Valentine Animals

These lovely ideas come from iheartartsandcrafts and firefliesandmudpies. We love how the hearts can be used as feathers or spikes depending on how you glue them on. We'll be making them at Toddler group next week as Valentine's Day is in the middle of half term this year. Jessica made the peacock and hedgehog for people at nursery today...

Nest Building Again

The combination of the garden whispering to me that Spring is coming, the RSPB big garden birdwatch this weekend and our installation of a new nest box on Sunday has got me thinking about the birds this week. We're also trying to complete our RSPB Bronze Wild Challenge where we have to complete different tasks about either helping or experiencing nature. One of these tasks is to upcycle some of your rubbish so we thought we'd upcycle an old magazine into a nest or bowl or hat depending on your perspective!

It will probably end up as a bowl for pompoms or feathers in Jessica's play shop I think. We didn't use nearly as much paper this time, we've got gaps and have not trimmed the edges so it's definitely more nest like than our first attempt last Easter. We did it all in one go and it dried within an hour or two - fabulous! 

Hot Glue and Pastel Thank You Cards

So, we opted for hot glue flowers and artists pastels for the next batch of thank you cards. Chalk works just as well but I have pastels by me and the colours are much more vivid. Jessica loves creating these pictures and they really don't take much time at all.

Marbled Thank You Cards

Having failed to post about the thank you cards we made after Christmas (which were inspired by a punched paper thank you card I saw on the Hobbycraft blog) we are now onto the production of thank you cards for the kind and generous people who have spoilt Jessica rotten for her fourth birthday.

This afternoon we opted to do some marbling on our cards, which we haven't done for a while. Unfortunately my marbling inks are past their best by some margin so our colour palette was very restricted and I don't think we'll be able to use the red again either but hey ho. Jess enjoys the marbling process very much so these were both fun and fast to make. Once the cards had dried she stamped the message on each one.

I wonder what she'll decide to do on the remaining cards we need to make...

Silhouette Suncatchers

Happy New Year everyone! It's back to Toddler group next week so I spent this afternoon preparing for our first craft of 2018. We haven't made suncatchers or used sticky-backed plastic for a while so this week I'm mixing it up a little with silhouette suncatchers. Sticking without the mess of glue; it's always a winner for me. I've cut out black silhouettes of birds and cats. No prizes for guessing which one Jessica will choose to do but here is my example...