Making stamps to paint with

Just thought that I would share with you a simple idea that we tried today.  All that we did was stick the fun foam stickers to card paint them then use them as stamps.  Little Boo really enjoyed it and got some great prints. 

I hope that you like the idea.  I look forward to reading any comments people may have.

Mother's day card idea

Little Boo always sends her Nannies a home made card for Mother's Day.  This idea came about when Little Boo had my watercolours out a few weeks ago, she started to paint her hands so I decided to make good use out of the hand prints to make some little hand print plants for Nannies cards. Once Little Boo had done her hand print I helped her to add the petals by finger painting.  Lots of fun and very easy to make.  Enjoy!

Spin art

Recently we went to Walsall Art Gallery and Little Boo really liked one of the works of art by Damien Hirst which was one from his spin art series.

Due to this we set to work doing a activity that I have had in mind for ages! I brought a salad spinner from Ikea a few months ago which was cheap.  I brought this with the intention of using it for spin art and it is so simple!

All you need to do is cut the cardboard to size, pop it in the salad spinner, squirt the paint onto the card, place on the lid (very securely) then spin!

We started adding glitter and glitter paint in as well and this makes the end result look really nice and sparkly!

I have an idea in mind to use these for a Christmas project so watch this space!

Painting leaves with feet, sponges and spray bottles.

Today we decided to have a day in crafting! This week we have been so busy getting out and about that it was a much needed day to stop and relax (well as much as you can with a 2 year old) the day was actually far from relaxing but was great! Therefore, I have a few activities to share with you all.

 The first few hours was spent outside playing and using our spray bottles! The idea was to get the outline of the leaves by using them.  However, this idea did not work for the desired outcome but we still had fun using the spray bottles and ended up with a very pretty piece of paper! The paper that we are using is wall paper lining brought from the £1 shop this is a wonderfully cheap alternative to the usually very expensive rolls of easel paper and much thicker.  The leaves were stuck down using masking tape folded back on itself.  I used this as the tape is not too sticky and does not damage the leaves when they are peeled off this way the leaves can be reused.

The next thing that we tried was sponge painting.  Little Boo was unsure about this to begin with but once I showed her what would happen she was really engaged and excited to see the results.  I have recently brought Little Boo the block paints that are in the picture.  I realised when she used these type of paints at a local craft day that it encouraged her to mix the colours and she loved doing it.  I then saw the paints in Wilkinsons for £2 and could not resist, she loves them! 

Now for the most fun activity painting with feet! Little Boo LOVES me painting her feet to do footprints and she loves to paint my feet as well. First of all we started off just doing footprints.  I then decided to try out the idea with the leaves and it worked.  Little Boo loved it as well.  I did join in as well and ended up having my feet painted and most of my legs! We did this activity in the kitchen this way I can just clean the tiles as it can get quite messy.

Little Boo peeling away the leaf she was so excited to see what it looked like . 

The finished picture was lovely and if you look you can see the outline of her little feet.  

Painting with items from our nature walk

To make use of those wonderful leaves and twigs and nature walk items I decided to do some painting with Little Boo using them.  She always gets really excited when I mention painting so this was a great hit which ended up being very messy.  It does not have to be messy but Little Boo decided that she also wanted to paint herself as well!

I realised when doing printing the less paint that you have the better.  Sometimes this is difficult with Little Boo as she is always keen to blob on loads of paint. So to overcome this I put the paint on a big tray then spread it thinly and did not get out the paint brushes. This worked effectively as it enabled us to mix the colours effectively.

Instead I made our own paint brush out of a twig and dried pine needles and which was really effective and looks like a mini broomstick. This made Little Boo laugh as we are reading Room on a Broom (Julia Donaldson) at the moment and she said that she was painting with her broom.

We used all the items we collected and it was interesting to see all the different prints that could be created with them.

We decided that we wanted to roll the conker across the page and watched as it made a paint trail.  The leaves we had worked OK but really we should have done this activity as soon as we had collected them or the day after as some were too dry to do an effective print with them.

We are out tomorrow and will be collecting more leaves as I have a few more ideas to try out and want to try the leaves when they are not so dry.  I am sure that Little Boo will not mind doing some more painting!

Incy Wincy

Little Boo loves the song Incy wincy spider so we decided to make a spider. Little Boo's Nanny gave us egg cartons so I  decided we should make the spider using these.

We did start off by using a brush but Little Boo decided that she wanted to use her hands to paint the egg carton black. 

Adding googly eyes and legs and you have a wonderful spider.  We had to make a Mommy, Daddy and a baby one. 

Nanny and Grandads birthday surprises!

I have loads of creative ideas to share with you as it was my Mom's Birthday yesterday and Dads Birthday today :) Due to this both me and Little Boo have been really busy doing loads of crafts and cooking to give them some home made presents! I love giving home made presents as I know that many people (especially my Mom and Dad) love to receive them.

We made a cake which was nicknamed hedgey from Little Boo! This hedgehog cake I found on the nature detectives website .  The fact that chocolate buttons were used was a massive selling factor to make the cake.  It was a massive success and Little Boo loved making it. 

We also made Nanny a flower window box this was made using 

• Egg carton
• acrylic paint 
• pipe cleaners
• beads
• floral Oasis 
• cardboard box
• lots of stickers 

These are the cut up egg cartons 

Little Boo painting the egg cartons

Once they are dry pierce a hole in the middle and thread the pipe cleaner  through.

Add beads to the middle as well so that the flowers stay in place. We had decorated the box with loads of stickers and I had cut oasis to fit the box.  This just left Little Boo to place the flowers in.

Little Boo also made Nanny and Grandad their cards.  Nanny's was an idea that I have pinned on Pinterest.  This was two hands that contained a concertina in between.  The hands say I love you then you open the hands and it reads "this much"Little Boo also wrote Happy Birthday in the centre as well. She wanted to use her new stamps so this was a great opportunity. 

To make Grandads card Little Boo used lots of her sparkly paint this was squirted out and added sequins. 

She then made a frame with lollipop sticks and added stickers.  I found a nice picture of Little Boo and stuck this behind then added this to the glittered card (when it was dry it took two days!) 

My Dad loves to have a cake or a biscuit with his cuppa so we made "Grandad's treats to have with a cuppa" We made some cookies and krispie cakes I love making rice krispie cakes they are so easy and so tasty!

Little Boo adding the rice krispies to the chocolate

Grandad loved his treats!

Hope that you like these ideas my Mom and Dad loved them all! 

learning the letter b

Today we have been learning the letter b in a very messy and fun way! I hope that you like some of the ideas.

We have been trying out masking tape resist painting.  This is basically where you place masking tape in an area where you do not want there to be paint. It works wonderfully as Little Boo could just go crazy with the paints and then like magic when the paint was dry a letter b appears when the tape is peeled off.

The letter b completed 

I also made a letter b template this was to draw around but Little Boo had other ideas and we used it as a stencil instead.

Recently we made salt dough letters using the play dough cutters so have painted some of these to place in the initial sounds tub.

Little Boo loves anything to do with threading so I quickly made this threading letter b. I was really pleased that she enjoyed it so much.  It was really simple to make I just used mount card and my crop-a-dile to make the holes. Little Boo is using some shoe laces for threading which Nanny picked up from the £1 shop. This could be a brilliant busy bag idea I think.

Little Boo did a great job after showing off her handy work to Daddy she had to show him how she did it. 

I found loads of inspiration through Pinterest (which I am addicted to).  Firstly thank you to Hands on as we grow for this wonderful alphabet maze idea .  We just tweaked the idea slightly as Little Boo has not yet learnt all the alphabet.  We used the idea but used only the letters we have covered (those in her name) and set it up like a bus stop idea where the bus had to "go to letter a" then it had to go to letter s etc. It worked more as a letter recognition game this way.  My worry dolls also made great passengers that were counted on the bus.

From Pinterest I found  DIY letter blocks idea from Simply Real Moms  this shows the uppercase  letter building but after a bit of searching I found the lowercase letter templates on Tired, need sleep thank you so much for this great template as it saved me so much time!  These templates took minutes to print and cut out.  I decided to cut them out of fun foam as they can then be used in the bath or on windows around the house.

Thought I may mention again the alphabet game which was on our No more odd socks post.  This is a game whereby the child throws a ball or in our case the odd sock balls we had made at the letter that is shouted out.

Learning letters the letters are written in chalk on the slabs. 

Not forgetting our initial sound tub which this week consists of a bobble, the letter b (salt dough), a toy bear, toy bus, toy banana, small ball and a massive button donated from my Mom.

I have set up a Pinterest board all about learning letters please feel free to follow.  Hope that you all have a great weekend.