Recycled Wrappers

My youngest son recently celebrated his 3rd birthday. He had a birthday party at school with 27 kids (including my son) in attendance. As a thank you to all his classmates and fellow students, we gave them loot "bags" filled with biscuits, jellies, chocolates, and toys.

Now, I'm the type of mom who would rather recycle magazine pages than spend money on plastic (or paper) bags that will eventually be thrown out as soon as the goodies were consumed. I used my eldest son's old Disney Junior magazines to wrap the goodies with. It was tedious, but the end result was worth it.

Make Your Own Drawing Pad

My son loves to draw. We used to buy him drawing books but they are EXPENSIVE! And since he's only six years old, he does not fully utilize the drawing books. I cringe every time he asks for a new one or show me a page with a small drawing in the middle with lots of space surrounding it but he refuses to draw anything else on it. It's a waste of good paper.

So what do I do? I don't want to spend tons of money for a drawing book that he'll use up in a span of days and he won't draw unless I give him clean paper. The solution is simple, and waaay cheaper than buying him a drawing book: make him one!

I sought out the cheapest ream of bond paper that I can find, I bought a folder, a paper fastener, and a binder glue. I made him two sets of drawing pads: one for school and one for home use.

The picture above is the one I made for home use. I adjusted the length of the folder so it will have the same length as the paper that we will use. After that, I used a puncher to put two holes on a stack of paper and fastened it onto the folder. Easy peasy.

And this one below is what I made for his school use. It's half the size of the paper, bound it with the binder glue.

PS: Some of you may think that a  scratch paper is better than using a blank sheet of paper. Yes, I agree. But you see, we don't have scratch papers available around the house. When we print, we print on both sides. I also use it to practice my calligraphy.

Make Your Own Pen Holder

I was feeling crafty the other day while I was cleaning up my son's crayons and pencils. Plus my inability to resist recycling things got the better of me, so I made our own pen (pencil or crayon) holder.

I know there are a lot of DIY guides for making pen holders, but I'm just damn proud of what I did.

I used an empty container of Gerber's Graduates puff snack for the pen holder body and my yarn scraps to decorate it. I didn't really put any thought on the color of the yarns that I used, I just grabbed a bunch from my stash and hoped that it will turn out okay. Aside from these recycled materials, I also used tape, hot glue, and a cutter.

Now on to the steps.

1. The most obvious step is to clean the container: wash it, let it dry, and peel off the label. 
2. Seal the cover onto the container with tape. I used masking tape for this.
3. Use tape to mark where you want to slice through the container. I chose to make my holders in two different heights, because I was gonna use it for crayons and for colored pencils. The purpose of the tape was to guide you so you can cut it straight. I, however, failed to keep it straight. 😂
4. Using a hot glue, wound the scrap of yarns onto the container.

Easy, right? I didn't put a design yet on the other pen holders that I made, but here's a picture of them together.

Mould & Paint: Sea Life

Ever since my son got a Mould and Paint: Safari kit from my sister (I'll post about this soon), I've been obsessed with buying similar kits.

Today's crafting activity with the kiddo is Mould & Paint: Sea Life. This kit contains a mould, two packs of plaster powder, a strip of magnet with adhesive, two pins, five small tubs of paint, and a paint brush. The mould has six designs: a turtle, two starfishes in a coral, an angel fish, a seahorse, two clown fishes behind a coral, and another fish that I have no idea what type it is. The available colors for the paint are: blue, yellow, white, pink, and purple.

We did the moulding a few days before. Just mix one pack of the plaster powder in 30-70 mL water. Pour the mixture onto the mould and wait for it to set and dry. You have to keep an eye on them because you'll be adding the magnet, pins, or a string (not included in the kit) before it completely dries up.

These are some of the dried up designs. We wanted to try making these into a fridge magnet (using magnets, duh), a badge (using the pins), and an ornament (using strips of string). I didn't use the magnet strip provided but used my own magnet, don't know what it's called, but it's the small, round ones.

I let the kiddo paint on his own. Since he loves pink right now (because of Jigglypuff, don't ask), he painted most of his work with pink. I painted one, the one with the two starfishes because I got frustrated with his clown fish painting. If you find the clown fish I'm referring to, then good for you. 😜

Sorry about the backdrop, we were still letting it dry when I took a picture.

So there you go. I have three more boxes of these Mould & Paint kits, four if I were to include the one my sister gave the kiddo. Hopefully we'll be able to make more these beauties.

Monster Pompoms: Vampire

I try to have at least one crafting activity with my 6-yo son. He loves creating things, and I guess he's the one that really inspired me to start this blog.

Anyway, I saw this video tutorial on Facebook: DIY Halloween Decor, and thought  that  my son would enjoy doing this with me. So today, we decided to make a vampire as our crafting activity this weekend.

Now, don't laugh, but this is a post where the reality is far from the expected outcome. To give you a visual, I grabbed this image on Kids' Craft Ideas. Isn't that cute? So fluffy!

Expectation

And now, I give you our finished product. It may not be as cute and fluffy as what we saw on the video or on the image above, but my son loved it. While I was being so pessimistic, he was all "Mommy, it's starting to be cute!" and "I love it!" I even got a free hug for making him a monster.

Reality

So, are you still interested to know how we did it? Or did our vampire scare you away?

Materials:

• thin wire
• yarn
• craft eye (we only used one)
• glue
• glue gun + glue stick
• scissors
• cardboard
• watercolor + brush
• masking tape

Instructions:

Step 1: Make the attachments - wings, fangs, ears, and tail. My son wanted to put a tail (not in picture). The ears, although we made a pair, we were not able to put it.

1. Draw one side of a bat's wing [tail/ear/fang] on the cardboard paper. Cut and use as a template to make three [one] more. 
2. Paint the wings [tails/ears]. Set aside to let it dry.
3. Cut two wires, the same length as the wing [tail/ear]. Note: we didn't put a wire on the fangs.
4. Tape one end of the wire in the middle of the wing [tail/ear] (unpainted side).
5. Put glue on another wing [tail/ear] (unpainted side) and stick it on the wing with the taped wire. Painted sides must be on the outside. This will be the first wing.
6. Repeat 4 & 5 for the second wing.

Step 2: Make the pompom. Because I botched my pompom, please refer to this site on how to make the pompom: Halloween Pompoms.

Step 3: Stick the attachments to the pompom. Secure the attachments with a glue stick.

Step 4: Glue the eye (or eyes) and fangs on the pompom.

Make Your Own Origami Paper

My son loves to do origami. It was cute at first, we even encouraged him. But it came to a point where he's love for the art became wasteful. He depleted our supply of bond paper, his quiz pad for school, he even uses receipts to fold origami. So to solve this issue, we told him that he can only fold origami using a special origami paper, you know, the store-bought origami paper. The origami paper that we didn't have. Harharhar.

After MONTHS of nagging from our son, I finally told him that we'll make our own origami paper. So yesterday, that's what we did.

Materials:

1. Old magazine
2. Cutter

How to make a square:

This is just for those who doesn't know how to make a square out of a rectangular paper.

1. Fold one side of the paper in a triangle. Make sure that the ends are aligned.

2. Fold the excess rectangular strip of paper where the triangle ends.

3. Cut off the rectangular strip.

We made three different sizes to maximize the use of each page.

Large origami paper - use the whole page to make a square

Medium origami paper - cut the page in half and use each half to make a square

Small origami paper - use the excess rectangular strip for both the large and medium origami paper to make a square