How to make an egg carton chick for Easter candy

This whole month of February, I've been keeping a theme going of organization and repurposing (see the following posts - blog organizing, recycling a box into a wreath, and repurposing a belt as a headband). Today's post will be the last, for a while, on this theme.

This post recycles in two ways. First, it recycles a common household waste product into a craft. Second, I'm recycling the craft/post. I had published it a couple of years ago on a website which no longer exists. It made me sad to think that one of my favorite little crafts had disappeared into the nether regions of the web. So I decided to bring it back right here with brand new instructions.

Now Let's get to business. 

Have you ever looked at your empty egg carton and imagined all kinds of little critters you could make out of it? Maybe I'm crazy, but that's all I see! The possibilities are endless, I'm telling you. With Easter coming up, here's one that would make nice little additions to an Easter get together. 

Materials:

• cardboard egg carton (I like them better than the styrofoam for crafts)
• construction paper (green or brown)
• yellow craft paint and a paint brush
• glue
• scissors
• yellow tulle
• orange craft foam
• small circular jewels for the eyes
• a small yellow pom pom

Steps:

1. Cut out the egg cradling parts of the carton, both top and bottom. Each pair will be one chick.

2. Paint the top half yellow and set it aside to dry.

3. While the top dries, cut a strip of tulle and one of green or brown construction paper. Cut thin lines until about 1/4 in from the bottom across the strip to make the grass for the nest. Glue the bottom of the strip on the inside of the bottom half of the egg carton.

4. Glue the small yellow pom pom (the head) on one upper side of the yellow painted carton. Then cut a small square piece of yellow tissue paper and scrunch it up for a tail, then glue it.  

5. Cut a small triangle of orange foam and glue it as a beak, then glue the small jewels as eyes. That's it, you're done!

When you put them together, you've got a cute little chick on a nest where you can store small candy. Just make sure you put some clean tissue paper at the bottom before adding the candy.

Filled with Easter M&Ms and jelly beans!

Have you ever done a craft with your old egg cartons or recycled containers? What was it?

Happy Easter! (And musings on drawing with kids)

Happy Easter everyone!

I try not to bring in religion to the blog too much, but I do hope you don't mind me celebrating some of the more important holidays for me. Easter is of course a big one, so I'd like to wish you all a blessed weekend.

I wanted to do a little illustration with an Easter theme, and N. of course wanted to join in. She never misses an opportunity to draw with me. In fact, it's one of her favorite things to do.

Here are a couple of things that I noticed when it comes to doing that:

1. No matter how stocked her crafting station is, as long as my supplies are out they're the only thing she'll use.
2. She will finish her work first, and then she absolutely must help me with mine. 

I used to worry and fret about her using some of my more expensive materials, but then...

I want her to feel free to experiment with art supplies and have fun with them, not feel like they're so precious she can't use them. She should also enjoy doing it, not worry about what I'm going to do if she adds something to my picture or spills some water on my watercolor.

So, with a herculean effort, I let go of it all. I let her use any and all supplies she wants (unless it's dangerous of course - no hot glue gun yet!), however she wants to, including on the picture I was working on. If it's something I really want to do alone, I wait until after she goes to sleep.

Today, we did these -

A long-haired girl on an egg hunt:

A bunny on a field:

Did you notice her addition to the bunny? She said it was a girl bunny and she needed a hair bow (which N. promptly supplied):

This hair bow makes me so happy. How could I ever say no to adding a hair bow to a bunny?

What are your plans for the weekend? 

A day with N

It's her letter day! My baby girl N.

It's a given that I'd be talking about her today. This is my little girl's life (well, this weekend at least)

Gymnastics

Dancing at the ice cream parlor (yeah, the photo is blurry from the dancing)

And lots of hugs from the Easter Bunny!

As you can tell, we don't always finds time to craft together, because life is full. I try to fit it in whenever I can, but if she doesn't feel like one day, then no art (but that's rare).

What are your weekends like?

Infamous (I)

Today's letter is I, and I'm pretty happy with I. I is the first letter of my first *and* last names. My initials then are IMI, and in Japanese that means, well, meaning. So am I meaning? Meaning of what?

I (me, not the letter) love language. How in+credible it is that we can take pieces of sounds and symbols, add them together to make more sounds and symbols. How in+genious of us to create a multitude of meanings and uses, forms and functions, out of air and vibration of our vocal cords. Whoa.

Nothing wrong with having fun with the in prefix, eh? Some other favorites:

incommunicable (so much of art comes out of our need to communicate the incommunicable)
incomplete (I have too many projects like this)
insinuate (ah, the subtleties of language)
instability (= life)
inextinguishable (true love, and yes, I believe it exists)

Do you ever have fun with language? What are some favorite words, morphemes, sentences?

Today is my first post over at The Caffeine Coquette. Do check it out, won't you? I shared a step by step tutorial to make a cute little candy container for Easter. Here's a teaser picture of the final product.

N. has already devoured the candy, but I'll fill it up again for Easter....