Welcome!

Hello!

Welcome to my little corner of the internet. I am constantly coming across little projects that I think are neat, and I wanted a place to share them.

Here is my humble little tutorial site. I hope you find something useful!

Hungry Caterpillar Crayon Art.

I forgot to put this in the Caterpillar room!

It's as simple as it seems. Glue gun crayons to the canvas, melt with heat gun (or hair dryer, but heat gun works better), cut out and glue on pictures from a dollar store greeting card!

DIY Hungry Caterpillar Room.

I've been wanting to decorate my son's room with a Hungry Caterpillar theme since I made him a Hungry Caterpillar quilt almost a year ago. I finally got around to it!

View from the door.

Made with a cheap poster frame (plastic), and a bulletin board set from Scholar's Choice.

Made with a greeting card from Chapter's, and stickers from Walmart.

The border is a bulletin board border from Scholar's Choice, the pictures go with the bulletin board set from Scholar's Choice, and the hanging butterfly is a hand puppet. Let the wall damage under the pictures be a lesson to you, do NOT use mounting tape on your walls! I didn't bother plastering, as I wanted to get this done, but I see a lot of plastering in my future the next time I pick a new theme for his room!

Little reading nook. The pillows are made with Eric Carle fabric from the Eric Carle Museum, and I cut pillows in half to fit in the pillow cases I made. The big caterpillar actually comes with a blanket in it, but I forget the company name. Please excuse the state of the rug, I took photos before vacuuming! 

Self-explanatory what I did here. I did use 2 shades of acrylic green paint, and green glitter paint for the green letters, if you're curious. (Every time I redo his room, which is a lot, I repaint these letters.)

A collage made with the rest of the bulletin board set from Scholar's Choice. It was in a really nice looking frame, but before I took a picture, we heard a crash and shatter. It is now frame-less. My husband just informed me that the poster itself has just fallen off the wall. I guess I need something other than the free Scotch document mounting squares!

Ikea toy box (which also gets repainted whenever the room changes), and a postcard glued on. This box is strong, my 43 pound son stands on it daily.

The quilt and pillow I made. Not going to lie, this quilt took several hundred hours to make. I hand traced, cut, and sewed all of those circles (a few times, they're ironed on then sewed!) There are about 1,000 of them. It took MANY lunch hours. If you're inclined to make this, may I suggest the lovely Eric Carle material :). The pillow is just a cover for our old nursing pillow that my son sleeps on. It was very easy to make.

I ran out of paint before I got to the cupboard doors, but I decided I like it two-toned :). The back of the room door is also blue.

The curtains are an $8 shower curtain cut into 3 pieces.

The longest wall.

Butterfly! He keeps asking me to take it down so he can sleep with it. I said I would try to figure out a way to get it so it can come down. He suggested scissors.

For the outside of his door. (Another thing that gets repainted often).

Wash cloth caterpillar was $3 at Winnner's, and the box is from a set of dishes given to him by his Aunt.

Of course, it took all of 3 minutes for Batman to make an appearance :).

Stamps Using Plastic Cups and a Glue Gun.

I went to do an art lesson with my class the other day, and realized I didn't have any sun or moon stamps for my sun and moon stamping lesson!

Pinterest to the rescue! I don't remember specifics, but I recalled seeing something about making stamps with a glue gun. I grabbed some plastic snack cups, yanked the glue gun from the art cupboard, and 10 minutes later, we were ready to roll (AND I now had several sets of stamps, so more kids could do it at once!)

The steps are pretty straight-forward: Turn cups upside down, glue pattern on.

The clear cups were flat on the bottom, so they were easy. The dixie cups had a lip, so I had to add extra layers of glue to make sure it was raised above the lip.

I found it worked best if I did a layer of glue, let it harden, then went over it again with glue. If I tried to do more layers too quickly, the glue just spread out.

I then laid out some paint on paper plates, and they used them as regular stamps. I don't think ink would work well since it likely wouldn't stick to the glue properly, but you can try it!

Turned out as well as any other stamp kids use, I think! Would have turned out better if I'd taken more care to get the glue more even.

Once it dried, I added the poem we were learning that day.

Crayon "Stained Glass".

Using crayons to create beautiful window decorations.

What you need:
Crayons, cut up into as small pieces as you can (you only need about 2 full crayons per project).
Cardstock
Scissors
Iron (one you don't mind getting messy)
Wax paper
Newspaper
Stapler or glue

Lay newspaper out to protect your table, thick enough it won't soak through. Cut a piece of wax paper to size, and fold it in half.

Open up the wax paper.

Get out your cut crayons.

Spoon/arrange some cut crayons on one side of the wax paper, and refold it so the crayon pieces are sandwiched between the wax paper.

Put 1-2 pieces of newspaper over the wax paper and crayons. Iron until completely melted (you'll feel that it's flat).

Be careful, melted crayon tends to leak out.

Take off the newspaper, and remove the wax paper (be careful, it's hot).

Let cool and dry (it doesn't take long).

Cut out your shape from the cardstock, and staple or glue it to the wax paper.

Trim off excess wax paper.

If you're hanging it somewhere that both sides will be shown, attach another cut out of cardstock to the back.

And you're done!

Now hang it in the window.

Some other ones we did.

Tie-Dye Watercolour.

After seeing this post on Pinterest (everything starts on Pinterest!), I decided to change it a little to do as a Valentine's Day craft with my kids.

We simplified it, and did heart flowers.

The kids had such fun doing it, that we decided to try other stuff. We made stationary, and the kids wrote letters to people they loved.

Here's how we did it:

First, mix water and food colouring. Using a medicine dropper, squeeze little droplets all over your paper.

Then, iron directly onto the paper until just damp. Make sure to use an old iron you don't care about! Be careful, it splatters hot water as it heats. Before drying completely, inspect your work.

We decided it needed more green. We added more drops, and ironed again. 

This time, iron until completely dry (I found turning it over and ironing the back helpful too.)

We experimented with different patterns, like a spiral,

A heart,

And a butterfly...which we decided needed a face :).

We tried a variety of different things (including just sticking a bunch of stuff in the middle). The kids had a great time seeing how they turned out, and had fun writing on their stationary :).