Cold as Ice

Brrrr!!! It certainly has turned cold today, so our craft is reflecting how we feel - Frozen.

Frozen themes only need two colours - blue, and white to give different shades of blue.

With one piece of blue paper I used masking tape to make snowflake shapes. For the other piece I cut a toilet roll to make a snowflake printer.

Despite having lots of different brushes, the Zebra insisted on painting her hands and feet. She would then stamp and pat the paper to cover it white...

Once it dried, I peeled off the masking tape to give lovely blue snowflakes against a snowy white sky 

Next, the Zebra had blue paint mixed into the bowl and was given the toilet roll stamper. Things started well and she made some snow prints, but it wasn't long before the toes got in on the action and the piece became a big blue smear! 

We did have a bit of artist temper half way through as the Zebra was clearly not happy with the direction her work was going, and demanded a clean sheet of paper...

The way things are feeling here, we may have some real snow in the next couple days! 

Christmas Cards

We made our Christmas cards a while ago but I've held back from posting so people could receive them first!

Cut an A4 piece of black card into 3. Bend it in half to make the card, and paint the front with PVA glue and then cover in glitter

Take some sheets of green card and swish patterns of glue all across

Shake glitter across all the glue

Leave everything to dry! Be warned, it gets messy as there is a lot of glitter.. 

Cut the green card into Christmas Tree shapes

Stick the tree to the card, make a star ontop with some glitter glue, and use cotton wool for the snow!

There was much more work from Mummy than the Zebra on these cards, but they look cute and there are many more years ahead for her to design her own!

Paper mâché. Just don't.

I have no idea what made me think this would be a good craft to mark the Zebra turning 18 months... It certainly isn't one we will revisit until she's much older. I'm usually fine with mess and chaos but this pushed it a bit to far!!

Having not done paper mâché since I was a child, I was a bit sceptical that one part flour to one part water would be sticky enough - so I had PVA on standby. Trust me, it is sticky and gloopy enough and we didn't touch the glue.

For the paper we used the reams of junk mail catalogues sat in the recycling!

To make things a little easier, blow the ballon up just bigger than a bowl, then wedge it in so it stays upright while making 

I think the first sign that this activity was not one for the Zebra was when she refused to rip any paper strips and just wanted to stick her head in a bowl.

Things improved a bit and the Zebra got stuck into the gloop, happy to dip in the paper and lay across the ballon like I showed her.

But the Zebra soon decided she would rather play in the mixture!

It wasn't long until the Zebra had the great idea to paper mâché herself instead... At this point I gave up and quickly did as much as I could before trying to bundle her to the bathroom. 

The mixture sticks to everything. And sets hard. It particularly sets well in hair.

The creation was left to dry in the window while we went away to brighton for a week.

After popping the ballon, we was left with a flimsy, ragged and holey bowl. At least things can't get any more messy when it comes to painting the thing...

Spoke to soon. By this point I just gave up and let her go for it, even throwing the Zebra a pot of glitter to go nuts with. 

Never again.