Emery Board Holder

I used this tutorial at Sherry's Simple Blog to make this cute emery board holder. This would make a nice little gift. They are easy to make.

I made a couple small adjustments. I used velcro as a fastener instead of buttons. Also, I decided to decorate it with flowers. Love this quick, cute craft!

Kids craft: pom pom animals

I am a big fan of simple, cheap kids crafts.

So here is another one we recently did!

The only ingredients needed:

• A bag of colorful pom poms (Dollar Store)
• A bag of googly Eyes (Dollar Store)
• Glue (washable!!)
  

My kids had SO much fun creating soft, furry creatures.

I started out by helping them, but realized I should let them do it.

The perfectionist in me often wants to 'help' and let them create something that lets pretty.
But I am trying to learn to let them do their thing, and not worry about it looking good.

They enjoy it, and it has been good for me to see that they can do it on their own, even if it looks a little (or a lot) different than I had in mind.

Kids craft: flower purse

Here is another quick craft that little girls will enjoy!

What girl doesn't 'need' a cute flower purse?

All you need is"

Small craft purses ($1 for 3 at JoAnn's)

Foam Daisy Stickers

Rhinestones

Use the flowers and rhinestones to embellish the purses!

My girls liked to stuff them with little books, notepads and crayons.

I have to say that they played with them much longer than it took to decorate the purses.

But I love to see how proud they are of their own creations!!

Dry Erase Board Tutorial

Today I made this cute mini dry erase board.

It is very quick, simple and fun.
And, you don't need a lot of supplies either.

So, let's start!

I used a simple plastic 5x7 frame from the Dollar Store.
But you can adjust this to work for any size frame you like.

Other supplies needed:

• Dry Erase Marker
  
• Background paper, same size as frame
• Burlap, a little smaller than frame (Or other paper. Make sure it is light enough that you can see the text you write on it with a dry erase marker.)
• Other patterned paper, flowers, ribbon, rhinestones, what ever you can come up with to decorate the frame
• Adhesive (Glue dots)
  

Begin by trimming the background paper.
Just cut it the same size as the paper that was in the frame when you bought it.

Next, cut the burlap a little smaller than the frame.
Then, pull out some pieces of burlap to create a fringed edge all the way around.

Adhere the burlap to the background paper.

Now the fun part begins.
Decorate the background with patterned paper, ribbon, etc.
Just make sure that you keep the 'bulky' parts, like flowers, rhinestones, etc. out.
You will glue these on top of the actual frame, not on the background.

Other things you could use are:
* fabric
*lace
*buttons
*beads
etc.

Put the background paper in the frame, and adhere the bulky items to the frame.
I really like to use mini glue dots, they seem to hold up pretty well!

Enjoy your work!

To make sure you will have your dry erase marker always handy, you could use a marker with a magnet in the lid, like the one pictured. Just glue a magnet on the frame, and you will have a place to keep the marker!

This works great to leave little messages for people
(or yourself, if there is something you don't want to forget)

Also, this is something that kids would enjoy to make, too.
They can just pick their own papers and decorations, and use it to draw on.
(Or leave messages for you.)

I linked this up to:

Glittery Shells

Today we picked up a couple items at the dollar store:

Glitter glue
&
a basket of shells.
I covered the table with paper, and let my girls decorate the shells with glitter glue.
They loved it, and could do it pretty much by themselves.
The only thing I had to show them was how they could use their fingers to spread the glue, sometimes they got a lot in one spot.
They were busy for more than one hour.

We put the shells on paper plates and put them outside in the sun to dry. They were so proud of their glittery shell collection.

The glitter glue was easily washed off their hands with soap and water. They used paper towels while they were working when they got too much stuff on their hands.
I love how simple (and cheap - $2) this craft is. You could do the same with rocks, or maybe use shells that you collected some other time.

Colorful Clowns

Recently I ran into a cute, Bulgarian website, called Krokotak. They have lots of great ideas, and thanks to Google Translate, I am even able to understand what they're writing.

This cute clown is one of the things I found there, it's a coloring page, in the shape of a circle. Once the picture has been colored, you can cut them out, and transform them into a 3-dimensional clown. It's just one piece, so no glue needed. Such a neat, smart craft!!

The download can be found here:

Black&WhiteClownColoringPage

Pre-ColoredClown

Let your kids color the pages.

Let them cut it out, only the black/white stripes, see picture above. (Younger kids will need assistance here.) Twist the legs and arms tightly, uncolored side of paper inside.

Let the clowns play in the yard!

These would make a really cute garland for a clown-themed kids birthday party.

I linked up to It's Our Long Story.