Felt Christmas tree }{ Crafting with kids

A while back I came across this project from Olives and Pickles on Pinterest, and I knew I wanted to try it with the princess. We love Christmas projects and this was easy and fun.

I also had this tray frame that I got on sale and that begged to be used for framing something fun. I put the two together - let the princess make some art and then frame it with the tray. My plan is to use it for different seasons and holidays. Simply change the background and the art piece as the year goes by.

Materials:

• green and brown felt
• yellow felt or gold card stock
• buttons of several colors
• glue
• silver glitter
• a large piece of card stock in a color that contrasts with green and gold
• a frame

Steps:

1. Draw a Christmas Tree on a sheet of green craft felt (or you can use a template) and then cut it out.
2. Cut out a small square of brown felt to be the tree trunk.
3. Draw and cut the yellow felt or gold card stock in the shape of a star.
4. Gather some buttons, the glue, and the glitter. 
5. Let the child decorate the tree. With older kids they could actually do the previous steps as well, but I decided to have it all ready for her to make it a quicker activity. She can get tired quick if it's too hard and involved.
6. Add the tree and the trunk in the frame facing down.
7. Place a contrasting card stock sheet on top of the tree for a background. I chose silver since it's sparkly for Christmas and out of the card stock I have it provided the biggest contrast.
8. Close up the frame and place it somewhere where everyone can see, and show your kiddo how proud you are of their work.

So I did turn the original project into a little art project rather than math play. The great thing about inspiration is that you can turn something you find into something entirely different and have two activities instead of one.

 

Quick tutorial

Of course I had to do something "quick" for the letter Q. It's my favorite type of craft - something I can whip up in just an hour or less.

It's Spring (in the northern hemisphere) and we should have lots of flowers, right? Well, we just had two days of snow. Spring snow just isn't as attractive as flowers, so I'm taking matters into my own hands and growing some colorful flowers. Out of felt and ribbon!

You can really do whatever you want with any of these felt flowers: create a bouquet or an arrangement, a headband, a garland, etc. But enough talking, let me show you how to do a couple of flowers.

Ribbon flower
I've been doing this one since I was a wee kid, and it's so easy! It sounds more complicated then it is, so I'm giving you some pictures to go along with the explanations.

1. Fold the ribbon in half.
2. Separate the ends so that they are at a 90 degree angle (or close)
3. Fold the bottom end over the top one, so that it's now on top.
4. Repeat until you have almost no ribbon left.
5. Let the ribbon go, holding only the ends that are left.
6. Holding both ends loosely, pull the one that's inside (not the one you folded last)
7. Secure ends with fabric glue or hand sew it.

step 2

step 3

step 4

step 5

step 6

step 7

Felt flower 
Another super easy flower.

1. Cut felt into petal shapes (use whatever colors/combinations you want). Use different sizes with outer petals  a bit bigger than the ones in the middle. You can play around with different sizes to see what you like best.
2. Glue each petal at a time on the stem forming a flower shape. You can use different things for stems - sticks, pipe cleaners, etc. I like to use these sticks that come with wire at the end because I use the wires to help me secure the flower in place while the glue dries. It's quicker.
3. Use watercolor paint/glue and glitter for embellishment (optional)

Put them all together and:

Thank you everyone for all the suggestions on adding color. I'll definitely share whatever I end up doing.

The 5-minute mama crafter

N. watched Frosty the Snowman for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Oh boy. She hasn't stopped talking about snowmen, Frosty, Santa Claus, "Karen," and Christmas in general. It doesn't help that every house in town has put their lights and decorations up (including us).

So yesterday we were killing time and playing before our bedtime routine, and she kept asking me for Frosty. So I decided to make her one with scrap materials we had around. It took us all of 5 minutes too! My favorite kind of baby craft.

Materials:
2 styrofoam balls (one small, one medium; or one medium, one large)
some red felt for the scarf
some black felt for the hat (which quickly got destroyed and thrown away by miss N.)
1 Toothpick
Chenille piper cleaners
Black and orange paper
Glue

How we did it:

I broke the toothpick into a smaller piece, so that I could stick each end of a different styrofoam ball. Then I cut the eyes and mouth out of black paper and glued it on the smaller ball (the face). Cute the red felt into a scarf and glued it where the two balls were connecting. I cut small pieces of the pipe cleaner and stuck them on the sides of the bigger ball for his arms. Then I took another piece of the toothpick and stuck it at the very corner of the mouth (for Frosty's pipe). I tried to imitate Frosty's button nose with black paper, but didn't like the results, so I decided to use a carrot nose (N. didn't notice). I cut a long and narrow piece of orange paper and rolled into a "nose" like you see above, took another piece of the toothpick and glued it to the inside of the orange nose and stuck it in the face (poor Frosty was stabbed a few times during this process...). Then I did something similar to the pipe (cut orange paper, glue the end of the pipe toothpick to the inside).

The hat... It took me the longest, cutting out round pieces of felt for the bottom and top of the hat, then a long one for the wrap around. It looked like a top hat... I glued it to Frosty's head but miss N. wouldn't wait until it dried (I should have used a hot glue gun, maybe?) and the thing got destroyed very, very quickly.

But I really like how it came out anyway, and so after she played with him he proudly went into our balustrade's pine needles among the lights and other things.

Off with their heads!

Well, actually, I'd like to avoid heads falling off, and that's where I need help. 

I made these little guys a while back, but their heads aren't attached yet. I've been trying to avoid drilling, but maybe I just have to bite the bullet? 

Anyway, these are for my daughter. She loves penguins and she loves skeletons. Yeah. Blame this video for that last one. 

I got some wooden door knobs, painted them black with craft paint, then made their faces/skull, bodies. Finally I added a felt beak, feet, and small stickers for the pupils on the penguin. Then I tried to get their heads to stick. No dice. I've tried so many different ways to get these heads to stay, but they never stay for very long. 

Any suggestions? These guys need to get their heads screwed on right... Do I need to drill it into them?