Recycled May Flowers

April showers are supposed to bring May flowers. Here in the Midwest we have some tulips in our yard, but the terrible winter has delayed a lot of our Spring flowers. You can make these flowers in a few moments and transform your paper scraps into an adorable bouquet to tide you over until your garden blooms. This project originally appeared in the April issue of Kids Craft 1-2-3! 
Materials:
paper (I used a map, sheet music, and pages from a gardening catalog.)
stapler
glue
pipe cleaner
something for the center like circles of felt, buttons, circles of contrasting paper, pom poms

Steps

1. Cut a piece of paper into a long rectangle. Try 4 1/2 x 12 inches or pick your own size.
2. Fold the paper like an accordion with small folds.
3. After the paper is folded up completely, staple at the halfway point and fan out the sides.
4. Glue the sides open to make the flower.
5. For the center you can do what I did and glue on a small circle of felt and a button on top of that. You also could attach circles of contrasting paper, tiny pom poms, or other center items. 
6. I used tape to attach the back of my flowers to the pipe cleaners. You could also use a glue gun for a neater appearance.

Fable of the Day Refrigerator Magnets

Do you like to regale the people in your life with useful advice? I do, whether they want to hear it or not! I love this project because it allows me to combine my love of Aesop's Fables with my interest in discussing morals and ethical dilemnas with my children. What you do is use the spinner to find the Fable of the Day. (or week, or whenever.) Then you can use the magnets to set up the fable on the refrigerator or on a magnet board. Then if you want, you can talk about the moral. I picked 7 fables that happened to appeal to me. Some have straightforward proverbs, like "don't count your chickens before they hatch." Others are more equivocal like "a tree that is unbending is easily broken." I am looking forward to springing this project on my family as soon as Corinne finishes taking pictures for me. (The poorly composed, badly lit photos are mine and the good ones are hers.)
You might find the 7 fables I picked to be not to your taste but fortunately there are over a hundred fables to choose from. Here is a convenient list of morals at the angelfire site. After you find a moral you like you can search for the fable and find it pretty easily online by typing the moral into Google with the word "fable" attached. Then there are numerous sites that feature fables. Of course, you may have a book of fables to read and mull over, which would be even better.
Here are the 7 that I chose.

The Farmer and the Stork

Moral: Birds of a feather flock together                                                The Olive Tree and the Reed

Moral: A tree that is unbending is easily broken.

The Hare and the Frog
There is always someone worse off than yourself 

The Serpent and the Eagle

One good turn deserves another

The Tortoise and the Hare   Slow and steady wins the race                                                      
 

The Milkmaid and her Pail

Don't count your chickens before they hatch.

The Lion and the Mouse

   No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.

To make your own magnetic fables you have to decide which fables you want to use and how you want to make the characters. I cut mine out of felt. You could draw them onto paper and laminate it, use clip art from the internet, or come up with your own original way to illustrate the fables. You also need to write or type the name of each fable and the proverb that goes with it.

Materials

• Artwork to accompany each fable ie animals, props, title of fable, moral
• Magnetic printer paper
• Craft glue
• scissors (It would be good to have both big and sharp and tiny and sharp.) 

Steps

1. Take each fable and decide what you will need to execute it. I tried to keep things simple. For The Lion and the Mouse I only have the animals and a net. This is the same net that is used for The Farmer and the Stork. Many items like trees and roads can be used for multiples stories.
2. After you have your list make the items and glue them onto magnet paper.
3. You can hand write or type the title of each fable and the accompanying moral.
4. I made my spinner out of blank shrinky dink paper. I punched a hole in it before baking so that I could insert a brass fastener. If you have any old board games laying around with spinners it would be really convenient to just repurpose an existing spinner, or at least dismantle one and use the arrows.
5. The bag that holds everything is just a piece of felt folded in half and sewn up the sides. I bought two magnetic clips so it can hang on the refrigerator too.  
6. Now, spin the dial and discover some words of wisdom to guide your day!

 

 

A Box of Pirates

If you read this blog you will know that Corinne and I often make little toys and games. We also like to make cute containers to hold these toys so that they make nice gifts and also can be stored neatly. Recently, I repurposed an old cardboard pencil box using felt scraps and the Jolly Roger flag. This box is nice enough on its own for school supplies and as a keepsake box for your favorite wanna-be pirate, but I decided to make a little scene to fit inside and make it even more fun.This is a pretty easy project but it has a few parts so I will lay them out separately here. 

The pirates:  Use my tutorial for Ping Pong Ball Fairy Puppets and make

 pirates instead of fairies. I dressed mine in a variety of shabby fabric and felt scraps and added some messy hair and facial hair and a bandana for one and an eye patch for the other.  I did not want the pirates to be puppets but to be able to stand on their own. So, when everything is done you will want to insert a wooden craft clothespin under the clothing and up into the ping pong ball head where the finger holes are. You can then glue the clothespin into a wooden clothespin stand (they sell these in bags at craft stores) and your little figures will stand up nicely. I should also add that for some reason I gave my dark-haired pirate vertical stripes. It would look way more pirate-y if the stripes were to go across his outfit. But hopefully you can tell they are pirates.

Treasure Chest

I used a mini Altoids tin, some leather scraps, felt, and a little key and lock charm I got at a bead store. You could follow my example or come up with something different. If you don't have leather, felt will work fine. Glue the pieces on with craft glue. Inside the chest I glued in lots of beads and glitter and balls of tinfoil to represent the treasure.
The Trees

I made a banana tree and a coconut tree for my pirates. I painted craft sticks of different lengths brown then added felt leaves and either bananas or coconuts cut out from felt. I glued the craft sticks into a clothespin base so they will stand. I had to file them down a bit to get them to fit. I would also add that my banana tree is so tall it is a little off-balance and if I did it again I might make both trees shorter for better stability.
Swords 
The swords are probably the least successful part of my little play scene. You can do better! I used gold and silver polymer (Fimo) clay and shaped these little weapons and baked them.

More...  there is plenty of room in the box for additional accessories. I found a cute little bird and added that to the collection. Ideally you would give this to a child and help them make more stuff like more maps, more weapons, more pirates. A mermaid would be cute, too!

Jolly Roger Pencil Holder

  

I am making a little felt pirate play set. This first part of the post is where I show how easy it is to make a cute box to hold the pieces. The second part of the post shows how to make the pirates, trees and other accessories. The box is really nice on its own, though, and would just make a nice pencil box makeover without even putting the toys inside.

Materials

• felt-  black, white, blue and colors of your choice
• craft glue
• plain pencil box
• scissors

Steps

1. Cut out the Jolly Roger pieces from white felt.
2. Cover the top of the box with black felt
3. Cover the sides with the colors of your choice. I added stripes to the front
4. Line the inside of the box with ocean blue felt and add some waves if you want to
5. Glue on the skull pieces and let it dry.

Tiny Felt Flip Photo Books

Here is a useful little book you can make as a gift for a Grandma or someone else who likes to carry photos around in their purse to share with absolutely everyone they run into.
I used some nice photos of my kids at the beach last summer and had them printed out as "wallet size." I used typing paper for the inside paper because it is thin and flexible and felt for the exterior. You could use origami paper for the inside pages too because it is really thin but do not use construction paper as it will crack. You can sew up the book in several different ways using either regular sewing thread or embroidery floss.

Materials:

• 3 felt pieces measuring 3 x 4 inches
• Embroidery floss
• Needles of various sizes
• Buttons and other felt scraps, trim, etc 
• 3 pieces of thin paper cut 3 x 8 inches and folded very neatly the long way
• Pins
• Scissors
• Optional- clamp for holding book while you bind it

Steps

1. Decorate the cover of your book. I used felt hearts, buttons, and rickrack. I added my sister-in-law's name to one of the covers. You can sew the pieces onto the cover or glue them.
2. Make a little book by stacking the folded book pages inside each other.
3. Lay the bottom piece of felt on a table, put the paper booklet on top of it. Lay your cover on top of everything. Do not worry about the third piece of felt yet. You will use it later on.
4. After everything is really nicely lined up and square use a bulldog clip or clothepin to hold the pages together.
5. It is time to bind your book. I employed two diferent methods for my two different books. For one book I used regular sewing thread and a sharp needle and just sewed over the edge and through the paper as neatly as possible. This looks nice, but the paper may rip eventually.
6. For my second book I used a simple book binding stitch known as the four hole pamphlet stitch. Here are good directions for how to do it from the My Handbound Books site. It is actually not as hard as it sounds, as you only have to poke 4 holes in the edge of your book so is quicker than the first method. If you enjoy embroidery you could use different stitches to hold your pages together, The blanket stitch would look really nice.
7. After your book is bound you can trim the paper edges so they don't show and trim the threads. 
8. To hide the sewing on the back of the cover I glued on a backing to it. This is where your third felt rectangle comes into play. You will need to trim it as it will be smaller than the cover since it is not stitched in. We are not stitching it in with the pages because that would add a lot of thickness for the needles to have to through. You ay want to try including in the binding and see what happens.
9. Glue in your wallet sized photos. I used a glue stick. A scrapbooker would probably use something more elaborate and effective but the glue worked fine for me.
10. Now, wrap up your little book and mail it someone who will be very happy to have more photos of your adorable kids, or leave the book empty and give it to someone who takes a lot of pictures and likes to share them.

Quick Curly Tailed Felt Mouse

 
This a quick way to make a little felt mouse, or many little felt mice. I used black felt, 2 red beads for eyes and thin wire inserted into the tail so you make it stand up.

Loch Ness Nonster in a Planter ... Part I

My son really loves the Loch Ness Monster. While trolling the internet for images of his favorite magical creature we came upon this British topiary frame. It is a huge Nessie that would fit well on a  large field or perhaps a palace lawn. Also it costs around $500. I have a small and shady Chicago yard and limited money to spend on my son's Nessie hobby so we came up with a much smaller and cheaper adaptation. I call this "part 1" because I am not really sure what to do with the thing now that it is ready. Hopefully in a month or so I will be able to add some photos of a verdant and mossy monster. For now I will provide directions on how to get started so you can make your topiary and get it planted up before summer.

Gigantic English TopiaryI found for sale.-