Another Day of Bows

My oldest daughter has been invited to a birthday party of one of her classmates. We don't really have the resources to buy a present that I would feel comfortable giving. I am trying something new. I have until May 19th to see if I can pull it off to my satisfaction. I decided to follow directions and make some corker bows. I didn't realize how time consuming it could be. First I used dowels that were to large so the spirals were to loose. So I used skewers from our grill tools to get a tighter spiral. They worked great, but I only had four of them.

The mail arrived while I was lamenting about my lack of choices. My Mom, Grandma, comes through. She sends us boxes of clothes or supplies I request on a fairly regular basis. She rocks. She sent me 1/4 inch dowels that were perfect. I was able to make more that had the right spiral tightness.

I made some different combinations of the 3/8 inch grosgrain ribbon. It takes 25 minutes in the oven for the wet ribbon to get the twist. Add on twisting it onto the dowel and taking it off then the time to heat seal the ends it is quite the project. I wish I knew some shortcuts. The end results are fairly nice.  I spent 6 hours making 6 bows and 2 hair clips. I would like a better return on my time. I can see why bows like this cost $8-10. If I ever see any for less than $8, then I know they are a real steal since they are so labor intensive.

I do have two favorites that I will have to make again since I will want my daughters to get a chance to wear them. I also think I will look in their closet to see what I can specifically coordinate with a dress or outfit.

Now I have to figure out what to do with all the 5/8 inch ribbon. I will have to watch more You Tube videos. Feel free to make suggestions.

© 2012 www.obsessedanalyst.blogspot.com All Rights Reserved.

Crafting Crocodiles for the Child

I never intended for my blog to be all about arts and crafts. This being my third craft post though doesn't really qualify it as such. Plus, I mostly leave the crafts to friends, especially one great friend who does a fabulous blog that I like. I will say it again, to remind myself, I am not a craft person. I really do not like doing crafts. I have fallen into it because I homeschool my daughter AND want to save money. My youngest daughter loves to do arts and crafts. [My oldest daughter, 6 years old, does too, but she is in a private school for now.] In fact it is the only way I can get her to learn some things. Twice a week I start out the night before or in the morning asking her what art or craft she would like to do. She always picks some sort of animal. Lately it is related to an animal she has interacted with on Sim Animals Africa, or watched on the Wild Kratz or Go, Diego Go. We then Google whatever animal she chooses and look at the images that come up. She picks the craft based on what she likes, supplies we have and if I think we can manage it.

Feeling ambitious today.

Today it was crocodiles, which included looking at alligator crafts. We learned a couple crocodile facts, then I had her practice writing her small “c” and “r” letters. I tried to incorporate some math with measuring out the size of paper, skip counting googly eyes, etc… but she caught on to it and started to zone out on me. Since working on fine motor skills is very important for her abilities I figured that cutting, painting, and applying glue was good enough. Plus, do you realize how much skill it takes to locate two matching googly eyes from a large spaghetti jar full of eyes? You have to match color, size, and features since there are some with colored eyes, pupils, and eyelashes.
The handprint crocodiles were an easy concept, but to make it really cool you have to do Spock’s Vulcan Salute and bend your thumb to your index finger. It is a great motor skill for a little one, let alone an adult.

She painted a paper plate blue too since she thinks we can make a blue alligator out of it. I haven’t decided how we are going to execute that final product yet.

The paper bag crocodiles really are a sign that I am getting a bit more artistic when it comes to creating crafts. I didn’t find a paper bag crocodile craft online. I saw paper towel ones and ones made with little 3 oz. paper cups, but nothing with a paper bag. I am learning you can make almost anything with a paper bag. I figured I would start with the bag and some of my scrapbook paper just like I used for the zebra and lions we did. I love scrapbook paper. It feeds my desire for perfection.

The scrapbook paper I use all the time for our animal crafts.

After I did all the alligator paper on the bag, I envisioned what I needed to do, not knowing if it would really work. I had to use some card stock paper on the inside to make it stronger. I did one staple in the center of the open end of the bag to create the head shape.

Did you know that crocodiles cannot stick out their tongues? We thought that was a cool thing to know so we included a pink tongue inside the paper bag alligator. Personally, I think the finished product came out really well.

I found the clothespin alligators online. They seemed easy, but after painting and 3 hours of crafts, my daughter actually got burnt out.

I wonder what we will do next time. Does anyone know of a curriculum that revolves around just animals or is all arts and crafts based? I would love to find one. I may need to find unit studies on each animal to create my own curriculum that can incorporate arts and crafts. The thing that I found was that there weren’t many animal unit studies that were isolated to one animal. I found unit studies that were of cats, dogs and horses. The rest were more about categories like sea creatures, farm animals, amphibians, reptiles, jungle, etc… She would like very specific animals, like mountain lions.  If anyone knows of a good source or has ideas, please let me know.  

© 2012 www.obsessedanalyst.blogspot.com All Rights Reserved.

I Surprise Myself

Since my oldest daughter goes to school now, she loses hair clips all the time. She is growing out a short layered pixie style hairdo that she wanted about 1 1/2 years ago.  Growing out super short layers is no easy task. Her hair is always in her eyes. In order to keep some of it out of the way for school she wears barrettes, bobby pins, and/or hair clips. They seem to disappear as fast as I can buy them. I got most of them at the dollar store, but it was adding up. 

Then there is my other daughter who is growing out her hair, thank goodness not layers. I put her hair up in a ponytail most of the time. She would prefer I braid it or do something fancy. The fanciest thing I can do is a basic Topsy Tail and/or put a bow in her hair. Yes, I have an original Topsy Tail tool from 1992. I still haven’t used it to its full potential. 

I am hair challenged. I grew up with a curling iron in my hand. I can curl the heck out of any hair, but can’t braid or anything else to save my life. Actually I can braid embroidery floss. I used to make braided bracelets all the time when I was young. Which reminds me, do you remember the bubble gumwrappers that you could fold and make into bracelets? I found out recently that making those is doing origami. Who knew? 

My point in all of that is that I can braid, but have a hard time with hair and don’t have the patience to do it on a live wiggly child. 
 

Anywho, I know that God has a sense of humor by blessing us with two little girls that have gorgeous features that are best displayed with their hair out of the way. People tell me, “it is easy, just keep trying and you will get it.” I guess I shouldn’t say I can’t do it, it is more like I can’t do it well enough, so I don’t like it. Heck I have a hard enough time just trying to get a part straight. I can’t do jig jag parts either. I see absolutely adorable hairdos on other little girls that I couldn’t dream of doing. 
 
What, did these people have Barbie head dolls to practice on all the time? I wasn’t really a doll kind of girl. I preferred Barbie’s camper instead of her. I liked to play card games, puzzles, house, tea parties with stuffed animals, color, and read. When I did get a doll, I tried to use my Mom’s curling iron on it. It was the biggest smelly mess ever. I have a memory of that smell, it was awful.

Hair after the playground.

I have decided that no matter what the girls’ hair may look like, a nice hair clip or bow detracts from the mess. So if the hair clips or bows are pretty and/or unique enough no one will notice the messy hair. Do you think that is a good strategy? 

Hence my latest project: making hair accessories. It is less expensive than even the dollar store. Plus I have put an order into Grandma to please send supplies. Also, I have an amazing friend who does awesome crafts that is going to make me some bows too. I figured we can never have too many hair accessories with two active little girls!

You Tube has been a tremendous help. I never would have known how to do anything without You Tube. See my latest creations, not bad for a very awkward crafter in training. Now if I could just figure out how to stop burning my fingers. I swear I end up with more glue all over my fingers too than on the craft item. I keep something (plate or paper towel) by me to keep all the peeled glue in until I am ready to throw it away. Making these I went through 3 glue sticks. I did all these in one afternoon and evening which I won’t do that again. I think craft sessions need to be less than 3 hours.

If I keep up creating all these craft items I may have to take back my declaration that I am not a “craft person”. I think I have at least called a truce about my hating crafts. Maybe I can inspire others to do crafts for the sake of the children. Well, it helps our budget too since we have a much lower income now. 

Galatians 6:9 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

© 2012 www.obsessedanalyst.blogspot.com All Rights Reserved.

Those Girls Do Like to be Crafty

Hopefully writing this won't be as traumatic as the experience. This afternoon we did a craft. This was a major production for me. I dislike any craft that requires manual cutting, massive quantities of glue, and multiple materials.  I am a perfectionist, crafts conflict with my nature. However, since I am homeschooling two girls that are 5 and 6 years old, I feel I am obligated to do it. It feeds one aspect of my needing to be the 'perfect' homeschool Mom since I struggle so much with the discipline needed to homeschool. I really would love to be one of those parents who embraces unschooling. I kinda did that the first year and in the end didn't feel I covered what I needed. After my first unschooled year my girls couldn't tell you the day of the week, months of the year or count past 20.
This year it was going to be different. I am using Math U See, Hooked on Phonics, and My Father's World. My Father's World has not worked as well as I had hoped. I have radically modified it to where we are only using the Bible Reader and Workbooks. The key is that Math U See is working fabulously and my girls read better than most of their peers. Anywho I digress.

My girls like crafts. If I did a craft every afternoon with them I would their hero. Now don't get me wrong, we do something art related everyday because they love it. Mostly we use markers, crayons, colored pencils or pens to draw. We will paint at least once a week too.  I go through a ream of white copy paper each month. I use tons of recyled pictures to print out my coupons.

Yesterday I whipped out my Cricut (I don't scrapbook) for the first time since we moved and created some Shamrocks and spring pictures. Just involves paper, scissors and glue. The simplest craft activities I can handle. However, the Cricut yesterday led to asking when we would do other crafts like we did in Vegas like with the babysitter. Oh how I miss our babysitter who would do crafts with the girls. Desperately would love to find one, but alas I am finding we can't recreate the past.

Our Cricut Creations.

Last night we found two crafts online that I thought would be somewhat reasonable to handle. A zebra picture from Busy Bees Kid Crafts and a lion with a mouth to feed from Learners in Bloom. What would I do without creative people on the internet?

Shoe print from a mary jane style Croc.

The paper I used for the shoe print & the body of the paper bag.

We started by painting the paper plates yellow. Set those aside to dry while we glued a body for the lion, picked out eyes and traced a shoe for the zebra head. I thought I was being clever and saving time by using zebra print paper (scrapbook pad). All that the zebra needed was some cutting and glue. Well unfortunately my girls are developing my perfectionism. I think we went through 10 ears, 5 manes, and 4 noses. My oldest got so frustrated that it wasn't coming together the way she wanted it to look that she quit. It didn't help that I was doing work for my youngest. I told her if she was patient I would help her too, but she decided it was her craft and that she didn't need help. She is stubborn like I am. We struggle with each others temperments. So she quit doing the zebra and joined us again when we went back to the lion.

With the lion my girls decided that it needed the mark on its forehead like Simba got from Rafiki, the baboon in the Lion King. I was fine with that until I figured out that in working with finishing the rest of the lion I kept getting orange paint on me. Why did I keep running into issues with the orange paint. Well I didn't think through the whole open mouth on the paper plate and paper lunch bag thing. They drew the mouths on, but I had to cut them out. There is no easy way of having a 5 or 6 year old put a hole in the middle of a paper plate and paper bag to have it look the way they want it. So I brought out the big guns, a box cutter. I didn't want to put holes in anything other than the plate and bag. I got a piece of cardboard to put underneath. I thought I was a genius. Little did I know that the box cutter must be dull and once you paint a paper plate it isn't so easy. So since the kids had painted on the orange before I did the holes, it was a mess. Anywho, in the end the kids adore the lions. They are running around the house looking for 'food' to feed the lions. This is when those Little People come in handy. Kids are having a blast playing King of the Jungle and occasionally breaking into scenes from the different Lion King movies.

Paper plate lion and shoe print zebra.

Other than my achy back from standing over the table for over an hour, I survived. Well the orange paint along with little pieces of paper all over the table and floor don't thrill me. Overall though it was a good afternoon doing a craft. Will I want to do it again? Not anytime soon.

My oldest daughter and I were out having Mommy and Me time today. As his special time with our other daughter my husband decided to do a craft with our youngest. She wanted a zebra who eats like her lion. I was so incredibly impressed. Take a look at the finished product. What a great Dad!

Zebra who can 'eat'