Mirror Mirror Castle and {Giveaway}

Are you a fan of Fairy tales? My daughter and I have seen just about every fairy tale movie out there.  If you are fairy tale fan you'll be excited to find out that a fairy tale movie called Mirror Mirror comes out today. (March 30th)  Mirror Mirror is based on the old classic Snow White and The Seven Dwarves. To view a trailer of the movie Mirror Mirror click here. To take a look at the official website for Mirror Mirror click here.

The creators of Mirror Mirror asked me to create a project based on this movie.  I am honored to be a part of this production and love creating projects so I was very excited.  After watching the preview of the movie,  my daughter and I both agreed we should create the Evil Queen's Castle. Here is our result.

To create the castle we naturally thought of using recycled tubes. If you see the picture of the castle below you can see why we chose to use tubes of all kinds.

Materials for the castle:

Tubes (paper towel, tp/loo rolls)

a cardboard base (cereal box, any recycled cardboard)

glue

newspaper

brushes

paint in gold and grey or (black + white + grey)

gold glitter

poly fil stuffing

We began by gathering the tubes and cutting them in different sizes. Also we created other size tubes by rolling up newspaper (you could use any paper)

Then we dipped the tubes in glue and stuck them on the cardboard base. Very much like our Recycled Tube Sculpture.

Then to create the towers on the castle, we used crumpled up newspaper like this and then added a twisted point too. We used glue to attach the twisted point and crumpled newspaper ball. Then we had to let the castle dry for a few hours before painting. C was excited to paint!

After the structure of the castle was dry, we began to paint. We used very light grey for the main color of the castle and gold for the towers.

To give the towers a "special touch" we sprinkled some gold glitter onto the paint.

Lastly, we added some polyfil stuffing with white glue on the cardboard base for snow and some snowflake spangles.  In all the pictures the castle seemed to be covered in snow so I thought this brought the whole castle together.

I'm excited to also be sharing a GIVEAWAY with a prize package that includes:

$25 Fandango gift card

T-shirt

Apple Snow Globe

Lip Balm

Mirror Compact

Tote Bag

Mirror Mirror: The Storybook

For an Entry to the GIVEAWAY:

Leave a comment on this post and tell me what your favorite fairy tale movie is.

*Also leave your email if I cannot reach you through clicking on your name.

Giveaway ends April 6, 2012, 9pm EST.

Remember Mirror Mirror comes out today March 30th!  Check out the Facebook page for the movie, visit their official website for sneak peeks,  and follow Mirror Mirror on Pinterest for the latest photos and scenes from the movie.

*This post is sponsored by Relativity Media.

Recycled Marble Run Fun!

We finally decided to get on the bandwagon and create our own Marble Run! So many blogs have been inspiring us....click on the link after this post for our inspiration. We made a Marble Run from our Magna Tile Toys here, but it was much more creative and enjoyable to create a "Run" from the ground up! We used all kinds of recycled materials that we have been collecting for the the past few months! Check it out:

Here are all the recycled tubes, oatmeal boxes, raisin containers, yogurt cups, food boxes, milk cartons, and egg cartons we had to choose from!

We started by cutting apart tubes and making tunnels from cylindrical boxes! We've eaten a lot of oatmeal and raisins in the past few months! We used tape to temporarily hold the recycled materials together so we could test out our runs and ramps.

Here is Cassie testing out this newly formed ramp. Our marble run went through a lot of changes as we were building and testing things out.

We found since we were building higher structures that we needed a base to put everything on! Thankfully we had some huge cardboard pieces in the basement! Cassie wanted to lay all over the cardboard.

Once we knew what structures were working we used a glue gun to hold things together. The glue gun worked well for fast joining of pieces! It was a little dangerous working with a glue gun on the floor because we had shorts on! It worked out well though!

In the end we made two runs off the highest tower.  We used other containers for support underneath and added a couple tunnels too.

Cassie tested out the two ramps and found one to be faster!  The one with the steeper hill in the beginning was faster (The right ramp)! I guess this could be a preschool physics lesson of some sort?

Cassie and I had a lot of FUN building our Marble Run! We also enjoyed playing with it and testing out all the marbles.  Isn't it amazing that you can create your own toy? What a valuable lesson to teach children! I'm so glad that we have all this inspiration from such great blogs to do such wonderful activities!

Have we inspired you to create a Marble 

Run???

Seven different Marble Runs that inspired us  can be found here.

This post is linked to:
NO TIME FOR FLASHCARDS
CRAFT SCHOOLING SUNDAY
PRESCHOOL CORNER

SHOW AND TELL
GET CRAFTY
IT'S PLAYTIME
Sunday Showcase
High Paw

Recycled Paper Tube Collage

Yes,  we are still excited about paper tube art here!  This project took a couple days and it was quite fun! Here is a close up preview of our Recycled Tube Collage:

We started out with gathering up tubes and cutting them into a variety of shapes:

You can see the variety of shapes. C could cut some and I helped her out.  With smaller children you could have them already pre-cut.

Then, as we did for our Recycled Tube Sculpture, we dipped the cardboard pieces in a puddle of white glue and put them on a recycled cardboard base (gift box, cereal box, etc.).  Make sure to shake off your excess glue before gluing down on the cardboard base/background. Arrange them any way you like.

This is how it looks before the paint.  It looks awesome.We let it dry for a day so we could paint it.

I gave Cassie one color at a time and tried painting it as carefully as she could.

C kept painting and painting and she worked really diligently.

We kept adding more colors....and then C was getting tired to paint the base/background. (quick thinking....)  So I said,  "Let's race your paintbrush like a little car around everything." .  She liked that idea and it  really was getting covered. I think it turned out like Modern Art. Almost like Modern Artist: Frank Stella.  Here is Cassie's Modern Art Masterpiece:

Here is a Frank Stella Masterpiece:

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

This post is linked up to:

CRAFT SCHOOLING SUNDAY
 NO TIME FOR FLASHCARDS
MADE BY YOU MONDAYS
 MADE BY LITTLE HANDS
 MAGIC ONIONS
WE PLAY
SHOW AND TELL
CHILDMADE
 SATURDAY'S ARTIST
PRESCHOOL CORNER
 MONKEYING AROUND
 TOT TUESDAY
MINI-MASTERPIECES
 GET CRAFTY
 THE PLAY ACADEMY,
RAISING MEMORIES/SHARING TIME
FOR THE KIDS FRIDAY
FUN FOR KIDS FRIDAY