paint cut paste

we’ve yet to really begin valentine creation over here. generally, we wait for N’s birthday party to be over before we go on to prepare for valentine’s day. but there is one little heart craft i’ve indulged in, because, as my pinboard says, i’m a sucker for garland. and paint chips. and hearts. and easy things to sew.

i pinned this about 6 months ago, originally from ohcrafts.net. so i’ve been psyched to do it for a while, and tiz the season now. i grabbed my trusty heart hole punch and some paint chips from my stash (yes, all of us crafty mom bloggers have paint chip stashes. we’re a weird breed.)

i punched away until there were hearts of many rainbowy colors.

even just this heart confetti is splendid to look at and to play with!

the little one had fun using the punched out paint chips as stencils.

cute as they were on their own, i still took it to the sewing machine and fed each one through while keeping a fairly steady, slow pace with the needle. it was easier than i thought, and the machine was forgiving if i had a few stitches in between each heart. for me, that was an experiment, as i am still learning how to sew.

stitched together

i heart this!

then i got heart-happy and stitched a few more hearts to some colorful paper. i think i’ll add these to some valentine’s day cards soon!

this garland looks festive in our kitchen right now, but notice that hearts are top heavy… expect some twists and turns, or maybe opt for sewing them up double-sided.

this also might make a cute addition to our february mantel, which i’ll share when the time comes (after birthday season!)

strung along

ooo, that title sounds yummy, cozy, and wintry! happy winter solstice! (which, by the way, is also my birthday!) we posted about paper snowflakes last year, but this year we let our coffee filters and cupcake liners help us out with creating snowflakes!

one of our advent activities was “make snowflakes!” and it came along with this lovely book full of photographs of real snowflakes, for inspiration. (since we can’t observe the real thing where we live.)

the thin papers coffee filters and cupcake liners are made from are so kid-friendly to cut in thick, folded stacks. their round shape is perfect for snowflakes and makes it easy to fold them into six sections, as snowflakes are six  sided. so we put on the christmas carols, prepared some pear cider, and got to work.

i also realized that if i left pre-folded cupcake liners on N’s art desk, snowflakes would spontaneously appear – like magic!

we taped ours to a front window in our home, to be admired by passers-by. day by day, the snowfall is thickening around these parts… happy winter!

i think we’ll leave these up all winter long!

every year, i wrap our holiday gifts in natural kraft paper, which makes them sort of like a blank canvas for whatever ribbons and adornment we select. this year, i’m thinking butcher twine and these wonderful handmade tree tags.

i saw this idea on pinterest (of course because i live on there! wth?!) and had to try it out! i’m always the chick who’s pocketing paint chips at the hardware store, so that part was easy. i have a large stash of buttons and ribbon, and a glue gun, so we were set to go. N was excited to cut the paint chips into triangles together, and was a huge help in doing so.

after she cut these lovely green ombre triangles, i hot glued a loop of ribbon under a button to the top of each one. N instructed me NOT to put a brown trunk on each one, so we left the trees as they were.

they turned out to be so cute! now i just need to get the actual GIFTS made!

paint chips are so naturally amazing — in what sorts of artistic ways have you used paint chips?

last week, we did a little holiday baking around here. we made our usual recipe-off-the-marshmallow-fluff-jar fudge. then i had to dig up a new sugar cookie recipe because of the whole pesky gluten-intolerance thing. i ended up finding an awesome recipe that you honestly would not know is gluten-free! we got down to business, mixing the 6,502 types of flours together.

we had an awesome time cutting the cookies…

and decorating the cookies.

and admiring the cookies and eventually eating the cookies! (and gifting some)

the next day when N was playing alone in her room, she asked for scissors and paper. i knew she was coloring, and she was being sort of sneaky about it, but we granted her the items (regardless of my fear that she will someday soon attempt to cut her own hair.) after almost an hour of total quiet in there, she emerged with “cookies!”

she had been cutting and decorating lots of “cookies” on her own, and was quite proud of them. i just love child-originated art projects!

(angry gingerman shown for scale? or just because we were about to munch on him... which is probably why he was angry)

winter is upon us in a few short weeks, the winter solstice being my favorite holiday! (ahem, it is my birthday, afterall…) today N and i practiced our folding and cutting while decorating for the winter by making paper snowflakes!

we gathered up some scrap paper and both grown-up and kid scissors. if you want an idea for something to do with those watercolor paintings that come home from preschool or lovely marbled paper, this is a great transformation for that art work to have a new life.

first, i had to brush up on my origami paper folding for snowflakes. sure, you can fold it in half and in half again, but there is a more intricate way that involves a 60 degree angle. this youtube video really seemed simple and friendly enough for me (or your older children) to follow. here are some of the papers in various stages of folding…

after properly folded, we were able to cut like crazy (as he says in the video.) here is where we found that a 3 year old using her little kid scissors just might get frustrated when cutting layers upon layers of folded paper. gotta hand it to N – she tried. if you have older children, they’ll be able to do this just fine.

then she opted to cut a bunch of other things out….

…while i cut the folded snowflake paper.

blue and white preschool painting turned to snow!

N also modeled the finished snowflakes, lined them up, counted them, threw them in the air like it was snowing… lots o fun!

when we were finished, it looked like a snowstorm in our den!

we hung these paper snowflakes up on the back door. i’ll likely make more to hang from our chandelier or to string into garland — i’m such a garland addict! help!

a little golden one landed on our christmas tree

who says it doesn’t snow in the bay area?

N came home from preschool the other day with the cutest little fishy! all of the credit for this simple craft goes to her amazing preschool teacher for creating fun art projects around this month’s underwater theme. i just thought this easy fish was super-charming!

this is truly a painting, cutting, pasting exercise, so i had to feature it here on paint cut paste! i’m not big on purchasing or using paper plates in my home, but if you’ve got some lying around, this is a nice way to repurpose those last few into fun works of art. (and for that next birthday party, be kind to the earth and use washable plates!) all you need to do is cut a triangle out of one side of the plate (making the mouth) and then tape, glue, or staple it to the opposite side of the fish (to make the tail.)

then paint away… for these fish, N’s classmates used a dollop of silver metallic (almost pearly) non-toxic, water-based activity paint mixed with liquid watercolors. then the kids glued large sequins onto the fish (for shiny scales) and a big googly eye. voila! a school of rainbow fish at school!

i could see these hanging at different lengths from the ceiling for a sea-themed birthday party decoration. N enjoyed doing this so much at school that this little green guy won’t likely be the only fish in our sea.

at first, it seemed that the stars aligned for this activity… N just got a trio set of scissors for her birthday that she wants to learn to use and valentine’s day is approaching. thus, the obvious project emerges: cutting out hearts. a last ditch effort for a v-day seasonal craft and also one of the more simple and rewarding cutting exercises, right? (well, not in our case.)

while N napped, i gathered up some scrap papers that could pass as “valentiney”

i folded each sheet in half, drawing halves of various sized hearts on them with sharpie markers.

N asked to watch the valentine’s day episode of little bear when she awoke from her nap, where little bear cuts out hearts and gives them out to his friends as valentines. perfection, right?

after the episode, she was super-excited to make the valentines. so she tried. wholeheartedly.

now i don’t know if it is her age or if it is that these scissors work extremely well in play-doh but not on paper, but it just wasn’t happening for her. honestly, it didn’t happen for me with her scissors very well either. not with the straight-edged ones, the zig-zag ones, or the wave-edged ones. they sort of bent and shredded the paper.

we sort of gave up and i ended up cutting out heart shapes for her with my grown-up scissors so that she could give them to all of her toys as valentines, and she was psyched nonetheless.

project gone awry? yes, i post these sorts of outcomes, too. i mean the site is called paintCUTpaste and all. eh, better luck next year…

p.s. – can anyone recommend some awesome paper-cutting kid-safe scissors?