Home Made Stamps from Craft Foam

I suppose this also counts as a recycled craft, as one of the most important elements for making these home made stamps is bottle tops.  We (well, I along with a husband who is beginning to suspect I’m crazy) saved the tops to pop bottles and milk jugs for a few weeks in order to have some ready to go when it came time for crafting our stamps.  When you actually get started, though, this craft takes pretty much no time at all.

plastic bottle topscraft foam shapesglueink padspaper for stamping Just a few items are needed to make your own home made stamps.

Glue craft foam shapes to the bottle tops. Smaller caps might only take one shape, while bigger ones can accommodate several.

Use your ink pad to cover the craft foam shapes on your home made stamp.

Have fun! We used ours to decorate some blank greeting cards, too.

What I Learned the Hard Way: We ended up using baby wipes to clean the stamps off before switching colors.

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Easy Kids Crafts - 4 Tips For Hours of Fun!

With so many electronic games on the market, it's easy to forget that kids love to have fun creating with little more than their hands, some junk and their very active imaginations. I bet you can remember making a 'car' out of a cardboard box and sitting in it for hours making 'brmm-brmm' noises until it fell apart! It was great fun, right?

Tip 1. Gather the essentials

Paper, crayons, safe scissors, and glue are a must. For paper, just look around the house and use any scrap you can find - you can use construction paper, plain typing paper, colored card and old envelopes. Junk mail and old magazines can make interesting art projects. Crayons and water-based paints are fantastic for younger children - make sure they are non-toxic though. For older children try washable dry-erase markers, watercolor pencils, and gel pens.

Tip 2. Don't forget recycled junk and scavenged objects

By recycled junk, I'm referring to empty cereal boxes, toothpaste boxes, cardboard from packaging, plastic containers, and even tin cans. Caution - If you let your kids craft with tin cans, you need to make sure the open edge of the can doesn't have any sharp edges. Simply file these off or squeeze them flat with a pair of pliers.

Scavenged objects are things like leaves, twigs, rocks, snakeskins, and other natural goodies a child might find whilst exploring the garden or local park. Perhaps there is a sheep farm nearby - if so, wool scraps can often be found stuck to the barbed wire fences. Any or all of these items can be used in kid crafts.

Tip 3. Collage

One of the most fun, popular and easy kids crafts is making a collage. Kids can glue anything down when making a collage - and often do! Use heavy paper for the background, and then let the creativity begin! For an extra challenge, build a collage around a theme, like food, animals, or babies. Young children will enjoy making collages out of glued down pasta, beans, popsicle sticks, leaves, and many other materials.

Older children might like to cut out details from magazine pictures and reassemble them in new and interesting ways. Search old magazines for just the right pictures, which they can cut out and glue to the background. They could cut out interesting words and headlines and add them as well.

Tip 4. Don't forget the glitter!

If your budget allows for only a few kid crafts splurges, remember that kids of all ages, really enjoy crafting artwork that includes glitter. But whether your kids young or older, encourage them to get their hands dirty and creative juices flowing the next time you hear the dreaded words "I'm bored!"

Get more great ideas and tips for easy kids crafts [http://spiritinternetmarketing.com/archives/easykidscrafts].

10 Reasons to Give a Kids Craft Idea For a Gift

1. A gift for any child could be a creative activity gift. Giving kids a craft gift will encourage and develop imagination.

2. It is so important for a child to be able to entertain themselves and allow them to sit and be creative. A craft activity will give a child the opportunity to be confident in working on their own, on a project.

3. A child can learn the rewards of creating or constructing, like making a puppet or building a wooden space rocket. Putting some effort into creating will lead to gaining a sense of achievement, which is a great feeling.

4. Kids Craft Ideas can teach children a new skill, like woodwork, knitting or sewing. All of which can develop into a useful tool.

5. After the pleasure of the child working on the activity or craft project the end result will also give pleasure and enjoyment, e.g. a decorated wooden treasure box - to keeps special bits and bobs in; a puppet or a soft toy, like a friendly knitted monkey, for hours of fun and cuddles.

6. By choosing a kids gift suitable for the child's age, children can improve an existing skill. Consider one year the child receives a basic sewing kit and the following year, you may choose to buy a more intricate kids sewing project, like a Stitch it Bedtime Bear Kit.

7. Kids Craft Kits will encourage children to spend time away from the TV and computer games.

8. Giving a Craft Kit will give an opportunity for a child to collaborate with a parent or grandparent, allowing the grown up to pass on some craft kit wisdom!

9. A Craft or Activities Gift can inspire a child into a new hobby, which can give endless pleasure for years to come, for example painting, sewing or woodwork.

10. A new skill gained may not just lead to a hobby, but even encourage ideas of a career, who knows by giving a child a Wooden Tool Set, you may well set them on the path of becoming a carpenter!

Read more about kids gift and crafts http://www.alphabetgifts.co.uk/Baby-Gifts

Swap a Smile Craft Auction

Who doesn’t love a good auction? Especially one for craft projects! This is going to be fun, and for such a good cause. Below you’ll learn a little more about Swap a Smile and this craft auction. I’m happy to be part of it, raising money to help someone smile. Thanks to Amy and Heather for putting this all together!

From Amy and Heather:

We as women and mothers delight in the joy of raising our families despite some of the frustrations and effort it takes.  We delight in hearing and seeing our children grow and learn, and we strive to put their needs before our own.  Their heartaches are OUR heartaches and their joy is OUR joy.  So imagine if you had a child who was beautiful and happy in everyway…but who did not have a beautiful outer physical smile to match the beauty of their inner smile?

Every three minutes a child is born with a cleft — often unable to eat, speak, socialize or smile. In some places these children are shunned and rejected. And in too many cases, their parents can’t afford to give them the surgeries they need to live a normal life.  Whereas, most of us are blessed to be living in Nations and countries where we have access to basic services and healthcare for our families which is there to help us help our children to lead healthy and normal lives.

We feel that women everywhere have the same basic tendencies to nurture and care for their families and feel that automatically connects us as social beings.  A group of us wanted to be able to use this crafting/DIY community and find some way to give back to others, to be involved in something that was bigger than us and our blogs, and do something to actually make a difference in the lives of women and children who are just like us.

Operation Smile is a charity organization healing children’s smiles, one operation at a time.

Operation Smile, is more than a charity organization. They are a mobilized force of medical professionals and caring hearts who provide safe, effective reconstructive surgery for children born with facial deformities such as cleft lip and cleft palate.  Each operation costs approximately $240.

With this is mind, we created “Swap A Smile” to raise funds through an online auction of DIY and Craft Bloggers’ past projects.  We would love for you to join us in our efforts to give back to others who need help. It only takes a little bit to go a long way. Our goal is to be able to give at least 5 children new smiles and help them to live the life they weren’t meant to live.

image source

We reached out to some various bloggers and asked them to help us out with and unique charity auction to raise funds in hopes to be able to help a few children by giving them a smile.Each of these bloggers have generously agreed to auction off an item that they have made recently and shared with their readers on their individual websites.  Below you will see a list of all of the items that are being auctioned off.  You can access each item by clicking on the link or the image and you will be redirected to that persons site and the item that they are auctioning off. 

The auction will begin immediately and will end on Friday, October 14 at 12:00 pm PST.  Each item has been assigned a shipping cost that will be added to the highest bidding price.  The item will go to the highest bidder.   You can bid on an item by leaving a comment on the individual’s post leaving us your name and the price you are bidding.

If you are not interested in bidding, but would still like to help out, we have also made it so that you can donate any amount to help us out with this great cause!  Every little bit helps!

We will be writing a follow up post and providing everyone with a screen shot of the PayPal account and keep you updated on our progress so you can be sure that your money is really going to support this cause. 

image source

For more information regarding Operation Smile and their mission statement and goals you can read about them on their site OperationSmile.Org.

_______________________________________________________________________

I am auctioning off a Hooded Bath Towel in a color of your choice!

Want to bid on this item?
Leave a comment on this post with your first name and bid price.
-An automatic shipping fee of $3.00 will be added to the price of the highest bidder-

Thank you so much for participating and helping to spread the word.
We are hopeful to help a few children get back their smiles.

Tagged as: charity

Marie LeBaron is the founder and managing editor of Make and Takes. Always having a love of crafts, she enjoys getting messy with glue and glitter. There’s always some sort of project going on, her kitchen counter is often cluttered with crafts. When she’s not crafting and creating with her kids, she loves to run, read, and blog! Read other posts by Marie

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Printable 4th of July Pinwheels

I’m really looking forward to the 4th of July this year, it will be the first year ever that I won’t be so overwhelmed with work that I can actually host a party and have some fun! I really love pulling out my pinwheel crafts – the kids just love them and they are really easy and fun to make. For more creativity, here is a blank pinwheel template (along with more colorful printable pinwheels!).

These 4th of July pinwheels would make a great party activity, camp craft, or simply summer rainy day fun!

4th of July Pinwheels to Print

Stars and Stripes 4th of July Pinwheel

4th of July Fireworks Pinwheel

Stars and Swirls Patriotic Pinwheel

American Quilt Pinwheel

Red White and Blue Stars Pinwheel

Red, White and Blue Pom Poms

4th of July Crafts and Ideas

4th of July Coloring Pages

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Scrap Craft: Piggy Ears for your Toddler

At our house, Dress Up is a favorite game.  While Miss Dot has plenty of costumes in the form of dresses, tiaras, wands, tutus, etc., sometimes you just want to be a pig.  We decided to get creative and make some pig ears one day, and we made it all from things we had around the house (including scraps!).

Pink feltWhite battingHeadbandScissorsGlue (we used hot glue, but if you’re more patient, your kiddo can totally do this with white glue) Scrap supplies for this toddler craft.

Cut the pink felt into two diamonds. We folded it in half and cut out a triangle. (You get to learn about two shapes at once!)

Cut two triangles, a bit smaller than the pink ones, from your scrap batting.

Add glue to one side of the diamond and wrap it around the headband.

Fold it in half and then add the other ear to bring your piggy costume to life.

Glue on the batting.

You can't tell me that's not the cutest thing you've seen all day.

What I Learned the Hard Way: We were totally making this up on the fly, so I didn’t think to measure the ears out in advance; and they’re a little on the big side.  One of my friends suggested that maybe we were playing Olivia from the children’s books.  Yeah…that’s…that’s totally what I was going for!

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Make Learning Shapes Fun With Kids Crafts

Learning shapes is a fundamental skill toddlers and preschool children learn early in life. Shapes are all around us in everyday items like the television, drinking glasses and even windows in our houses. But learning to recognize the many different shapes is not always easy for toddlers.

 

As parents, grandparents and daycare providers, we can help kids learn shapes while having lots of fun. Kids of all ages love to create and make things with their own hands and these kids craft ideas are a perfect way to incorporate some fun and lots of learning.

 

Shapes Crafts for Kids

 

When learning shapes, kids generally start with the basic shapes like circles, squares, triangles, etc. So think of anything that has these basic shapes and then turn it into a kids craft idea. For instance, using simple craft supplies like construction paper, scissors and glue you can make many different shapes crafts.

 

Here are some quick ideas for shapes crafts that you can do with your kids.

 

A House of Shapes

 

Cut out basic house shapes with different colored construction paper. Use a square or rectangle for the house, a triangle for the roof and several circles, ovals, smaller squares and rectangles for the parts of the house.

 

Then have the kids glue the house together on a piece of paper. They can use ovals, circles or whatever shape for the windows. Have them name the shapes as they glue their house together.

 

Animal Shapes Crafts

 

Kids can create many animals, insects and fish using some of the basic shapes. For instance, create a cute angel fish using triangle shapes to form the body, tail and fins. Penguins are all the rage right now and your kids can put one together with a few oval shapes and a circle for the head. Use black and white construction paper or craft foam and you can have a cute penguin in no time. Glue them to a popsicle stick and you have an instant puppet.

 

Inexpensive Crafts to Learn Shapes

 

Kids craft ideas do not have to be expensive or even use your typical craft supplies. Instead recycle some of your household items to make many different shaped crafts. Reuse an empty coffee can to make a simple drum. The circle shape of the can is perfect for creating a drum set. Just cover the can with construction paper, decorate and put the lid back on. Then use some wooden dowels or BBQ skewers and some wooden beads to create your drum sticks. If you don't have wooden beads you can even use marshmallows. Just stick the marshmallow on the end of the stick. You can even paint them which will help seal the gooey treat. Keep in mind, these drumsticks are not for eating. 

 

Use paper plates to create a king or queen's crown. Cut out several triangles from the middle of the plate and then decorate with glitter glue, beads and ribbon and they have a king or queen's crown they can wear.

 

Get out the old newspapers and create a Paper Mache craft. Paper Mache is a great way to create many different shaped crafts. You can create an oval shaped Easter egg by blowing up a balloon (into an oval shape) and then just start laying your Paper Mache together. Once everything is dried, just decorate and you have a finished craft. 

 

Shapes Activities

 

Learning shapes with kids crafts are a great way to get the children involved and having fun while they learn. You can also add many shapes activities for kids to help reinforce their learning.  Create several flash cards with different shapes and have them play "concentration" or matching the shapes with the cards.

 

You can even reinvent those old favorite childhood games like "red light, green light". Instead of the child calling out red light, green light, give them two shapes to call out and one shape would mean go and the other would mean stop. Another kid's activity idea for learning shapes is to place different objects around the house. Then ask your child to find all square shaped objects, and then circle shapes, etc.

 

Another great way to help with their learning is with fun songs or lyrics. Studies show that by adding a catchy tune or lyrics children are able to retain the information better. Rather you use kids craft ideas, activities, a catchy song or a combination of all of these, you and your kids will have fun while they learn their shapes.

Julie Barros is the author and creator of Cool Kids Craft Ideas. This is a fun site with lots of crafts including these shapes crafts for kids.