paint cut paste

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!

just a petite post about a big butterfly. last year we made these little coffee filter butterflies, that i blogged about recently.

then an art therapist friend gave me a few of these huuuuge coffee filters. so one rainy day, we colored all over one of them with markers, like we’ve done before to make coffee filter flowers.

then we set it outside in the rain. (we kept ours out there too long -while we went to ballet class- and most of the color washed away. usually you can just remove it from the rain after about 5 minutes of getting soaked.)

once it was dry, N wanted to wear it.

then we gathered it in the center, paperclipped it, and attached some twisted pipe cleaners to the center for the butterfly’s body. now N’s playhouse (<– stay tuned) has a large lepidoptera friend in the window, catching the light.

you don’t have to go big to do this — regular, human-sized coffee filters will do.

one year ago, when N was 26 months old, we went to a spring festival where they offered many crafts for the kids. this is an easy and fun one that N enjoyed making — clothespin butterflies! all you need are a few household items: a pipe-cleaner, a clothespin, and a coffee filter, as well as some markers.

first, let your child’s imagination run wild in coloring all over the coffee filters with the markers. if it is raining when you do this – you know those spring showers can be an artistic blessing – then put the colored (with a water-based marker) filters onto a cookie sheet outside for a minute to let the colors bleed, then dry them out before proceeding. you can see that effect from when we made coffee filter flowers last year. even if it’s not raining, the butterflies can be lovely. just let your child color away until his or her heart is content.

then bend a pipe cleaner (or half of one, actually) into an antenna shape. crinkle your coffee filter in the center and clip that into the clothespin along with the pipe cleaner. and there you have your winged springtime friend…

flutterby - ours got a bit wrinkled, but you get the idea

rainy spring days are enough to leave any mom wondering what to do with a toddler who will be bouncing off the walls after a couple of hours indoors. i remembered an article i had seen a while back in cookie magazine, which i’m convinced is actually hip as far as parenting magazines go..? (oh, humor me.) anyway, i broke out the water-based markers and some coffee filters. my daughter and i colored all over the coffee filters with the markers. (i used mr. sketch markers because i’m partial to the scents – the turquoise mango one is the best!) we put the colored filters on an old cookie sheet.

colored coffee filters

then we donned our raincoats and ventured outside to place our tray out in the rain (and splash around for a while.) after about 30 minutes of puddle play, the rain had sort of tie-dyed our filters. we brought our wet tray inside and observed how the colors had run together so beautifully.

wet and smeary

i lined the bottom of the bathtub with old towels and rags and strung a piece of yarn across the tub. there we hung the filters to dry.

dripping dry

in the afternoon, after nap time, these works of art were dry and ready to be transformed into beautiful flowers! we attached green pipe cleaners to the coffee filters to create stems, and voila! a lovely rainy day bouquet! this makes such a cute everyday addition to N’s playroom!