paint cut paste

we are delighted to have been invited to be a part of tinkerlab’s creative challenge this month! our tinkerfriend has asked us to upcycle magazines to create a project that is child-directed. given all of the junk mail and catalogs inundating our mail box this season, i was more than happy to accept this challenge so we could upcycle some of this unnecessary paper! (why all the catalogs from stores who have web sites?!)

the other night, while sorting through the stacks of catalogs, i said to my daughter, “i wonder what we could make out of all of these extra magazines…” with christmas undoubtedly on the brain, she immediately responded, “ornaments!” but of course! she said she wanted to rip them up and glue them to balls. sounds like a plan to me — so she got right to work on the ripping that evening (thus the dark photo. my apologies: it’s a casualty of wintertime blogging.)

the next day we took a trip to michaels and scored these brown paper ornament shapes for 60 cents each (which turned out to be even cheaper with a coupon – love it.)

later (and again after a mad-early sunset,) N got to work mod podging her “magazine confetti” (as she termed it) onto the ornaments.

once they were covered (and she was kind of bummed by the white look of wet mod podge initially) she said she wanted them to sparkle more, and asked for glitter. [artsy-mom guilt-producing confession: i so HATE loose glitter.] while i knew glitter would be a lovely and festive addition to something for our tree, i shuddered when N asked for it. then sighed a bit of relief when i realized quickly that we didn’t have to sprinkle it onto the ornament. i suggested stirring the glitter into the mod podge and painting another coat of glittery mod podge onto the ornaments. she was sold - phew!

we hung the ornaments to dry (which only took about an hour actually – not bad in terms of fairly instant gratification.)

and they are super cool, colorful, and sparkly on our christmas tree!

thank you, rachelle, for including us in this challenge!

check out all of the other amazing bloggers below who gave their junk mail a second life:

• tinkerlab (our lovely hostess!)
• kids in the studio
• teach mama
• the imagination tree
• childhood 101
• teach preschool
• hands on as we grow
• the artful parent
• a mom with a lesson plan
• toddler approved
• kiwi crate
• art 4 little hands
• red ted art
• the chocolate muffin tree
• imagination soup
• michelle’s charm world
• messy preschoolers
• mommy labs
• putti prapancha
• sun hats & wellie boots

visit each of their amazing projects on the linky below – so many fun ideas! there’s a second linky at the bottom where you can join in the fun and add your own upcycled magazine ideas, too!

add your own ideas here:

just writing to share with you about an inspiring trip my family took over to berkeley about a week ago to check out a place called urban ore. it’s one of those amazing salvage yards where any and everything can be upcycled and repurposed. love their motto: “to end the age of waste.” cheers to that!

i could have spent alllllll day there (and then some) drooling over amazing finds and dreaming up new ways to use these treasures, but with the little one in tow, we lasted about an hour. it started to sprinkle when we were there (first raindrops we’ve experienced since may!)

sweet aqua sink (i mean, if it were clean.)

my intention was to purchase a farm house window, and that’s this place’s “bread and butter” as they put it. they have a HUGE stash of windows and doors. the windows that are in condition to be reinstalled start at $20 each for an 18″ window, and they increase in 6″ and $5 increments.

THEN they have the section where some of the windows are broken or not suitable for installing in a home and ALL OF THOSE ARE $5 REGARDLESS OF SIZE. perfect for the artist or decorator. score!

there is a huge indoor warehouse part with odds and ends, furniture, pieces of furniture, books, electronics, housewares, etc.

random stuff stored in distressed drawers. love that.

inside i found a great wooden bowl where i can keep natural art materials, some ball jars, and these lovely photography contrast filters (for the darkroom) that are made from hard plastic. i can’t wait to see what N wants to do with them artistically! (light table trinkets? suncatcher? what would you make?)

now i just need to make a trip over to SCRAP in SF at some point — but i have to say that it’s hard to stick to my purging and simplifying goals when there are so many great raw materials to hoard! stock up on for art’s sake!

what are your favorite treasures to find for upcycled creative pursuits? where do you get them?

a few months ago i inherited a huge box of wine corks from a friend who was moving. because i’m not going to decorate my home with someone else’s wine choices (though there are some great wreaths, corkboards, etc out there,) i’ve been trying to think of kid craft ideas to do with cork. when i saw this gem on jonah lisa land, via the crafty crow, i knew we had to give it a whirl.

N and i selected 15 corks from the stash to make 5 cork boats. my fox-lover was smitten with one that said “foxhollow” on it and claimed it immediately. we selected some colorful paper to use for sails, and got out my glue gun, craft sticks (toothpicks work too,) twine, eye-hooks, and driftwood/sticks. ready to create!

N got busy folding paper in half and cutting doubled triangles out for sails…

…while i hot glued corks together. (i suppose you could use other waterproof glues that are more kid-friendly, but this is what we had on hand.)

using a dollop of hot glue, i erected the craft sticks in between corks and let them dry.

then we folded the sails around the craft stick and glued them in place. (note: if you use paper like we did, it will get soggy when capsized. if that matters to you, you might want to laminate it with packaging tape or contact paper, use craft foam for sails, or use something plastic like an old plastic folder perhaps.)

we screwed teeny eye-hooks into the front of each ship and tied twine to the hook on one end and to the center of a piece of driftwood on the other end. N had fun rolling up each twine around the driftwood (a natural buoy!) that way our ships wouldn’t sail away from us — we could always hang onto them.

with our boats in a basket…

we set out with some friends to a favorite park with a great creek, perfect for wading and sailing… yet, it was all dried out! so the following day, we ventured to another park with a manmade lake with, uh, turquoise dye in it [willies] to try out our ships.

it was so quaint, simple, and fun — N was psyched that they actually floated! nevermind that the mid-lake fountain kept pushing our boats back to the shore line. no bother for these mighty cap’ns.

wishing you smooth sailing through the rest of summer!

so, what should we make with the rest of our corks?

mosaics have been near and dear to my heart since my first semester of graduate school when i created a lifesize one as part of a semester-long self-exploratory “container project.” we created a small one for my daughter’s bathroom in the early days of this blog, but thought my little treasure-lover would enjoy making one for the backyard.

summer’s here and we’re in outside a lot, so we’ve been sprucing it up with handmade art and splashes of color. recently we created a garden mosaic stepping stone together, and i wrote a guest blog about it for the good hands community. click over to check out our step by step process of how and why we created this piece.

the theme of our mosaic was around this quote my mom has shared with me: “there are two lasting bequests we can give our children: one is roots, the other is wings.”

can you tell N had a hand in creating this according to good ol’ ROY G BIV? i adore my little rainbow lover – a girl after my own heart.

i knew it was only a matter of time before we made one of these. we’re big fans of snowglobes over here. this is a new one my sister gave us this year as a gift. lovely, huh?

i’ve sort of been intimidated by the whole snow globe thing — what with eggshells and different oils inside in all of those instructions i see online. then i decided it didn’t need to be all that complex. we had all four things in our home that we needed, lucky for us, as N has quite a bad cold right now and we can’t really run to the store. we gathered up a clear jar, glitter, polymer clay (sculpey), and a plastic trinket for inside. oh, and water! just water.

we opened the jar and put a ball of the sculpey clay on the inside of the lid. N chose a plastic cinderella from her sandtray toys outside to put inside of the snow globe. okay, so it’s not christmasy… but she can display it year round in her bedroom. we stuck the cinderella securely into the clay.

then we sprinkled lots of glitter and some tiny shiny confetti into the jar.

N filled the jar with water. (yes, our sink got glittered.)

(nevermind the tea cup and egg pan from breakfast)

then i put hot glue around the top edge of the jar and screwed the lid on. this seals the jar from leaking.

we let it dry for a bit…

and voila! cinderella (all fancied up with a blue sash for the ball) was enjoying a blizzard of fancy sparkles!

all the credit for this one goes to N’s amazing preschool teacher! the kids made these at school, and you know i’m a fan of art made from recycled materials, with a particular penchant for toilet paper rolls. (what does this say about me? i don’t know.) check out these beauties!

to make these, all you need are toilet paper rolls or paper towel rolls (cut into smaller sections, if preferred,) some wooden craft sticks, and paint. i love how they used the metallic paints at the preschool. these look so cool.

the group of them that the class made created a really cool wall display for this month’s unit on transportation. i love the cotton ball smoke puffs behind them! these would look cute in a playroom or plane-themed bedroom for a kid, too.

i just had to share… since they’re tp rolls and all. ah, it is easy to be green!

you probably already know we like to make art out of toilet paper rolls around my house…. the recycling bin is a great place to find art materials! when i saw this project on the a glimpse inside blog, i knew we’d have to try it out. i mean, we have toilet paper rolls for days being saved over here.

first, we gathered about 5-6 or so toilet paper rolls (paper towel rolls work well, too.) you’ll also need scissors, orange paint (we used acrylic, but tempra is fine,) a hot glue gun, twine, and maybe a ruler. i flattened the cardboard tubes and cut them into sixths. (i just eyeballed it, but a ruler measuring them to a half inch might have been nice…?)

N had lots of fun painting them orange. (on the blog where i saw the idea, they painted some orange for pumpkins and some red for apples, but we opted for pumpkins only at our house. check out their apples though – different shape and also way cute!)

i painted the insides of the rolls for her, and she did the outsides

honestly, it was a hot orange mess, but i love how acrylic paint just peels right off of skin when it’s time to wash up.

after the ringlets were dry, we lined four rings up in a row, and i hot glued them together where they touched.

next, cut two other rings on one of the folds. spread one out across the top and the other out across the bottom of the four glued together rings, and glue those to the sides and onto each of the four points across top and bottom. put a glue dot on the top, and glue an unpainted (or green painted, if you please) little piece of cardboard there for a pumpkin stem.

we ended up making five of these pumpkins, but i almost chose to make four of these larger pumpkins and alternate them with single-ring tiny pumpkins (like the one i mocked up below) across the garland. i decided against it in the end, but i wanted to share that idea here incase you want to try it. if you do the tiny pumpkin, turn the stem sideways (like you see below) so that the twine can be strung through it.

these are the five pumpkins we made, before they were strung. cute, huh?

next, N helped to string the pumpkins onto some twine we had laying around. (i love that i bought nothing new for this project. my favorite kind!) when you’re ready to string yours, you just have to choose which part of the pumpkin is the front, and make sure the bulk of the string shows across the back when you thread it through. she just put it down through the top tiny triangle hole on the left side of each pumpkin, and then back up through the top tiny triangle hole on the right. easier done than said.

photo credit: my husband was home

that’s it! then you’ll have a rustic pumpkin garland that will be so cute for halloween and the duration of the autumn harvest season! we strung ours across the mantel. if you try this, let us know  – share your photos on our facebook page’s wall, as we’d love to see yours and where you’ve hung it!