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 – …

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… 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 …

The Olympic Games is probably one of the biggest and most well known sporting event in the world – yes, there are others in racing, golfing and tennis – but nothing quite captures the hearts and minds of people as the Olympics. The Olympics is full of symbolisms – which are great for Olympic craft inspiration – you have:
5 Interlocking Rings – Designed in 1912, when the present day Olympics were established – the 5  represents the five parts of the world who support the Olympics. The colours blue, black, …

Here is a quick craft idea for you.. why not print out some Olympic Pictograms such as the below from Buyong.com, print them twice on card (or coloured card to brighten them up). Cut them up and hey presto – you have an Olympic Memory game! And you can practice talking about all the different sports to your children too! (Please visit Buyong.com if you want to use the image).

If you specifically want the London 2012 Olympic Pictograms, I found a copy of them DSGNWRLD.com:

(Please visit DSGNWRLD.com if you want to use the image).
My …

Well.. another week has passed ALREADY and we are on to C… Would you like to do a Chick (as Red Ted has chicks at school) NO! Would you like to do a caterpillar (as we have some caterpillars at home) NO! Would you like to do a cake (because we like cake) NO! How about a Crocodile (just because) YES!

Aha. Crocodile it is.
The tricky bit for the children is keeping your index finger and middle finger, as well as your ring finger and index finger together….So that the space …

I do love the (British) blogging community (I love the my kids/edu community too.. but that is another topic) – there are so many of us with such a broad range of skills and abilities. Everyone bring something different to the table – some are very technical and solve all our technical woes  (such as Liz, Nickie, Jax and the long suffering Fiona), there some that are crafty (ahem, I could list you all.. but recently Emma, Kelly, Rebecca and Liz have been particularly good at joining in with Get Crafty), …

Welcome back to this week’s How To – where I made a Cardboard Pirate Ship for the children! Red Ted was given a fabulous pirate ship with fabulous pirates for his . He wouldn’t let Pip Squeak play. So I bought her some pirates (thinking the pirates were the problem). He then said “Mummy, can you make Pip Squeak a pirate ship too?”. This was about 4 weeks ago.. and *finally* I found the time during the Easter holidays to Get Crafty for the kids.

Materials: Cardboard (I used a mid …

April is Families and Reading Month and very few themes have captured the imaginations of authors and readers alike as much as the railways.
From the talking trains of bed-time stories to the magical trains of children’s books, to the mystery trains of detective novels, there is no question that the railroad, from its earliest beginnings to the present day, has played a special role in fiction.

In the early days of the railroad, trains were both exciting and frightening to many and often embodied the negative aspects of the industrial age.  …

Welcome back to this week’s Kids Crafts – our very own paper mache Solar System – ok, so it is “only” the sun, the earth and the moon, but it is a start and something to add to over time. We actually made it , mainly because the lovely people from Cubbykit sent it to us to make (more about them at the end)! It has taken as a while to “get round” to doing it – basically the Easter holidays – I think any paper mache craft is perfect …

This post was meant to go live NEXT week (oops)… Please find the Kids Get Crafty linky on the Solar System Post!
Welcome back to kids crafts and our clothespins pirates! We have been meaning to make peg dolls for a long long time.. there really are so many crafts out there, that we simply don’t get around to… but finally we did make some peg people! I was working on some peg dolls for my craft book coming out next year… when Red Ted got inspired… there was no stopping …