Making paper snowflakes and Vileda review

Wow, life has been utterly hectic lately!

I always find this time of year manic, not just from the usual Christmas lead up with school performances and extra activities, but from it being 4 out of 5 of our birthdays within 3 weeks. We gave the boys a party each, which for me means more cake making because I never just make things easy for myself. But if all that wasn't enough this year we also had a nasty sickness bug which wiped out at least one of us for over a week (James was the only one to escape!) and also a friend's wedding too!

The snow day just about tipped me over the edge when I thought either Sam's party would have to be cancelled or no one would turn up...thankfully though we carried on and enough could make it!

So after all those very busy weeks, I was quite glad when the Monday came around and the boys school although not fully shut (they'd said if it was too dangerous to come in not to worry...I didn't fancy a 50min round trip with the buggy in the snow) we took advantage of a possible lazy day in the warmth.

We were all shattered, especially Sam who was still getting over the lurgy and his birthday. By mid morning I'd actually had enough of them and thought we should at least try and do something festive...I'd been in full on birthday mode up until then!

I decided it had to be something very quick and easy. So we made good old fashioned snowflakes from white paper.

It's something I used to love doing as a kid, and still fun to do now as you never quite know how it will turn out.

Simply get a square piece of paper, fold into a triangle, and fold again to a smaller triangle, and then for a third time.

Open up the third fold.

Bring both side of the triangle to the middle fold and cut off the excess paper.

Now the fun part, cut your design.

Alex had free reign and did his own thing, Sam was more frustrated (due to tiredness) and needed more help so I drew some simple triangle shapes for him to cut. With his snowflake I made less folds too, for ease of him being able to cut it.

Look online if you want a more challenging design too.

Once they'd finished we layered them in so much glue they went soggy lightly put some PVA glue on them and sprinkled with some glitter. We couldn't find silver glitter so made do with some bronze coloured one.

Most people would cringe doing this sort of thing at home with the glitter, but it's super easy to tidy with the right tools.

We had a Vileda 3 Action Broom to try out, now normally I'm not a great lover of brooms as I find they don't pick up the small bits of leave a bit of a trail behind them.

Once the boys had finished and there was the mess of the paper, glitter, and their snack all over our kitchen floor (which is a horrible vinyl...) I was thinking that the broom wouldn't be great if I'm honest as I never have much luck with brooms.

But this one was different, because of the 3 different brushes within the broom head it picked up everything really well and with ease. Even most of the glitter moved with it, and we all know how hard it is to get rid of glitter!

So if you're in need of a cleaning aid this Christmas this broom is brilliant for the quick jobs after crafting, baking, or when you get that call from an unexpected visitor saying they will be round in 5!

This is especially handy for us at the moment with Zachary crawling, I don't always have time to grab the hoover so can do a quick clean of our kitchen and hallway if need be (which quite frankly with 3 boys and a husband in the trade it's always needed)!




The broom was given to us to review but all thoughts and opinions are true and our own words

Easter crafting: shaving foam marbled paper and Easter hats with Marigold.

We've been busy crafting this past week ready for Easter.

Spring is a great time of year to craft, the sun is out and it's time for lots of bright colours too!

On a day where Alex had gone to a friend's house to play after school I took it as a good opportunity to do some crafting with Sam one-to-one. Which I will admit I've not done enough of over the years!

We collected some cards and papers, chose the colours we wanted and bought some shaving foam. (Please read the bottle when buying...we bought the gel one first time and had to head back to be able to make this project)!

How to make shaving foam marbled paper:

Things you need

• Shaving foam
• Paint (at least 3 colours)
• Thick paper or card
• Cocktail sticks/kebab skewers/fork
• Tray with foil (saves on lots of washing)
• Ruler or something else to use as a scraper

How to make it:

• Make sure you clear a space, thanks to Marigold we had plenty of sponges and cloths to wipe down the table and kitchen worktops. 
• Wear gloves if you want to...this would be advisable if you wanted to use food colouring instead of paints.

• Set up the trays, and squirt a generous amount of the shaving foam all over. 
• Choose which colours you want to marble together and dab small blobs all over. 
• Using the skewers etc, make patterns with the paint. Tip: start off with bigger gaps, when you reuse the same shaving foam over a few times you will get a 'tighter' marble affect anyway. 
• Once happy with pattern made place a piece of paper on top. Don't press too hard, but enough for the paint to take. 
• Gently peel off the paper, place on the table.
• Using the ruler scrape the excess shaving foam off, press firmly when doing this.
• Leave to dry
• Put the excess shaving foam back in the tray and mix with the skewer again, repeat until you want to stop. 

I will admit this is quite a messy make! But it is fun, and I will also admit that we aren't too precious about our table as it's on it's last legs. Again having Marigold to help with the clean up was great-as you can see our table needed it!

We actually used these papers this weekend, the boys used templates and cookie cutters to cut out spring shapes for their Easter hats. 

These were really simple to make as it was simply a piece of card for each hat, cut into 3, 2 stapled to fit their heads, and then the extra piece bridged over the top. The 'grass and box of carrots' were from Asda at a £1/e I thought these were pretty reasonable! Using my glue gun I got them to tell me where they wanted their shapes placed.  

Hope you enjoyed this, let us know if you will be crafting this Easter!

This is a collaborative post with Marigold

PinAddicts Pinterest challenge- Another Personalised Christening Gift

Well it was James' youngest two brothers' Christening this Sunday and for weeks I have been struggling to think of what we could buy them.

Me and James were the Godparent's to one of his brothers too so wanted to get something nice.

With E being 8 and T being 5 we couldn't get the normal sort of Christening gifts that you would be likely to buy for a baby's Christening.

After making this Christening gift a couple of months ago I thought about doing something similar...but then though that might be a bit babyish. So instead I decided to look up their name meanings.

Bingo! Both religious meanings which was the icing on the cake for me and gave me the kick up the bum to figure out what to do (and get pinning)!

I found these ideas:

Both pins are originally from Not on the highstreet where I did a LOT of browsing (but left too late to order anything as per usual)!

I knew I wanted to use box frames and was quite excited and annoyed to find out that The range were half the price than Hobbycraft who I have used many times before now (I know where I will be going from now on)!!

I have loads of paper stock, but had no good sized alphabet stamps so also got some in The range for about £8 and a pack of 3 ink pads for a few pounds, (again bargain)!

I recently bought a scoring board at a Stampin' Up party so wanted to get to use that, so for the background paper simply scored straight lines all along it. Then I stamped the names with blue ink and then their meanings underneath. 

I felt it was missing something so I searched high and low until I found the clip I'd found weeks ago and forgotten to pin to make scored 3D stars. I loved this! So after a few practices made some with some silver card and  stuck them with double sided sticky foam. 

Quite pleased with the results and so were James' parents even if the boys weren't too fussed! And the day was beautiful the sun made it all the more perfect too. 

I've been told I could make these to sell, and to be honest I'd love to, would you buy things like this if so how much would you be prepared to pay? I'd really love to set up my own craft business instead of going back to part time retail work, but am I just being silly? Would really appreciate some opinions on that :)

Don't forget to check out the other entries at pinaddictschallenge.com

Play dough patterns

We got the play dough out that I made the other week again.

I wanted to something different than our usual 'lets get the cutters and rollers out and play' sessions so decided to include our plastic animals and dinosaurs.

I wanted Alex to see the different patterns and shapes they would make when pushed and pressed into the dough. I wanted him to try and see the different shapes of the footprints too.

First we just created a bit of a scene with the play dough being the ground and I just let him have a bit of free play.

Then I encouraged him to make foot prints and imprints of the whole animals. We talked about the different textures they left, for instance, rough, scaly, smooth, and talked about the different shapes, like the snakes being wiggly not straight, but it having straight lines for it's pattern.

This interested him for a short while and I must admit didn't entertain him for as long as I thought it would.

But he continued to then play in his own way, rolling up dinosaurs in the dough and rescuing them by digging and cutting them out with a plastic knife. This was great fun for him!

I then cut out some face shapes that happened to be on the back of one of Alex's many Easter egg boxes, and he had loads of fun making funny faces with this.

At dinner time the animals were still out, James then asked questions to Alex about whether the animals/dinosaurs ate meat or vegetables, surprisingly Alex got quite a few of the answers right and I would never have thought of asking this myself so it was nice for some new ideas!

Messy Play: Gloop

We make gloop on Friday, it's the first time I have ever made, ever played, and ever introduced it to Alex.

I must admit I was quite mesmerised by myself and Alex absolutely loved it.

It's an incredibly easy craft to make, do and clean up too!

All you need is:
Cornflour
Water
Food colouring
Some utensils/bowls to play with.

We were talking about how it felt, hard, sticky, then runny and squishy. 

Alex did a bit of role play, we pretended to scoop ice creams, making/icing cakes. Alex spent ages 'spreading butter' too. Once I got one of our Easter plastic eggs we filled it up and watched the gloop drip into the jug or tray like breaking a real egg for a cake. 

Alex spent well over an hour playing with the gloop, and he even asked this morning if we could play it again-so it must have been a success! He played with it quite tentatively at first as I think he was unsure, and a bit uneasy of getting too messy but it wasn't long before he was covering his arms up with the gloop and squishing it through his fingers.  

Even the gloop was smiling (which wasn't even intentional just found it like that)!

If the gloop started thickening too much we just added more water & vice versa.

Found a good page for explaining why gloop is like it is here the video looks fun too!

Linking up with Messy play for Matilda Mae & Messy Monday's.

Pinaddicts Pinterest Challenge-personalised letter box frame Christening gift

It was my best friends little girl's Christening today and I wanted to make a nice keepsake gift for her. I knew it my head what I wanted to do so looked for some things in Pinterest for a bit of help.

Source

One Sunday recently I managed a lovely browse around Hobbycraft and bought a white box frame and some lovely coloured felts. Typically I left it to the last minute to make the present so the last few days I've been sewing fast, and typically the first box frame back wouldn't come out so it was another trip to Hobbycraft to change it (also came back with a huge Swiss roll tin for £3-bargain)!

I cut the E out of pink felt and stitched around it, and glued this onto the cream square of backing felt. Then backstitched 'is for', and then satin stitched the name 'Ella' - this is the first time I have used this stitch and I wish I'd come across it before! Then I cut a heart out of the pink felt and sewed that onto the backing. 

My friend loved it, I think it is so nice to be able to make something personalised and handmade for occasions like this-and no risk of doubling up on gifts!

                                   

Marbled egg cards-Happy Easter!

This morning Alex made the Easter cards from the painting we did yesterday

I drew a big egg shape on some of the paintings and Alex cut around the shape, I was really impressed with how well he did with cutting around the line, it was funny to watch him concentrating so much and with every movement of the scissors he opened his mouth up and down.

Concentrating

Cutting around the egg shapes

Some of the marble paintings we did yesterday

We stuck the eggs shapes onto some sugar paper.

The final cards

And Alex tried to write his name at the bottom of them too. 

'Alex'

We only made two cards today as he got bored of doing it, so will try and get another couple done in the morning as we haven't seen James' parents today. 

 

Marbled eggs

Today we got the paints out, I'll admit I haven't had the paints out for one whole year which I am quite ashamed to admit.

Alex LOVED it and I felt quite bad I hadn't done anything like this with him for that period of time, the things I would have done had I had not felt so ill during my pregnancy last year :( feel like he's really missed out and I didn't give him the attention he needed.

Anyway...

I chopped one side of the cereal box off to make a deep tray, placed paper into it and blobbed paint randomly on the paper. We then put some marbles in the box, Alex was first unsure of what to do but soon got the hang of it and loved making lots of patterns.

This first attempt was so wet with paint I placed another piece of paper on top to make a print of it too!

Then after we used the marbles that were covered in paint on a plain piece of paper without any added paint which gave really good patterns and not too thick and gloopy. 

Then we put the finger paints to good use, Alex wanted to make lots of lines with them rather than printing. 

We have some great painting tools from ELC, he really liked the circle stamper-as you can see he was moving fast!

Who needs finger prints when you can use your whole hand?

Making lots of 'dots.

Messy hands. 

We had a great time, I really liked using marbles and actually that part of the painting was not too messy if you wanted to try it. 

We will be cutting the paper into egg shapes tomorrow and sticking them onto cards to give to the Grandparents tomorrow. We couldn't do it tonight as the paint was still so wet at 7pm and Alex was in bed way before then as he was so tired!

So look out for the finished results tomorrow!

UPDATED:

Linking up with the fab new linky by Jennie from Edspire in memory of Matilda Mae, there are some great ideas, so head on over!

Our final cards can be found on some of our later post which have some better photos of painting results!

                                   

Shaving foam Easter egg marbling

Last Easter I grabbed a load of craft supplies and put them outside for me and Alex to do some marbling for our Easter cards. It was probably the last messy thing I did with him before feeling the side effects of pregnancy-how awful it has taken a year for me to get back into crafting with him again. :( I never got around to blogging about it so I am using the photos from last year. I cannot believe we were out in shorts and t-shirts outside in the sun the same time last year-really hoping spring kicks in soon!

Marbling with shaving foam is incredibly easy and leaves great results.
1.You need some sort of tray to squirt out and cover with shaving foam, then use either food colouring and/or paint and blob either one side or all over (I think if I remember correctly it worked much better with the paints).

2. Using pencils/paint brushes/cardboard swirl patterns into the shaving foam and paint mixture creating wonderful patterns.

3. Once you are happy with the patterns place a piece of paper (we found normal white printing paper worked best) on top and lift it up carefully, it might look like a mess now.

4. Use a strong long piece of cardboard or ruler and scrape the shaving foam mixture off the paper.

5. Leave to dry you should be left with something looking like this...

I then cut the paper into egg shapes, Alex also had some practise at cutting with his scissors too, I was very impressed at his co-ordination doing so.

We then stuck these onto some card, I had picked up some Easter foam shapes from ELC  that Alex stuck on too, unfortunately I didn't take a photo of these. 

This was Alex after doing the marbling last year, he wanted to just paint his hands and do hand prints!

Play dough fun

Today I made play dough for the first time!

I have fond memories of my Mum making play dough for me as a child, I always loved playing with it, and remember sitting at my red ELC table making cakes, shapes and worms/snakes of course.

It's something I have been meaning to make for some time, but Alex had been given some play dough which unfortunately for me lasted longer than I thought it would (as in more than a year)!

Alex was so excited this morning as I was making it, it was a great bribe for him to get dressed quickly that's for sure!

I found the recipe over on the imagination tree and used the top one, as I didn't have any cream of tartar I used juice of a small lemon which seemed to do the trick as the play dough came out great to work with. (Thanks to jenniferslittleworld for mentioning that blog on your last post-helped me a lot once I'd remembered about it)!

There is something very satisfying when kneading warm play dough and mixing in the colours-ok so maybe I was slightly excited too!

I got out some of Alex's plastic cooking toys like chopping boards, knife, rolling pin as he has acquired a few different sets over the years, and gathered up lots of cutters.

He wasn't too fussed though and mainly just wanted to do his own thing, he literally spent all day playing with it apart from lunch, baking a cake with me (later post), and a quick half our playing some cbeebies games, and the last thing he said tonight was "can me play mellow play tomorrow" for some reason that's what he calls it, despite me saying it's called play dough 50 times already today :)

Even Sam wanted to see what all the fun was about

Linking up with Messy Mondays at theygrowsoquick