I love these small chenille chicks and bunnies; oh and of course I LOVE these mushroom birds. My kids and I thought it would be fun to create these cute scenes using egg cups as a pedestal. These egg cups are kid friendly and make fun and festive Easter decor! This post first appeared for Darice on their blog – Live.Craft.Love

Supplies:

• Wooden egg cups
• Mini polyester chicks
• Pom pom bunnies
• Petaloo flowers
• Mushroom bird
• Acrylic paints
• Tacky glue
• Decorative paper or paper doilies
• Decorative edged scissors
• Easter grass
• Paint brush
• Pencil

How To:

Step 1: Paint your egg cups and let them dry.

Step 2: Choose a patterned paper and draw a circle on the paper by tracing around a cup or lid. Use decorative scissors to cut out the circle. Another option is to use a paper doily.

Step 3: Glue the cut paper piece onto an egg cup. Center over the top. Next, glue Easter grass to the paper. Let dry.

Step 4: Arrange bunnies, chicks, and flowers in place and glue them onto grass. Create your own fun spring scene.

Another option is to use a mushroom bird and pearls for eggs in a nest made from crinkled paper.

Step 5: To finish off the egg cups, glue gemstones or other embellishments to the pedestals.

And you’re done!

The post How To | Egg Cup Pedestal Display appeared first on Alanna George | The Craft Nest.

Welcome back to the second week of Summer Day Camp. This week we are featuring a round-up cereal box crafts. This week’s post is written by Finding Sanity in Our Crazy Life. You can find this week’s full post here: Finding Sanity In Our Crazy Life – Cereal Box Crafts.

Here is a little more about Gwendolyn -

Gwendolyn is a Christian Wife and Homeschooling mother. She has two children ages 10 and 15. When she isn’t blogging, she loves to read, bake, cook and come up with craft ideas with her mom and daughter. When you visit her blog you find a little bit of everything as she shows you how her family finds their sanity in their crazy day to day life.

Join us next week for another Summer Day Camp project. We love to read your comments, let us know if you have tried out a Summer Day Camp project from this year or a previous year.

Here are some links to previous Summer Day Camp Project favs!

• Sun Paper Art - have some fun in the sun creating mini masterpieces using Sun Paper and toys or flowers
• Hula Hoop Hideout – create a simple outdoor hideout using a hula hoop, sheet and pins
• Recycled Robots – use recycled containers to create unique robots

The post Summer Day Camp | Cereal Box Craft Round-up appeared first on Alanna George | The Craft Nest.

T-shirt decorating is always a fun summer time craft. My kids always beg me to decorate any plain t-shirt they have. Yes, even the ones that are supposed to be school shirts. So I gave in and we headed to Dollar Tree this week to find some $1 shirts to decorate. (Have I told you how much I LOVE Dollar Tree for kid craft supplies?) So find some old t-shirts or pick up a couple new ones from the dollar store and let’s get decorating!

(This is a sponsored post. See my disclosure policy here.)

Supplies:

• T-shirts and other fabric items
• Fabric Markers
• Rolli Stamps

How To:

1. Wash your t-shirt ahead of time. Next, draw and color your t-shirt with Fabric Markers. Then accent with Rolli Stamps.

2. We also decorated socks from the dollar store.

3. When you design is finished put your shirt in the dryer on high for 2o mins. to set the ink.

4. Wear and do a fashion show with your cool new shirt!

The post How To | Decorate a Shirt appeared first on Alanna George | The Craft Nest.

We are kicking off the Summer Day Camp Series with a project using Sun Paper. Creating these little masterpieces using items from around your home is easy to do. The kids will love seeing how shadows turn into art!

Supplies:

• Sun Art Paper
• Assorted Toys – Little Dolls, Tiny Cars, Tractors
• Flowers
• Plastic Letters or Letter Stickers
• Large piece of Cardboard, Tray or Box Lid
• Cutting board
• Accessible Water – Faucet or Hose

How To:

1. The best time to use Sun Paper is on an extremely bright sunny day with no wind. It will work best if the sun is at its highest point in the sky. You will get the best images that way because no large shadows will be cast off of the objects you lay on the paper.

2. Choose a piece of Sun Paper. Prepare your creation in an area where there is no direct sunlight. Lay the Sun Paper on a large piece of cardboard or on a tray (any portable flat surface).  Quickly lay out all the pieces you want onto your Sun Paper.

2. Cover your design with a cutting board or piece of cardboard. You don’t want your art to be exposed to the sun until you have it laying flat and still.

3. Carefully take your covered box lid with your Sun Paper art outside.

4. Lift off the cover and keep it absolutely still while your Sun Paper is exposed to the sun’s light. The paper starts off a medium blue color as shown below.

5. When it is finished being exposed it will be a very light blue, almost white.

6. Cover it back up and take it inside. Pull the objects off the paper and you will see a shadow of what was on the paper.

7. Rinse the entire piece of Sun Paper with water. Squeegee excess water off by running the paper between your first two fingers. Lay the wet Sun Paper on a towel to dry.

8. When the Sun Paper is completely dry it will like very dark indigo blue. Now you can frame your art or glue the art to the front of blank cards.

Join us next week for another Summer Day Camp project. We love to read your comments, let us know if you have tried out a Summer Day Camp project from this year or a previous year.

The post Summer Day Camp | Sun Paper Art appeared first on Alanna George | The Craft Nest.

Summer is here and in full swing and the Summer Day Camp 2014 series is about to begin. Stay tuned for lots of fun kid based craft projects coming in the next couple weeks. And read below to check out our Day Camp Instructors!

Gwendolyn from Finding Sanity In Our Crazy Life

Gwendolyn is a Christian Wife and Homeschooling mother. She has two children ages 10 and 15. When she isn’t blogging, she loves to read, bake, cook and come up with craft ideas with her mom and daughter. When you visit her blog you find a little bit of everything as she shows you how her family finds their sanity in their crazy day to day life.

Rebecca from Finding My Blog

Rebecca shares her passions, dreams and things that work for her. From recipes to parenting escapades, the blog, like Rebecca’s life, is incomplete and taking shape as it goes.

Alanna from The Craft Nest

Hey, yes, this is me! Alanna was a Design Manager in the scrapbooking industry until the birth of her first child. She then turned freelance designer, crafter and stay-at-home mom. Her website features family and kids crafts, recipes, handmade gift ideas and advent activities.

We look forward to sharing our Day Camp Projects with you over the next couple weeks! See you soon.

(If you are a blogger and would like to be a day camp instructor shoot me an email at: alannageorge (at) alannageorge (dot) com)

The post Summer Day Camp is Arriving Next Week appeared first on Alanna George | The Craft Nest.

My kids and I had so much fun creating these sock animals to slip over their water bottles. We had lots of laughs as our creations morphed into what we were hoping they would become. What little boy doesn’t want a Ninja Turtle to hold onto while taking a sip of water during T-ball. Can you believe how the blue dog turned out?

This is also a great sewing craft for kids who can handle a needle and thread. Look at how my daughter’s bunny turned out. So cute.

Instead of buying new socks, you might have a few mismatched socks you can use!

Supplies:

• Socks (ours are from Dollar Tree)
• Stuffing or Cotton Balls
• Embroidery Floss
• Sewing Needle
• Buttons
• Felt
• Ribbon
• Scissors

How To:

1. 

   Select your socks, floss and buttons.

2. 

   To create the nose or muzzle area, turn the sock inside out and place stuffing in the heel of the sock. If you want the nose area to be oblong, pinch the top of the heel to the bottom of the heel and sew together (i.e. turtle). For round nose area see below.

3. 

   If you want the nose area to be round, cut a circle of felt and sew it over the heel full of stuffing.

4. 

   After the nose area is complete, slide the sock onto your water bottle. Use embroidery floss to sew on the nose, eyes and other details you want on the face.

5. 

   To create the ears, cut a slit in the top of the sock. Ears can then flop down or you can tie a piece of embroidery floss around the bottom of each ear to make them stand up as we did with blue dog. For the bunny we used a second sock and cut it in half and sewed it onto the polka dot sock to make long floppy ears.

6. 

   Finish up your animal sock cozy by adding any extra details. Then slide it over your favorite water bottle and fill with an icy cold drink!

    

    

My Summer Day Camp series will be starting soon! Don’t forget to come back to visit and see what fun summer crafts your kids can do!

This post originally appeared on Skip To My Lou.

The post How To | Water Bottle Sock Animal Cozy appeared first on Alanna George | The Craft Nest.

Have you played with any fun stamps lately? I have and my KIDS have. I found these fun rolling stamps by Funny Bone Muse at the New York Stationery Show and the company was kind enough to send us some stamps to play around with.

My kids have been rolling these stamps over everything. My daughter just rolled them onto the wooden bird house she is painting. They have gone a little wild with Rolli Stamps in our house! School has only been out for a little over a week and we have crafts components lying all over the table. Just ask my hubby, we don’t eat at the table, we (me and the kids) craft there! So today I took a little time to make some cards for upcoming events we have happening. It was so easy and fun to roll these little stamps across the paper and add some extras to create really simple, but fun cards.

Supplies:

• Rolli Stamps
• Blank Cards
• Washi Tape
• Markers
• Alphabet Stamps (Mine are Studio G found at Michaels or JoAnn)
• Scissors
• Baker’s Twine

In today’s post I don’t really feel I need to do step-by-step directions for each of these cards. There are pretty simple and the key component is the Rolli Stamps. So if you want to have some stamping fun and make some cool paper projects and cards try out the Rolli Stamps. Also know the ink is permanent and I saw on the Rolli site that one customer used the stamps on a ceramic pot – check it out here. I am thinking we may have to buy some plain white coffee mugs and get our Rolli and put some designs down on the mugs. Great rainy day project for the kids!

Here are some close up pictures of the cards I made today.

inside says: create some cherished memories!

inside says: feel better soon!

I hope you take a few minutes to check out Rolli Stamps and their sister company Funny Bone Toys. You won’t be disappointed – their design style is amazing and their products beg to be used and played with!

The post How To | Rolli Stamp Cards appeared first on Alanna George | The Craft Nest.

Warm weather is finally here! Planting flowers is my favorite way to celebrate Spring’s arrival. My daughters and I worked together to create this fairy garden in hopes that we get some magical visitors this summer. Do you think they will like the tea we left for them? This post first appeared for Darice on their blog – Live.Craft.Love

Darice has tons of miniatures and garden decor that are just perfect for fairy garden supplies. These are the supplies I used to make my fairy garden, but the possibilities are endless – get as creative as you’d like!

Supplies:

• Mini Garden Tin Bench
• Wire Mini Garden Arch with Door
• Wire Tin Mini Bird Bath
• River Rocks
• Painted Butterfly with Wire
• Miniature Potted Roses
• Miniature Tea Service
• Moss
• Assorted Flowers
• Gardening Tools
• Large Flower Pot with Soil

How To:

Step One. Place the bench, bird bath and arch in the large flower pot.  Arrange them where you would like them to sit.

Step Two. Place the river rocks on top of the soil to create a garden path.

Step Three. Add the preserved moss along both sides of the rock path. We used toothpicks to hold our moss in place because it was a windy day.

Step Four. Plant your assorted flowers in the dirt.

Step Five. Add the mini butterflies and tea service so your fairy friends feels welcome! Fill up your bird bath with water, and you’re done.

Now, how fun was that?! It’s so pretty and magical!

To make the fairy garden even more enchanting for your children, move the tea set around and remove some water from the bird bath. They will be surprised and so happy when they notice the fairies had a visit to their garden!

The post How To | Magical Fairy Garden appeared first on Alanna George | The Craft Nest.

I am so excited about this personalized Father’s Day gift I have been working on with my kiddos! While I was walking the aisles of the New York Stationery Show I came across a little gem of a booth called Compendium. Umm, yes, their books are A-Mah-Zing! The Story Lines series aren’t just books they are more like activities. I love projects that are keepsakes, crafts, and drawings all in one neat little package! I want to show all of you what we are working on inside this wonderful book. Compendium is also sponsoring a GIVEAWAY of 2 books each to 3 lucky readers. So read on to enter!

You can purchase this book directly from Compendium by visiting this link: Story Lines: Dad Can Do Anything (Illustrate Your Own Book) And when you visit the Live-Inspired website to purchase don’t forget to check out the Story Lines Gallery. “It’s an inspiring and creative place to see, share, and admire artwork from kids just like you.”

Although I am not showing it photographed here, the paper jacket that the book arrives with should be removed and underneath is a clean white cover with the title Dad Can Do Anything and a huge white space underneath where a picture can be drawn! We are currently trying to agree on what should be drawn on the cover and how everyone can work together to draw the picture.

The first page is titled About the Illustrator and the page also features a few questions your child or children can answer about Dad. All four of my kids are working on the book together, so it has been fun to see all the different answers and drawings they are creating.

Like the drawing above. On the second page of the book it says, “This is my dad.” Everyone wanted to draw a picture of Dad. It started out as a fight until we came to an agreement that everyone could draw their own picture of Dad. So the pictures from left to right are drawn by: Calista age 3, Lorelei age 9, Charlie age 5, and Allan age 7. This page just makes me happy! I love seeing all the ways they draw their Dad. Even the 3 yr old tried to draw the beard on his face, lol!

My 5 year old chose this page as one of his pages to draw on. The facing page is blank and we will be adding our own text and pictures. You could also make your drawing span two pages.

This is one of my favorites because we do go camping and we go berry picking, not necessarily at the same time. It is a fun part of the story of what Dad can do though! This page spread was drawn by my 7 year old. We used makers and in some spots we did get a few smudges, but my little ones aren’t good at using colored pencils yet, so I was okay with the smudges. It just shows how they really create, it’s not always perfect and clean! How many times does your child come home from school with marker smudged on the side of their hand?

Are you intrigued by this story line yet? You will have to get the book to see what happens and maybe your Dad does other amazing things that you add in on the blank pages! This page was done by my 9 year old.

And the winner of the sweetest page is drawn by my 3 year old. “And he always keeps me safe.” She drew our whole family, including our dog. See the dog in the bottom corner in black? Then she tried to draw some purple hearts. I know, so sweet, right?

I picture the future when each one is graduating high school or college, my husband will pull out this book and spend a few moments reminiscing about the fact that they created this special book for him. He will take some time to pour over their illustrations and think about how far they have come since the days of markers and crayons.

This the perfect gift for Dad for Father’s Day, his birthday or even Christmas. They also offer a Story Line for Grandma. Well, they offer a lot of different Story Lines themes (did I tell you there is going to be one about Ninjas?!), so go check them out here: Story Lines (Illustrate Your Own Book). This gift also fits right into a tight budget and it is also partly handmade by you and your child! That makes it a perfect gift in my book!

And of course don’t forget to enter to win 2 of your own Compendium books! Enter below for the GIVEAWAY and please read the terms and conditions at the end of the Rafflecopter entry. Winners we be contacted by me. Prizes will be awarded by Compendium.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The post Handmade Gifts | Father’s Day Personalized Book and Giveaway appeared first on Alanna George | The Craft Nest.

If your daughter is anything like mine, then Disney’s “Frozen” and Elsa the Snow Queen may be an all day topic in your home. My three year old is in love with all things Elsa; Elsa’s songs, Elsa’s braid, Elsa’s gloves and Elsa’s ice castle, just to name a few. The now-famous Snow Queen inspired me to make this icy looking snow cape so my daughter can pretend to be Elsa to her hearts desire! This post first appeared for Darice on their blog – Live.Craft.Love

Supplies:

• Darice Sheer Decor aqua organza fabric
• Blue and clear rhinestone stickers
• Jolee’s Boutique Dimensional Snowflakes
• Turquoise organza ribbon
• Scissors
• Safety pin
• Sewing machine
• Straight pins

How To:

Using your Sheer Organza, measure your child for the cape length and cut the fabric to desired length. The long outside edges of the cape are already finished for you.

Fold the unfinished edge over twice and pin. This will create a tube for you to thread the ribbon through to create the tie for the cape.

Sew along pinned edge of the cape.

Cut a 20″ piece of ribbon. Attach the safety pin to one end of ribbon. Insert safety pin with ribbon into one end of the sewn tube. Continue to push the safety pin with ribbon through the tube and out the other end.

Once the ribbon is all the way through, center it across the top of the cape. Use your sewing machine to stitch the ribbon in place in the center of the cape. This will prevent the ribbon from pulling out.

Stick self-adhesive rhinestones and snowflakes all over your cape.

Wear your Frozen cape and pretend to be Elsa the Snow Queen!

The post How To | Frozen Elsa Snow Queen Cape appeared first on Alanna George | The Craft Nest.