Craftastic

Last Wednesday we got bit by the craft bug- which, I must say, was much more enjoyable than whatever bug had us around the throat on first day of the New Year.

Yosi got to use glue in the kids' playtime during Mom's Group. She loves glue. So happiness there.

My brother-in-law's birthday is this weekend [and, I trust he doesn't read my blog...] so my sister asked if I could experiment with getting a hand or foot print of Claire's that she could then incorporate into a birthday card. Not being a fully recovered perfectionist made the "experimenting" part difficult. Claire wasn't too thrilled with me by the end of our session, but she was ready for a nap.

I wasn't astounded by the resulting prints, because my skills were lacking, but I was giddy with thankfulness for the invention of Color Wonder paint.

I just smeared it on their hands and feet and pressed them on to Color Wonder paper. I didn't change their clothes or even bother pulling up their sleeves! No stains! And, I could let manage letting Yosi kinda go at it on her own, while trying to perfect Claire's prints, without worrying about how it was getting smeared all over non-paint-friendly surfaces. It's kinda pricey, so the paint was a Christmas present and the paper pads we have are gifts from benevolent friends. We've done alot more painting in recent weeks than we ever would have.

I think the markers are pretty genius too. They've prevented alot of drama around the house. I like that I can leave them out without worrying about visible wall graffiti, skin graffiti, furniture graffiti.. (you get the point). I wished they'd been around when I was a kid. I got in trouble alot for coming home with marker stains. I loved markers and I took me a LONG time to grasp the concept of coloring in such a way to keep the side of my hand, arm and elbow out of the freshly colored page.

As much as I love the new paint, we haven't abandoned the "old fashioned" kind- much to David's disappointment- he hates the lingering odor of tempra paint.
While Claire was napping a friend dropped by and noticed my pile of misc. Christmas goods by the door. Three paper grocery bags of decor I'd weeded out to be donated- old tinsel, garland, lights, knick-knacks and ornaments. On top was a partial set of clear glass bulbs. I'd gotten crafty with the other half in the years before Yosi was born, but lacking any inspiration and pessimistic about making time to do anything with them, I'd decided to pass them on to someone who might. BUT she suggested Marbelizing the insides with craft paint and so they stayed. Claire woke up soon after our friend left, but I was not deterred. I pulled her high chair up to the table and much to Yosi's delight, we went right to work.

 It was remarkably simple- I put in the paint and reattached the hanger and Yosi shook the ball around- with cautioning not to bang it on anything. The paint was thick enough that it didn't drain or drip out with the efforts of her little hand shaking, but with a few of the balls I needed to add a little more paint to ensure the entire inner surface was covered and with the strength of my shaking efforts I was glad I'd put down newspapers. The result was pretty pleasing! I prefer the ornaments in which we just used 2 colors of paint, particularly those with a bold primary and white. Now we have 6 new ornaments to hang on our tree.

In searching for a links to show you how to marbelize ornaments (not that you really needed it, b/c you definitely are smart enough to have practically done it without instructions) I found some great links with some really fun little ideas for more ways to get crafty with clear globes (here, here) AND a crafty way to recyle those old Christmas cards - something I'd been intending to research anyhow. yays!