Early Years Archives - Simple Crafts

Father’s Day Banner

June 2, 2014 by Merry 5 Comments

I’m increasingly in love with fun foam sheets for a bit of quick crafting; I’ve seen some amazing stuff done with it (I do NOT do amazing stuff!) over on Pinterest, but what I do love is that is is very versatile. It works brilliantly for something rough and ready and which needs to be weather proof and then there are terrible clever people who do remarkable things like some of the crafts I’ve piunned on my Kid Craft pin board below.

I rattled this up as part of my Bostik Blogger challenge because I wanted to see how their Blu Stick works on foam sheets; it’s an ordinary glue stick which is blue on application and turns clear as it dries. It doesn’t stipulate that it can dry clear on foam, but I’m pleased to say it does. The beads are a Craft Planet mix of wooden beads, sewn on with acrylic yarn.

The proper sensible thing to do would be to print out large size type in the letters you need and cut out neatly; since I was crafting in the garden, I drew free hand and then stitched on the beads. You can use a fairly blunt cross stitch needle for foam, which makes it safer for small people. I think we’ll hang these up for Father’s Day – I’m sure he will appreciate it 😉

Follow Merrily Me’s board Kid Craft on Pinterest.

Disclosure: I blog at Patch of Puddles where we are a Bostik Blogger and get products for free to produce crafts. We supply the craft kit to the bloggers from CraftMerrily, our online craft shop. Amazon link is an affiliate link.

What to do with a Polystyrene egg?

March 20, 2014 by Merry Leave a Comment

We recently used a crafting kit from our website that included lots of bits and bobs of different craft materials, not least 3 different sizes of polystyrene egg. I was hoping to get to decorate one myself but the girls used them all up before I got a chance!

I was rather pleased to see how well a Sharpie pen draws on them (and dries quickly too, no inky fingers) and pleasantly surprised to find it was possible to glu dot pipecleaners to it for wings and feet. Maddy made this little chap and a combination of raw ends of the wire and adhesive meant her all held together rather cutely. I’m a fan on the wisp of pom pom used to make his hair tuft 🙂

Josie took a very different stance with her, creating a proper little character; I called him Humpty, to her fury – he’s Mr Eggman (we’re nothing if not literal here!)

I rather liked the fact she secured his arms with packing tape but turned it into a jacket – I must buy some washi tape to explore that as an idea! He has ribbon for hair and a cake case for trousers and a very dapper bow too.

For a much cheaper take on the old Faberge egg, a combination of Sharpie, self adhesive flowers, and ribbon around a small pot lid works pretty well. We gave this some added sparklet with glitter glue too.

What would you do with them?

For more Easter Craft ideas, visit our Pinterest board.

Foam & Felt Mother’s Day Card

March 18, 2014 by Merry Leave a Comment

I’m not always very good at mixing my crafting media; I tend to make something out of all felt, or all Fimo etc But I happened to find myself playing with a Spring craft pack the other day that had been created in our shop for a set of bloggers and it pulled together a variety of different early years materials that I wouldn’t normally be playing with. The result was a very happy afternoon making some very gorgeous items with my girls which thoroughly pleased us 🙂 We made various cards from the items in the kit and Josie did a great job of making something really pretty out of an assortment of different materials.

I’m going to give pride of place to my favourite one though which is nothing more complicated than layering a set of items together but really worked for me; it has sat on the shelf for a week or two now but I’m liking it so much it may end up staying!

I’ve taken a liking to craft foam recently, having never really played with it before. These self adhesive shapes are great and I like the way you can swap them about to give a multicoloured look to the tulips. I stuck them on to felt and then used glue squares from last months Bostik challenge to to stick that to the felt rectangle I glued on to the card with a bit of a 3D effect. It’s all terribly simple and the materials are deceptively basic, but the effect is quite stunning.

Josie made more cards too.

Apparently I put the one on the left sideways. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Disclosure: on our other blog, we are part of the Bostik challenge and receive some free items from them which we used this month for these cards. The kits come from our own shop, CraftMerrily.

Simple Pipecleaner Daffodil.

March 9, 2014 by Merry 11 Comments

If you read our other blog, the one about out family, you’ll know it is now nearly 4 years since our little boy fdied at 11 days old. He was an April baby and daffodils are the flower that we most associate with him. This year though, the mild winter means they are already flowering and will be gone before his birthday. I’ve asked some blogging friends to join us in making daffodil crafts to light up April with yellow anyway.

Today I had reason to play with chenille stems and made this little pretty. It couldn’t be simpler.

Join two yellow stems by twisting the ends to make a long stem.
Make a zigzag with 6 points, then join them into a circle with another twist.
Use an orange stem to bind the centre together with crossovers (a bit like weaving a star into the middle of the flower) until it is solid and holds flat.
Use another orange stem to coil a trumpet, then use the last inch to bind over so that it stays a tight coil.
Glue into place.
Work a half green stem into the back of the flower for a stalk and twist a second full stem to the bottom and bend up to make leaves.

A glass jar, some plasticine, felt and stickers made a nice pot for it.

If you have a daffodil craft on your blog, old or new, why not join in our linky 🙂 It will make this little family very happy. Thanks 🙂