Everyday Materials

Old Slides into Sculpture

I was excited to find a bounty of blank slides when we visited SCRAP (San Francisco’s answer to a re-use center for artists and educators) a few weeks ago. I wasn’t sure what we’d do with them, but it didn’t matter because resourceful children always know just what these sorts of things are for. My [...]

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Seven Ways to Upcycle Paper into Flowers

We’re flooded with flowers this time of year, but soon enough we’ll have to make our own flowers to brighten up the dark corners of our wintery homes. These would make great DIY hostess or teacher appreciation gifts. I wandered around some of my favorite sites and found a little sampling of some easy and charming [...]

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A Little Business + Make a Name Badge

I have a few new things to share today before jumping into our project. First of all, I’ve received lots of questions about where I get our materials, so I added a tab up in the navigation bar called Supplies that you can click on. As I discover new things or think of other materials that [...]

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Styrofoam Prints and Baby “Painting”

Printmaking is one of my passions, so we invariably make a lot of prints in my house. I was about to recycle a styrofoam tray (I think it was from a pack of corn) when N asked if we could print with it. Why yes, we can! We’ve printed with these before (Abstract Recycled Prints) [...]

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Easy DIY Light Table

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After seeing the beautiful glow that illuminated from the easy light table at Teach Preschool and the pop-out pictures created in salt over at Child Central Station, I’ve been on the hunt for some DIY materials to make my own easy table. My caveats? No paint, no saw, and no nails. So when I spotted [...]

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Permanent Markers on Cellophane

We received these amazing permanent markers (Project Popperz), courtesy of Elmer’s, and I’ve been dreaming up ways to use them. This is actually almost as simple as it gets, and N got a huge kick out of “drawing on the table.” Materials Permanent Markers Cellophane (I used Cling Wrap) I covered her art table with [...]

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Painting on Ice Cream

If you live in the U.S., there’s a good chance that you’re in the middle of a terrible heat wave. While I can’t make it cooler (sorry about that), I’d like to offer up this cool lesson in color mixing…and it all happens right on top of a chilly scoop of ice cream, sure to [...]

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Mini Paintings

Do you recognize these materials? I’m big on repurposing found objects into art, so when I found a plastic slide sheet from my pre-digital days I couldn’t bear to throw it out before giving it the ol’ arts and crafts makeover. If you’re not familiar with these, they’re essentially sheet protectors for slides. I showed [...]

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Fine Tuning the Mud Pie Kitchen

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In case you’re one of the few who doesn’t read my blog religiously (gasp!), we’ve been building a mud pie kitchen in our yard. It began in part as a way to lure my child into our yard, but its popularity with our resident 3-year old has organically turned this into one of our summer’s [...]

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