have you ever been addicted to making flower fairies?
oh, i’ve had this bug for way too many years, and now i’m thinking it just might be genetic…
they’re just too fun! gather up some floral wire, wooden beads, silk petals, and get busy making new little friends! OR get the kit at the bottom of this post that has all of the materials in it, along with inspirational ideas for fairies you can create.
love these springtime friends!
how i just love those cheap, clear glass ornaments you can get at michael’s (or practically anywhere!) there are so many fun things you can do with them. last year we swirled metallic paint inside of them. this year, we decided to do it up fancy-style by stuffing them with all sorts of fun things!
N and i got our ornaments ready by labeling each one with one of her classmate’s names on the tray where it sits, so we could tell them apart since they were soon to be personalized.
then we got out a bunch of stuff from our art cabinet, such as feathers, seed beads, sequins, glitter, foam letters, tinsel, and fuzzy pom-poms. (tiny toys, figurines, shredded paper, leaves, dried flowers, etc could be great in here, too — let your imagination run wild!)
N found the first letter of the name of each of her classmates and we put the foam letter in the ornaments first.
then she carefully considered the colors and things that each of her friends would like, and we went through the materials type by type until each person’s ornament was full of fancy holiday cheer!
a tip for adding glitter, seed beads, or other tiny items – use a small funnel.
i tied ribbons to each one so they can be hung on a tree (or in a bedroom windown year-round, perhaps.) we will package them up safely and give them out at preschool when winter break nears. (hope this didn’t spoil it for any of you parents in her class. sorry 
)
one of my favorite things about autumn are the beautiful, variegated ears of maize that grace the farmers markets. their jewel-like colors are always inspiring… and this year they inspired jewelry.
if it were not for crow rooster crow, i wouldn’t have known it was possible to bead with corn, but i saw this supercool idea for making an indian corn necklace and had to put it into action.
N was thrilled to help pop the kernels off the ears of corn. she spent an entire day (off and on) working on one of the ears. this is a great task for little hands, unless you have one of those weird ears of maize where the kernels are sharp. (we had one of those and it so wasn’t possible for her or me to pluck that one.)
after all kernels were off the cobs, it was quite satisfying to even just play with a huge bowl of the seeds. this material alone makes a colorful filler for an autumn sensory box for toddlers and up.
the next step was to soak the kernels in water to soften them a bit so they can later be punctured by a needle. i chose a handful of the seeds to soak, as i wasn’t ready to use them all at once. (we ended up with zillions!) the blog where i saw this idea said this may take “a few hours” but i soaked ours for about 24 hours (only because i didn’t have a chance to get back to them until a day later.)
i chose some random thread and a needle from my sewing stash, and drained the water from the kernels. then i began to string them onto the thread. it was easier than i thought it would be.
the white part of the kernel is easiest to pierce.
pardon these dark rainy-afternoon photos
stringing the necklace was very satisfying. while N couldn’t use the needle and thread herself, she sat beside me, cheering me on excitedly as she watched her necklace take shape.
the idea is to make this as easy as possible… use a LONG piece of thread so you can just tie it together after the strand is long enough to go over your little one’s head. i didn’t have too much forsight on this one, so my thread was too short, and i ended up having to put a clasp on this necklace so she could take it on and off because it lacked a bit of length. luckily, i’m a beader and had those things on hand, but it would have been easier had i thought about this in advance, so i’m telling you now so you can learn from my mistake.
once it was complete, N was thrilled to try it on. she said it looked like “what a hula dancer would wear in the fall.”
we have so many more jewel-like kernels that i’d love to make a multi-strand harvest necklace for myself, and perhaps a bracelet for N.
with the autumn equinox just behind us, my thoughts are turning to colorful leaves and acorn hunts! i thought it might be a nice time to revisit the artistic endeavors that last fall brought in our home. click on the names below to see the complete tutorial for each:
and one of my favorites… autumn leaf garland!
we did a lot of fun halloween crafts last year, too… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. for now, enjoy the refreshing air, pinecones, bright leaves, and acorn treasures the season brings! crisp, fresh autumn art coming soon! stay tuned!
i recently realized that we recycle so many plastic juice (and otherwise) bottle caps, so i figured i should start saving some to see what art comes from them. the first (of likely more projects to come) are bottle cap magnets.
yep, this has traditionally been done wit metal bottle caps from glass bottles, but we honestly don’t buy anything like this in our house, so i’m using the plastic and large metal ones we’ve got. first i used some elmer’s household cement to glue little round magnets to the backs of the caps.
i let them dry overnight.
the next day, i used 1.5″ and 1″ hole punches to crop selected pieces out of some of N’s art work to “frame” in the caps.
i mod podged both sides of the art so that it wouldn’t get soaked when it was coated in the next step. from this i learned that next time i’ll “laminate” the art with contact paper or clear packaging tape on both sides.
(who knew that cats like to lick mod podge?!? place up high to dry!)
next i glued the art down to the bottom of a few of the caps. i coated the top of it with this great stuff called dimensional magic
after each was coated, N helped me drop some seed beads and sequins onto the wet medium to give the bottle caps some bling.
looking foggy through the wet dimensional magic
we let it dry overnight… and then some, as the thicker ones were still tacky after 12 hours. i learned that the art that she had painted with acrylics and watercolors got smeared by the dimensional magic, despite the mod podge coating, which is why next time i’ll laminate.
unfortunate blurry painted dragon & bunny
the pencil and crayon drawings came out really great.
now we have art holding up the art on our fridge!
we’ve done some bead crafts before, but N wasn’t ever as into diligently stringing beads as she was today… when my self-proclaimed beader went to WURK.
we got out our trusty alphabet beads to make a baby bracelet for a newborn friend (and a big sis bracelet for the newly-minted big sis.) we like to mix these with our mish-mashed bead collection on stretch cord to make funky trinkets as gifts.
we’ve also used these same combos to make allergy-alert bracelets – remember? N picked out some beads she loved, and we also made her a name bracelet for herself today.
(knitted sweater a la my mom)
as i was working on the baby bracelet, i noticed that N was rooting through the letters, and had picked out a stash of beads and was stringing them happily on the other side of the table. honestly, this wasn’t going to be a blog entry craft until i saw what was going on.
it wasn’t until i was finished with the baby bracelet that i realized what she was doing – too sweet!
customized jewelry is quite a perk of having a 3-year-old who can spell the names of her family members.
batgirl, the beader
i proudly sported my mommy bracelet all day long!
way better than silly bandz, yo!
a while back i posted a blog about making impressions of natural objects in sculpey after a nature walk. it was one of my favorites…
since we discovered that sculpey is fairly toxic when baking, i decided to try this out again, but this time using crayola model magic
then we let it dry for 24 hours, and strung it on a leather cord along with a few earthy wooden beads we had in our stash. and there you have it – our ode to california farewell gift.
