Difficulty 1/5 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 🙂

Pom Pom Snowball Fight.

December 31, 2012 by Merry Leave a Comment

I saw this idea a year or so ago on Pinterest and will have to find the right place to credit it when I'm near a proper computer but this idea for making a Pom Pom snowball fight tickled Maddy very much when I told her about it and so she made it happen.

It turned out to be the perfect playtime craft for a Christmas Eve, nice and easy so no parental involvement required (if you use the lovely pom pom makers we have) and then ideal for burning off over excited per bed time energy when the stocking are out but sleep won't come!

Maddy made 16 medium sized white pom poms and filled to mini ikea steel buckets with them. Then all hell let loose as they pelted each other with them! The baby particularly liked it and no one got cold or hurt or needed drying out afterwards! Perfect!

It looked pretty too 🙂

Paper Snowflakes

December 23, 2012 by Merry Leave a Comment

The inspiration for our felt snowflakes was the paper ones we make each year for our windows. This is such a perfect craft for kids; little ones can manage simple versions but older, more creative children can really enjoy working out what cuts will manipulate the paper into more exotic shapes.

As you can see, Maddy got pretty carried away with her versions – I’m not entirely sure they are snowflakes as nature intended, but who cares!

Here are some sites that will show you ways of cutting to make different effects.

High Hopes

Instructables

Inspiration for Home

If you really want to get carried away, what better than this pin to get your juices flowing!

Source: joybx.com via Merrily on Pinterest

We tend to laminate our snowflakes so they last for a year or two and have an extra sparkle. This year we seem to have quite a blizzard! Maddy is going to do some more of her own cutting ideas here at some point but we also love this idea; if white paper is too thick to cut easily, try using coffee filters!

Source: thepinkcouch.blogspot.com via Merrily on Pinterest

Simple Sewn Snowflakes

December 19, 2012 by Merry Leave a Comment

Since illness and panto-ing children mean we've not really started christmas here yet, we thought we would fest up a bit by celebrating winter instead. So we've jazzed up our murky foggy day with lots of snowflakes these last few days.

Recently my youngest girl made a gorgeous beaded bunting strip for a friend and, following a day making paper snowflakes, she thought the idea might be nicely applied to some felt versions.

Since having my error pointed out to me by a friend once, after we made (just WRONG!) 8 point snowflakes, we always make sure ours are folded into 6 triangles. This proved a little harder with our fairly substantial felt and I found we had to make decent sized flakes and occasionally unfold them a little to make the cuts as best we could. The rounded edged ones seemed to work the best as the slightly cuddly shape just seemed to work well in felt.

The girls stuck to very simple seed bead embellishments but I've got a bit of an urge to try some slightly more intricate ones with some embroidery. I really must learn to embroider properly.

These are going to be glue gunned to some pretty white ribbon and hung up in our French windows as dangling banners. We don't want real snow, thank you but some fake snow will do nicely!

Simple Paper Christmas Wreath

December 18, 2012 by Merry Leave a Comment

Maddy created this really quick wreath a few days ago while I was running around taking our little boy to hospital. She takes her craft blogging very seriously 🙂 It’s very easy but it looks rather nice I think.

The wreath starts with a cereal box cardboard ring on the back, then squares of green craft paper cut out and bent slightly. Pinking shears are perfect for a prickly look 😉 I think Maddy cut red circles out for the berries but sticky dots would be perfect too. Once it was all stuck down and bent to satisfaction, she punched a hole in the top of the ring and hung it with a pipe cleaner. I think possibly a ribbon would have worked better, but still!

Challenge: beat our gods eye snowflakes!

November 30, 2012 by Merry 2 Comments

While admiring something done by Red Ted Art the other week, I had the idea for some yarned snowflakes. So I took the kids out on a walk, collected sticks and when they got back they had a go.

To be honest, I think really we made spiderwebs, though if we spray them with glue and glitter, they'll make nice frosted ones 😉 I've been trying to come up with a way of improving them since and making them a little more crystal like, but I've not come up with anything pleasing yet. So I'm throwing it out there as a challenge; can you take the gods eye idea and improve it? I'd love to see your blog post or photo if you do!

Easy Beaded Christmas Elves

November 26, 2012 by Merry Leave a Comment

Last year we had fun making these little beaded elves from pipe cleaners and wooden beads. With some creativity, bits of fabric and ribbon we ended up making lots of fairies too and strayed into Fimo heads and faces too; the possibilities are pretty endless.

First of all we bought some assorted wooden beads on ebay and some proper pipe-cleaners from a real tobacconist (not chenille craft stems, they are too thick). Next we made the body shapes out of two pipe-cleansers.

Make two shapes like this, one more twisted than the other and slot the less twisted one on top of the main body. It makes arms which you tighten around the neck. Then add a large bead body, leg and arm beads and a head on top of the whole thing. You can buy wooden face beads, or draw on plain ones with Sharpies. Fold back the pipe-cleaner to make hands and feet and hold on the beads. Accessorize with gauze, silk petals etc. We made pointy Fimo hats, with a hole pressed through the top for a hanging loop, and stuck them on top.

This craft first featured on our family blog.