paint cut paste

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!

N’s third birthday party was for pixies… that is, we did a fairy theme and all of her little friends wore their wings. we had amazing vegan fairy cake and cupcakes, made by the scrumptious bliss bakery. it was quite a shin-dig!

we had a lot of fun making the gift bags for the kids to take home.

our favorite thing in the gift bag were the fairy wands that we made for each party guest…

N’s dad went for a beautiful morning hike and collected some sticks that were about the size of pencils, from the tall, magical sequoia trees that are woven under and over us here in the bay area.

then he sawed the ends of each stick so that they were flat, and we sanded each stick just enough that it was smooth to the touch.

next, N selected special gemstones for each wand, taking care to decide which one was for which friend. we chose matching ribbons, and began our work by hot gluing the ribbons to the tips of each stick.

then i hotglued each stone to the end to insure that it stayed in place. not pretty, but it won’t show in the end. i found it to be easier to do the next step if the bead was secured.

then we wire wrapped the stones and sticks together with copper beading wire.

after that, we tied a feather to the end of one of the ribbons on each wand…

and abracadabra! our little fairies each had their own special scepter for making magic!

this year we are taking part in the annual crafty crow ornament swap! the theme for the year is fairy tales… you know, kings, queens, princesses, gnomes, dragons. but they had me at fairy. always do.

fairies hanging out in our tree

so N and i went hunting in our backyard for some natural materials to make fairy ornaments out of. we found tons of tiny pine cones.

thank you, trees

we baked the pinecones at 250 degrees for about an hour, to make sure the critters were gone and because the sappy stuff in the cones gives them a nice shiny glow after baking. the house smelled divine! (that’s the closest we’ll come to the real christmas tree smell in our home, as we have cats.)

then we decided to apply a bit of gold paint to the pinecones to make them sparkle, all fairy-like. these cones were going to be fairy bodies!

gilded

with some wood glue, we attached unfinished wooden beads to the tops, to serve as fairy heads. then i hot-glued (hot glue guns and toddlers do not mix) a golden thread and paper flower to the top of each, so the fairies had flower hats and a string from which to hang.after that, we used one of my most favorite art materials ever — garlic peels! (and a coupla red pearl onion peels, too) these make the perfect ethereal fairy wings when hot-glued to the back of the pinecone.

then we had a big fairy family to share with the ornament swap recipients!

we put each safely into a small empty crayon box and wrapped them with coloring book pictures of fairies that N has colored.

we wished each fairy well in their new homes in new york, pennsylvania, louisiana, new hampshire, and california… and they’re off in the mail now to these new homes and new adventures! so excited to see which 5 ornaments we receive in return… we can take a peek at the flickr group for the swap to see what others made, too… how fun!