Salt Dough Heart Necklaces

Salt dough is always fun and the materials for it are readily available. We created some heart necklaces from salt dough which will be given for Mother's Day to C's Grandmas and one for me of course!  We made extras for some Mom friends that we know too.  These hearts would also make great Valentine's Day gifts, Holiday ornaments, or even for no reason at all.  Just to say "I Love You"! ***We actually gave these as teachers' gifts too.**

To create salt dough you need:

1 cup flour

1/4 cup salt

1/4 cup water

Mix flour and salt well and add water. Add more flour if too sticky or more water if too dry. Then form shapes on a foil lined cookie sheet. Use a straw to form holes on top so you can make them a necklace. Bake between 275 F and 300 F for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. 

Here we painted the hearts with red acrylic paint first then used q-tips (cotton buds) for the dots.

Here we used q-tips like a paint brush to create beautiful pictures on our hearts. After painting we added Mod Podge for  a glossy look.

These smaller hearts we are using as pins by gluing a pin back on the back.

On these we added thin ribbon for necklaces.

Would you like receiving these as a gift?

Super Easy Paper Baskets

What would you put in these cute little baskets? We made these paper baskets with some construction paper, liquid starch, and pipe cleaners. They could be May Baskets, Mother's Day, Teacher gifts or for Easter.

For these baskets you'll need:

Square paper of any size (we used 6"x6" and 9"x9")

Liquid Starch

Paint Brushes

Tin Cans

Rubber bands or Elastics 

Pipe Cleaners

Lay the square paper on some newspaper and brush the liquid starch over the paper.  Turn the paper over and do the other side too. 

Now put the wet starchy paper over a can.  I used a large stewed tomato can, but you could use some thing like a coffee can too. Place a rubber band around the paper like this.  Let the starch dry.

Then when the basket is dry, you can punch holes on the sides and twist pipe cleaners together to form the handle. Pretty simple!

Then place whatever you want in your basket.  Maybe natural items, trinkets, or coffee filter flowers like we did below.  To find out how we made the coffee filter flowers click here.

Our Coffee FIlter Flowers:

What kind of baskets have you made?

Coffee Filter Flowers and Handmade Cards

Cassie's last day of Preschool was this past week and I wanted to give her teachers something nice.  I thought about just buying something, but thought it would be much more meaningful to create some gifts and plus we had the materials on hand!  We decided to make Coffee Filter Flowers and handmade cards!
You could also make the flowers with colorful tissue paper too, but the coffee filters and liquid water colors were so much more fun! Here is a vase of some of our finished flowers!

All you will need for the flowers are:

Coffee FIlters

Liquid Watercolors or Food Colors

eye droppers

pipe cleaners

scissors

First, we covered the table with layers of newspaper so the food color or liquid water colors wouldn't soak through. I put some liquid water colors into a muffin tin, spread some coffee filters out, put eye droppers out, and Cassie was good to go! Here you can see Cassie dropping the color onto the coffee filters.

At one point Cassie was using two eye droppers at a time!  If you have never used eye droppers with your children make sure you do because it was so fun!

 As you can see Cassie is full of joy and quite excited with this endeavor!  She wanted to keep making more and more! We ended up making a whole vase full after giving them to her teachers!

After making the dyed coffee filters, we had to let them dry!!! When they were dry we began to construct the flowers! Cassie has become quite good at following directions....I've seen so much growth from a year ago!  The first step is to fold the coffee filter in half-----semi-circle---1/2. Math is definitely involved here!

Then fold the semi-circle into a 1/4 of circle.  After Cassie watched me do one she understood right away!!! Good Girl!!! So proud! Having been an Elementary Art Teacher I've had much older children who could not do this!!!

Then twist the folded 1/4 circle at the non-curved corner. A little tricky!

I wrapped one end of the pipe cleaner to the twisted end! Cassie did try but she kept twisting it off! We also used scissors to create petals....C loved this part! Then you can flare out the folded filter to make more of a flower shape and to open it up.

Here are the flowers we made for her teachers!!! I Love the colors!

After finishing the flowers, Cassie created some wonderful cards that she designed with flowers! They were so NICE! They went very well with the Coffee Filter Flowers!

Here are the flowers and card for Mrs. C. !!!!

Here are the flowers and card for Mrs. P. !!!!

Breathtaking! I could look at them all day!!!!

INSPIRATION:

***Click here for some Coffee Filter Flowers made with water based markers from  MOUNT PROSPECT LIBRARY !

***Click here for some Coffee Filter Flowers from TinkerLab made by layering the filters and accordion folding them!

WOULD YOU LIKE RECEIVING THESE FLOWERS AND CARDS AS A GIFT???

This post is linked to:

IT'S PLAYTIME

PRESCHOOL CORNER

THE PLAY ACADEMY

FUN FOR KIDS FRIDAY

HIGH PAW

CRAFT SCHOOLING SUNDAY

NO TIME FOR FLASHCARDS

WE PLAY

SHOW AND TELL

KIDS GET CRAFTY

CHILD CENTERED ART PARTY

FUN FOR THE KIDS FRIDAY

RESOURCE CENTER

SHARING MONDAYS

SUNDAY SHOWCASE

Mother's Day Sun Catcher

Since Mother's Day is right around the corner, why not create a heart shaped (or any shape) Contact Nature Collage Sun Catcher! My last post is on how to create a Contact Paper Nature Collage so check that out first if you don't know what I am talking about! Here is my heart idea:

After you have a Contact Paper Nature Collage completed, then use construction paper or tag board to create a heart frame. Create two that match to put one on top of the other and the Contact Paper will be in between the two frames.

Then cut out the frame part.

Place the heart frame over the nature collage and cut to fit. Then tape or glue it.

Put another heart on top and use glue or tape to adhere the two hearts together.

You could just tape it on the window or add some yarn or ribbon for hanging to make a nice Mother's Day gift!

Be sure to check out my Contact Paper Nature Collage post here!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!

This post is linked to:

CRAFT SCHOOLING SUNDAY
SHOW AND TELL
NO TIME FOR FLASHCARDS
MADE BY YOU MONDAYS
KIDS GET CRAFTY
IT'S PLAYTIME
PRESCHOOL CORNER
THE PLAY ACADEMY

Spiral Heart Pendant Necklaces

We created these wonderful clay heart pendant necklaces with the intention of them being Mother's (or Grandmother's) Day gifts.  My gift will be the mostly red and purple one, but whatever one Cassie chooses will be fine with me! The other two will be for her two Grandmother's! I first saw this idea as a Valentine necklace on the blog Art Matters and knew I wanted to try it, even though it was too late to make for Valentine's Day so Mother's Day seemed to be a perfect time! Or if not, these will also make great Christmas gifts for Mom.  Here are our finished necklaces:

You could use any kind of clay that you put in a kiln (oven for cooking clay) or a self hardening clay.  Since I already had some Crayola Air Dry Clay that is what we used and it claims to dry in two days!  You could also use Sculpey (a polymer clay) which you have to bake in your oven or even a Homemade recipe using flour, water, and salt. The homemade self hardening clay recipe (click on the link) dries in about two days with this small size of a project. FYI: This homemade clay has taken longer than two days! The first step is to roll out a ball of clay smaller than a golf ball.

Then after we rolled out a ball, you need to make a snake and Cassie is a pro at that!

Next, using our Snail making skills from my Play Dough Snails Post, we made a spiral!

After the spiral, you need to shape it into a heart by pushing an indention for the top of the heart anywhere on the spiral and then pinching the area below to create the bottom point.  This was a little tricky,  but after practice Cassie could do it!

On the heart we used a toothpick to carve some simple designs and I used a straw to create the hole for the string.  Here is some serious concentration from Cassie! After this step, we had to wait a couple days for the clay to dry to paint the pendants.

We used watercolors to paint the hearts. Cassie really enjoyed this part and painted both sides! Watercolor dries very quickly because it soaks right in! No need to really wait for them to dry!

Here are Cassie's finished hearts---along with a snail too! She wanted to create just a snail because of our recent fun with making play dough snails! You could add Modge Podge over the painted pendants to give them more of a glossy look! If you were using the homemade recipe, Modge Podge would help protect it from getting wet and deteriorating!

After the hearts were dry, we used a small piece of pipe cleaner for the loop on the heart and a piece of yarn for the necklace part. You could add beads, colored pasta, or clay beads to the yarn too.

Once again here our wonderful Spiral Heart Pendants.  I think they could make a great gift for Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, or even a Birthday gift! I think they are wonderful! Be sure to check out  Art Matters to take a look at their pendants too.

If you are a Mother, would you like to receive this as a gift?

What has been your favorite homemade gift from a child?

This post is linked to:
NO TIME FOR FLASHCARDS
CRAFT SCHOOLING SUNDAY
MADE BY LITTLE HANDS
PRESCHOOL CORNER
IT'S PLAYTIME
SHOW AND TELL
MADE BY YOU MONDAY
ART FOR LITTLE HANDS
KIDS GET CRAFTY