Make Easy Salt Dough Ornaments: Part 1

By Rachelle 37 Comments

Raise your hand if you’ve made or plan to make salt dough ornaments this season! Yep, I see a lot of you out there. It seems we’re not the only ones, but in case you haven’t committed to this yet, I have one piece of advice for you: While the recipe is simple, give yourself some time!

This is a 2-part post. In the first part I’ll share a salt dough recipe with baking instructions and in part two, I’ll share my best tips for painting and decorating salt dough ornaments with kids.

I used this recipe on ParentDish by Anna Ranson, who blogs at The Imagination Tree.

Salt Dough Ornament Recipe

This salt dough recipe is the easier ever with just three ingredients that you probably already have. Double or triple the recipe for more ornaments.

1 cup of flour
1 cup of salt
up to 1 cup of water.

I mixed the dry ingredients and then added a full cup of water. Gulp. Did you catch that bit about adding up to 1 cup of water? The dough was sooo sticky, so I kept adding equal amounts of salt and flour until the dough held together without sticking to my hands. Okay, back on track…

My 3 year old and I both rolled out some dough and got busy cutting shapes with our favorite cookie cutters. I also gave her a small bowl of flour (you can barely see it at the top of this photo) for her to flour her workspace at will. She loved that, and I can’t believe I haven’t thought of that before. Her ornaments are less than perfect, but she proudly made them herself. Awwwww.

We followed Anna’s suggestion of using a straw to add a hole in each shape that we could later hang a ribbon through. Of course N saw no good reason to stop at one hole per ornament. And why should she?

The next step is to bake them at 100 C for 2-3 hours. OMG — just caught that it was Celsius, and here I was cursing my oven for not going below 170 Fahrenheit. Haha! Now I know why it took, literally, all day to bake these. Okay, so I could have just put my oven at 212 degrees and it wouldn’t have taken forever.

Bake your Salt Dough Ornaments

Bake at 212 F or 100 C for 2-3 hours, or until hard.

After they were dry, N sorted all the ornaments into hearts, trees, snowflakes, and gingerbread men…and then, of course, her little sister stepped in to mix them all up.

Ready for painting. To see how we painted them, click over here for Salt Dough Ornaments: Part 2.

Halloween Tradition: Little Fabric Ghosts

By Rachelle 13 Comments

This little fabric ghost tradition began last year, and N has been begging me to revive it for weeks. We haven’t had any white fabric in the house, I didn’t have the energy to make a fabric run, and then low-and-behold I found a quarter yard of fabric in a closet sweep a few days ago! Yay for “free” fabric. It’s more craft than art, but you’ll see in a minute how this can be open-ended and exploratory for curious, creative little minds.

We started with approximately 15″ squares of thin cotton fabric, a little thinner than muslin. But really, almost any thin white fabric will work. We filled the middle with about six cotton balls. Actually, it started out at “five,” but when N took over she increased the number by one or two, until the last ghost had about nine cotton balls in the head. This is good for counting, too!

I cut cotton string into lengths of 12″ – 30″ and then tied them around the “heads.” We then glued on googly eyes with white glue.

Now for the fun part! N wanted to draw a mouth on one of the ghosts so we found a Sharpie marker. Drawing the mouth turned into drawing hair, ears, and decorating the entire body. So fun!

She even drew inside the ghost. There are no limits, are there? We made four ghosts altogether, and she named this one the “dad.” The others (mom, baby, and sister) were plain white…what does this mean, I wonder?

We hung them in the tree to scare our neighbors for Halloween. Monofilament might have eliminated the noose quality of the string, but you work with what you’ve got! Boo!

I love hearing from you. Please share your Halloween tradition/s!

This post is shared with Sunday Showcase. Craft Schooling Sunday

Tin Painting for El Dia de Los Muertos

By Rachelle 6 Comments

The Mexican folk art of tin painting is eye candy for little kids, such a fun medium to play with, and it’s perfect for El Dia de Los Muertos (The Day of the Dead, November 1 & 2).

I used to lead this activity when I taught art in Los Angeles elementary schools, and I’ve seen 100’s of children get sucked right into it, inevitably asking for more. I was curious to see if my 3-year-old would have the same reaction…she did!

She made 6 tin paintings before I had to cut her off. If you try this, you’ll have to let me know if you have the same experience with it. If you do a quick image search for Mexican Tin Art (or click this link), you’ll have some good inspiration for this project.

For this project you’ll need:

Permanent Markers (like Sharpies) in multiple colors
Pure Metal Tooling Foil. Kitchen aluminum foil is too thin to do the job, but I encourage you to try heavy duty foil it if that’s all you have. If you’re feeling more DIY, you could try cutting an aluminum can with tin snips as Anjie did here.
Paper tape or electrical tape
Blunt pencil
Magazine
Scissors

This is essentially an embossing project, and I think the joy in it lies in pressing into the foil to create a relief print. It’s highly rewarding, the foil is shiny and enticing, and the final product is a keepsake.

Directions

Cut the foil to the desired size. I like this foil because you can cut it with household scissors or a paper cutter. So easy!
Tape off the edges to avoid cutting little fingers
Place the foil on top of a magazine and draw on it with the blunt pencil. Press down firmly to make a good, strong mark. You can experiment with both a blunt and sharp pencil to see how they work differently. The magazine (or stack of newspaper) creates a cushion that allows the embossing to happen.
Once the drawing is complete, decorate the tin painting with permanent markers. The foil will maintain its sheen beneath the Sharpie marks.
Display proudly.

My daughter taped off these edges by herself (she was proud) and drew one of her signature spiral shapes.

When I introduced this project to elementary age children, we would also include a small piece of tracing paper (the same size as the foil) and images of Pre-Columbian and Mexican symbols (see Resources for a link to a great book). The children would trace the symbols of their choice, place the tracing paper on top of the foil, and then trace the image again. It’s a different experience from the free-form preschool activity I’m sharing here, but it may be of interest to those of you with older children.

Resources

If you’re a teacher, you might like this lesson plan for Mexican Metal Tooling from KinderArt
Design Motifs of Ancient Mexico is a fabulous resource that’s full of beautiful, easy-to-copy Pre-Columbian symbols and images.
To make this really come to life, consider buying one or more Mexican Tin Ornaments as inspiration. I’ve purchased these from this company in the past, and they’re not only beautiful, but very well priced.
Berkeley’s Heart Museum put together this nice PDF pamphlet about Mexican folk art. Scroll to page 35 for a small piece on Tin Art.

Homemade Soap with Kids

By Rachelle 23 Comments

Soap Making with kids…

In preparation for Mother’s Day, we decided to make soap for the grandmas.

I wanted to use an organic soap base, but couldn’t find any on short notice. We chose two soap bases that they sell at Michael’s and Amazon.

Supplies

This list contains affiliate links

Shea Butter suspension soap base (Amazon) or Shea Butter Soap (Michaels)

Oatmeal

Soap Mold

Essential Oil

Embossing Soap Molds

Embossing Soap Stamps

Rubbing Alcohol (for spraying the molds)

We broke the soap up into pieces and microwaved it for about a 1.5 minutes. Clear directions are on the box. This could also be heated in a double broiler.

Once melted, we added a few drops of Lavender oil and oatmeal, and mixed it up.

To keep bubbles out of the soap, N prepared the molds by spraying them with rubbing alcohol. She loved this step. Adult supervision with rubbing alcohol is obviously recommended!

We poured a little bit of soap into each mold and then placed embossing soap stamps on top of the soap. This keeps the stamps from sliding around.

I then poured the soap mixture on top.

Note: In subsequent batches I didn’t bother “gluing” the stamps down, which improved the appearance of the soap.

Waiting for the homemade soap to cool is the hardest part!

However, to keep our spirits high, this was a good time for lunch. What did we eat?

Oatmeal, of course!

Aren’t they pretty?! The two cupcake-looking soaps you can see way back there came out of Silicone Cupcake Molds.

What to Avoid!

In case you’re like me and think, “hmmm, why bother buying that soap base when I can just get some soap and melt it down and make a new bar of soap?”

Here’s what happens…

I thought that I could take a bar of vegetable glycerin soap from Whole Foods and give it the same treatment. This is what happened when I put it in the microwave. Eeek!

I should have known better since I’m familiar with the Microwave-Ivory-Soap-Experiement, which is something to try on another day. It puffed the soap up into a stiff cloud…pretty to look at but completely useless for soap-making.

Then it was time to wrap them up.

We made our own wrapping paper. Check out Handmade Wrapping Paper with Kids for a quick tutorial on how to set this child-friendly activity up.

Good real-world practice with tape cutting, folding, and wrapping.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the beautiful, nurturing, intelligent, kind, selfless, and inspiring moms!! Moms are amazing!

Holi Colors

By Rachelle 19 Comments

Stanford throws the biggest Holi festival celebration in the Bay Area, and we were lucky enough to join in the fun this weekend. In India, Holi marks the beginning of spring and it’s celebrated by covering friends and strangers with bursts of powdered colors. It’s also a day when enemies turn friends, which I can only imagine is symbolized by everyone donning the same rainbow of vibrant colors — equalized by the power of joy and celebration.

It was our first Holi experience, and while I wanted to introduce my oldest daughter to the excitement of this holiday, I was also uncertain about she might react to being covered head-to-toe in pigment, the loud music, and the bursting crowds.

To prepare for the event, we looked at some amazing photos ahead of time, got dressed in our painting clothes, covered our skin in sun block to create a barrier for the color, and poured a little oil in our hair to protect it from the drying colors. N surprised me by embracing the colors right from the start.

And then she and her dad headed off into the crowd. I took the opportunity to snap some photos while our little one slept through the whole thing.

A festival-goer covered in color. Look at that smile! Everyone there wore the same expression. It was SO inspiring.

Another big smile. And I love how the color looks in hair.

N sang and clapped along with the Bangra music.

A sea of happy color. While time will determine the lasting effects of our outing, my daughter came home talking about “throwing color” and expressing her love for mango lassis. And I hope that the experience infused her with a perspective on the potential of crowd-generated festivals — something we could never generate behind the doors of our home.

More information on the significance and history of Holi.

Have you celebrated Holi? What joyful festivals have you been a part of?

Deconstructed Valentines

By Rachelle 26 Comments

Our neighborhood market does a good job at displaying an appealing array of holiday goodies just as you enter, and I’m often a sucker for such marketing ploys. They recently set up a lavish Valentine’s ordeal, and before even getting close to the milk aisle, I already had a shaker of heart sprinkles and a Fancy Nancy Valentine’s Day book in my hands.

N skimmed through the book on the way home, and then devoured every word as soon as we had a chance to sit down together. We’ve been talking a lot about this mysterious “hearts and flowers” holiday, but I don’t think it actually began to sink in until we read the book.

Once we read the book, mere moments passed before the request to “make Valentine’s cards” came in and Project Deconstructed Valentine’s was underway! It all began quite obviously with a pile of doilies, cut-out hearts, glue, and glitter.

And then the cutting began. And more cutting. Cutting, cutting, cutting. Any vision I had of frilly Valentine’s with heartfelt messages was quickly replaced with one of hearts, cut into smithereens. A bazillion little fragments of love, splintered all of the table.

It wasn’t enough to cut up a sheet of paper. Oh, no. I had to cut hearts out of the paper first, and then hand them over for further cutting. Since we were collaborating, I was then instructed to glue the little shards to a doily, which is what you see here. A true collaboration, full of process-based goodness. And while the end-result may not be what I had in mind, I actually think we ended up with something far more interesting and fun to look at in the end.

Recipe for Making Process-based Valentine’s Cards

Although I didn’t start with this plan, in retrospect I think this is what led to our success…

Look at examples of Valentine’s Cards or Read a Book about Valentine’s Day
Set up some basic Valentine’s materials – Doilies, Red and Pink Paper, Glitter, Glue, Scissors, Markers
Provide materials in a color scheme that will make the end product look cohesive (i.e red, pink, white, and silver)
See where it takes you without prescribing how the child should make their card
Gift them, hang them, or repurpose them. N wanted to decorate the house with ours, and I had a package to send off to grandma and thought this would make for a festive gift topper.