Doll Ring

Here's a craft you can quickly make for your American Girl doll.

All you need are brass fasteners, jewel pieces and a hot glue gun.

Glue a gem to the top of the brass fastener:

Open fastener and wrap around doll finger. Here's how it looked on my pinkie (sorry I didn't get the pic clearer)

Quick and done!

I Love You to the Moon and Back

This year's DIY Father's Day present was quite a success!

Supplies:

• Canvas, poster board or heavy paper
• Blue and black washable paint
• plastic plate or paint palate
• scrap paper
• double-sided tape or masking tape
• wooden skewers
• wooden popsicle sticks
• printer photo paper
• hot glue gun, regular glue
• silver glitter (optional)

1. Cut out a circle of  scrap paper and tape it to your canvas, using double-sided tape or a loop of masking tape underneath. You could trace something round to get a good circle (measuring cup, glass, masking tape roll, etc)
2. Mix blue and black paint on your palate until you have a night-blue color you like. Let this dry.
3. Pose children in a climbing position against a white background. We had them step up on our white stool so as to not see the floor in the picture. Take a picture of each child you will be including.
4. Print pictures and cut out.
5. Create the ladder. First we trimmed the skewers to fit the size of our canvas. Next, we hot glued them vertically on the canvas. 
6. Hot glue popsicle sticks across skewers as the rungs of your ladder. We also laid our people in place to figure out where to position the rungs. 
7. Glue people to the ladder.
8. If you like the idea of stars in the sky, brush some glue across the top and sprinkle glitter.

Don't forget to sign and date your artwork!

Upcycling old crayons

I've always wanted to try making our own molded crayon chunks. Well, it was one of the most successful projects of the summer in several ways.

First, we got out our big tub of crayons and sorted out all the tiny stubs. Great job for the kids to do on their own.

Secondly, the kids got to peel the wrappers off all the crayon stubs.

I broke crayons into smaller pieces wherever possible.

Finally, the kids got to fill the (greased - don't know if it's important or not) muffin tin with whatever combination of colors they wanted to create.

The next step is thanks to the hot summer sun.

We set the muffin tin out in the sun on a 90+ degree day and voila!

Popped right out of muffin tin after they were cooled. Melted crayon chunks.

Nice and big, easy for small hands to use.