Love Painting for Kids

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Do you have watercolor paints and masking tape on-hand? Here’s a quick and easy kid-friendly painting project with stunning results — just in time for Valentine’s Day! To make your own “LOVE” painting, use masking tape to spell out the word LOVE on heavy watercolor paper. Tip — use a craft stick or the back [...]

Quick Craft: Scratch Art Valentines

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Looking for a super quick craft for the kids to celebrate Valentine’s Day? Something with a little sparkle and lace?? Then this adorable Valentine ornament craft is for you!  To make your own scratch art Valentine ornaments, you will need: Scratch Magic paper (we used sheets from the Scratch & Sparkle Deluxe Kit, so pretty!), [...]

5 Biggest Obstacles to Crafting with Kids

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The 5 Biggest Obstacles to Crafting with Kids (and how to overcome them) If you ever experience problems while crafting with your kids, you’re not alone. While crafting with my own kids, writing crafts for this blog and designing crafts for children’s magazines over the years, I have come across many issues. Thankfully, most of [...]

Quick Valentine Window Display

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Need a quick Valentine’s Day craft idea for the kids? Looking for a fun way to brighten up an otherwise cold and dreary day? Do you have coffee filters on-hand?? Then this heart window display is for you! It has been awhile since we’ve last updated our front window with a new colorful display — [...]

Kid Art: Process-Based Valentines

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Valentine’s Day is one of the best excuses to craft up special handmade gifts for the ones you love, and this invitation to create was a BIG hit here! Kids of all ages are sure to enjoy making Valentines with this process-based art project. To make your own process-based handmade Valentines, you will need a [...]

Make Your Own Paint!

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Kids Craft: Make your own paint using eggs and chalk with the help of this guest post from the lovely Rachel of KidsActivitiesBlog.com (Thank you, Rachel!) If you haven’t already seen her site, it is loaded with plenty of inspiring crafts and activities for kids! Yup. Raw egg and the leftover bits from your chalk [...]

Weekend Project: DIY Cardboard Firehouse

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Looking for a handmade gift idea the kids will love? Ever wish to pay tribute to our amazing rescue workers? Need a crafty weekend project?? I made a cardboard firehouse for the kids last weekend, intended as a handmade Christmas gift, but… well… I just could not wait that long! It was a HUGE hit! [...]

Colorful Kid Made Holiday Cards

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Handmade cards play an important roll in our holiday preparations. Clara and I had a lot of fun making these bright and cheerful holiday cards! I thought you might want to make some of your own too. All you need to make these is an alphabet stamp set (we adore our Melissa & Doug Set), [...]

DIY Cardboard Toy Gingerbread House

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Do your kids enjoy decorating gingerbread houses? Do they wish they could build and decorate gingerbread houses all day long over and over? Do you have an empty cereal box on-hand?? Here’s a little DIY toy project to try! First, you will need to download and print out our free gingerbread house template. Each cereal [...]

Spooky Paper Mâché Haunted Houses

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Know what I love? Adorable little houses!! Know what’s better than adorable little houses? Super-cute little haunted houses!! These beauties came from a lovely website called ConsumerCrafts.com Before After Consumer Crafts is an online craft store that offers a wide range of budget-friendly craft supplies for jewelry, scrapbooking, kid crafts, and just about any other craft [...]

Quick Craft: Bread Tag Monsters

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Looking for something fun to do with the kids this Halloween? Need a quick little craft project to keep the kids busy? Do you collect bread tags for no good reason?? Then this silly monster craft is for you!! To make your own bread tag monsters, you will need: a collection of bread tags and [...]

Kid-Made Fall Leaf Coasters

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Please give a warm welcome to our new sponsors, Mod Podge, who generously supplied us with plenty of craft supply goodness!! When the package from Mod Podge arrived, I had a difficult time trying to decide which products to use first. So many interesting and pretty things — I already have several projects in mind [...]

Let’s Make Play Dough Critters!

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It’s National Play Doh Day!! As if I needed another excuse to play with Play Doh! This little play idea is quick and easy, and reuses those twist tops from apple sauce or baby food pouches as did our last post on Play Dough Cars. This time around, we added some pipe cleaners and a [...]

Recycle Craft: Play Dough Cars

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You know those colorful caps that twist off of apple sauce or baby food pouches?? It seems a certain someone was guilty of holding onto them for a wee bit too long in the hopes that they would one day be used for some recycling crafty goodness. Ahem. Anyhoo, when the kids declared that they [...]

DIY Doll Lunch Box from a Mint Tin

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Is your doll ready for back-to-school? Does she get hungry at lunch time? Do the other dolls make fun of her lunch box because it’s old or out-dated??? Then this project is for YOU!! To make your own doll lunch box, you will need an empty mint tin and some colored duct tape. Am I [...]

DIY School Supplies: Modern Notebooks

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It’s almost time for back-to-school, and the kids have been hard at work making many of their own school supplies for the upcoming year! This was one of Emily’s favorite projects because (just like her mother) she seems to have inherited a love of decorative tape. Oh, how I LOVE beautiful tape!!  Did you know [...]

DIY School Supplies: Apple Printed Lunch Bags

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Doing art on lunch bags is a festive way to dress up an ordinary bagged lunch, and it’s also a great way to keep the kids busy! I love how something so simple can let the kids have an active role in preparing their own school supplies while proudly showing their teachers & friends some [...]

How to Build a Simple Shadow Puppet Theater

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I completely underestimated how much the girls would enjoy playing with shadow puppets. Whenever something so simple makes them so happy, I can’t help but smile!! And this was SUPER simple. Added bonus — the perfect entertainment for whenever a power outage occurs. Our little shadow puppet theater was made from an empty cardboard box [...]