needs* a snowglobe diy of sorts. A homemade snowglobe is a childhood must! And finally we have made some. The best thing about your snowglobe, is that you get the chance to “use up” some of those plastic figurines that you may have lying around from Kinder Surprises or party bags… and if you don’t you could “whip” up some FIMO and make your …

And the Handprint Crafts continue with D for Dinosaur – I am really loving seeing quite how much both the children enjoy doing these, Red Ted always jumps up with pleasure when I say “shall we do some more Handprint Letters”? Check out the rest of our Handprint Alphabet… A, B and C already there!
This week  I asked again – what “Ds do we know”? What handprint craft would you like to make? Dog, Dragon, Duck (we almost made a duck) and then suddenly there were excited “Dinosaur” cries. Mummy, …

Oh my, this “”How To make a No Sew Alice Band” – must be my quickest and craftiest cheat EVER! The idea came from my Mother in Law, apparently she had them as a child. I added some no sew craftiest by whipping out the stapler and hey presto – bright colourful Alice Bands….. I made this in literally less than 5 minutes (I think finding the stapler took longer). And kept it simple – bright red. But of course you could take the this “basic idea” and decorate your …

A quick post to share our cookies that we made yesterday.. Chocolate and Orange Biscuits – they are yum yum yum and QUICK to make! Mmmmh.

Recipe:

250g Plain Flour
125g Sugar
125g Butter (helps if it is soft)
Tsp of Baking Powder
1 Egg
2 Tblsp of Cocoa Powder

If you do not want to use an egg, you can also use our ALL TIME FAVOURITE Easy Shortbread Recipe – so easy, so versatile. Just add some drops of milk if the coco powder makes it too crumbly! I have used this recipe for Alphabet Cookies, Rainbow …

Remember how a few weeks ago we made Blossom Fairy Lights from Egg Cartons?? Well.. we only used the “cup” of the egg carton and I couldn’t resist keeping the “long pointy bits”.. I knew they would make perfect egg carton Monster finger puppets! So, when we had a play date a couple of weeks later, the kids got crafty. Again inspired by the pretty glittery glitter from Zing Zing Tree, as well as her really cool chenille  ribbon, the kids got crafty.
The process was very simple: paint – dry …