Fall Trees

Over our vacation our tree lost many many of its leaves. I had the girls pick them all up off the floor promising a project. I drew a tree trunk out for them and let them go at it with glue sticks and their leaves. A perfect project for fall even though all of the leaves came from inside.

Edith really enjoys using the glues stick so she glues and I stick leaves.

Sand Harmonograph

I had kept this super expensive box from moving because I knew it would be useful one day. I finally found a great use for it, making a simple and contained harmonograph. I found a great idea perusing the Internet of making one with paint. After many failed attempts at getting paint to make lines instead of drops and splatters I asked my Dad for advice. He suggested sand. We have a few jars of colored sand and a plethora of contact paper so I tried that. It worked wonderfully.

The box has a built in bar that I hung our applesauce cup from using yarn and gimp(rexlace). I poked a hole through the applesauce cup using a screwdriver. I taped a few pennies around the cup to weight it down a bit. Then I cut contact paper to fit and placed in the bottom of the box. I had cut an access panel in the side of the box so the girls could see what was happening. I should have made this a tad bit bigger to aid in removing the projects easily. Place sand in the cup and let the girls swing away. Two colors of sand worked great. After a few swings we spooned some white sand over the entire drawing so it would not be sticky. This helped keep the design because I had to fold the contact paper to get it out of the access panel and I didn't want the extra colored sand moving around and wrecking the design.

The girls loved it and I will probably attempt to figure out the right paint consistency. Edith did need some prompting to let go of the string so that it could actually draw a pattern. Overall a big hit.

Addie's is pictured first and then Edith's.

Touchy Feely Art

This week for school one of our projects was to make our own feely page like in so many picture books. Here are the steps.

1. Pick out a desired fabric. Draw a picture on cardstock that the fabric will go into.

2. Cut out a hole in the picture. I used my handy dandy ceramic cutting tool for this.

3. Use an embellishment glue stick to stick down fabric to the back and then glue a second sheet of cardstock over this. Use staples for thick fur fabric.

4. Seal edges with colored masking tape.

Trekker made a cat, Addie made a circle/egg, and I helped Edie make Cookie Monster. Trekker was definitely the most excited about this project.