Crystal O. Minkler: Get Kids Crafty

Saturday, January 20, 2018

Get Kids Crafty ~ January Blog Hop ~ Valentine's Day

The kids and I are at it again! It's time for another Get Kids Crafty hop and the theme this month is Valentine's Day. We decided it would be fun to make Daddy a little something for Valentine's Day.
We started by stamping and coloring our images (we used the misti to stamp the images - I forgot to take pictures. Oopsy!) from Lawn Fawn's Love Letters stamp set.

And then we pulled out the Cuddlebug to die cut our images. The kids got a kick out of cranking the plates through. We used a touch of washi tape to hold the dies down.

We started to assemble our pieces. We had die cut some mailbox pieces from Lawn Fawn's Happy Mail dies so here the kids are gluing the mailbox pieces together.

We set those aside and started assembling our card. We had die cut some Grassy Hillside Border pieces (also from Lawn Fawn) that we adhered to the bottom of our card front. We then decided we wanted to color the sky, which turned out to be harder since the grass was there... but we made it work. We did learn a lesson about planning out our scene or project before gluing.

Once our skies were colored we adhered our mailboxes to the card. We put an acrylic block on the mailbox to weigh it down a bit so it would dry flat.

I missed a few picture taking moments... oopsy again... we traced the kids hands on some construction paper and then cut them out. We adhered those to these little kraft paper bags and added some die cut hearts. We punched out a couple holes and added some black twine... because black is Daddy's favorite color. Our cute little krafty paper bags became our envelope of sorts. We plan to add a couple treats to Daddy's gift.

Here the bags are beside each other... how cute is that?! I think the kids did a great job (with a bit of help from Mom).

Get Kids Crafty is hosting its first quarterly giveaway (open to US and International followers)!! All you have to do to participate is showcase your children's projects on social media using the hashtag #getkidscrafty.

Images must be shared publicly on Facebook and/or Instagram to be eligible, pictures of your child's work (not your children) are required. Bonus points if you are in the Get Kids Crafty Facebook group and share in the group! Please share by February 14th, and the winner will be announced in the February Get Kids Crafty Blog Hop!

~ Hop List ~

Jeanette with Acute Stamper

Marcia Caradinta with The Frolicking Fairy

Sara with Phineas and Mae

Megan with Mad Crafters Tea Party

Hannah with Fanciful Spaces

Crystal O. Minkler <--- you're here

Annalisa with Faith Dream Create

Evie Does It

Thanks for stopping by!

See ya next time.
~ Crystal & the kiddos

Saturday, December 9, 2017

Get Kids Crafty ~ December Blog Hop ~ Fun with S'mores!

Hello! Happy Saturday to you!

Today, I am getting crafty with my kiddos and joining the December Blog Hop with Get Kids Crafty! When I asked the kids if they'd like to join for this month's theme, they got super excited! We have a couple of things to share with you. Be warned though, there are a lot of pictures! I hope you have some fun seeing the crafts that we made because I know my kids had a blast making them!

~ S'mores Ornament ~

The first craft that we decided to do was a S'mores Ornament. This ornament is made out of popsicle or craft sticks. We started out with 8 craft sticks that the kids painted with acrylic paints.

They painted 3 sticks white for the marshmallow, 1 stick dark brown for the chocolate, and 4 sticks a light brown for the graham crackers.

We talked about the importance of having scrap paper under our project so that we didn't get paint on the table (I'll admit, I was a little nervous... the kids usually paint with washable paints).

We also talked about keeping the paint to our projects and not on our clothes. Once our sticks were painted, we set them aside to dry. Sadly, I am missing a few pictures for the next couple of steps. I think they were deleted by little fingers. Anywho, the kids and I wrapped a little twine around a couple craft sticks that we had cut down to be support pieces to back the ornament. I then used a hot glue gun to secure the twine to the support pieces. We laid down our support sticks and I added hot glue to each piece while the kids built their s'more. In this step, we decided to just use 2 craft sticks for our 'graham crackers'.

Once we had the s'more built we set it aside so the glue could cure. Which was a great time to learn what the term cure means when you're referring to glue. The kids thought it was funny, like the glue was sick. They learned something new.

The next day, we were ready to add googly eyes and our smiles. We used googly eyes that I got from Fun Stampers Journey during last Halloween. The kids thought it was funny to give their ornaments more than two eyes... so I guess we have S'mores Monster ornaments. Ha! I was hoping to share a picture of the ornaments on the tree, but... our tree isn't up yet so... yeah.

~ Watercolor Handprint Campfire Art ~

Our next project was a fun little art project combining a couple of different ideas we saw online.

This time it was epic fail for Mom because I forgot about taking pictures when Saydee was adding Color Burst pigment to the watercolor paper. Oops... but we did get pictures after. She really loves to watercolor so she was super excited to use Mom's 'little bottles' - as she called them. I think her watercolor turned out so pretty!

I did approach this part of the project with the kids separately. It was just a better way to control the mess for this OCD mama! In any case, Sym also had fun doing this part of the project. The pigment powder didn't cooperate with him so he ended up whacking the bottle. He sprayed a lot more water on his paper and got a totally different look from Saydee's. We let our watercolors dry overnight and then we traced and cut out our paper hands. We were able to get 3 hands from each paper.

The kids picked some green and blue paper for the background of their campfire and we cut up 'logs' from some brown paper.

Now it was time to glue everything. We used plain old glue sticks for this.... and managed to get glue everywhere so that was fun. We did discover that the glue stick was not strong enough to hold down the watercolor paper. So we used some Mono Multipurpose glue to make sure our paper hands stuck.