Happy Thanksgiving!

Just want to share a pic or two of the cards I sent out to family. Also, wanted everyone to know how thankful I am for a very long list of things, including, of course, you, my family (that's you, hubby!) and friends. I appreciate your support of my creative endeavors and all other aspects of my life.

Enjoy and THANKS for visiting!

Chris

Halloween Projects

Hello All! School started, so I've been M.I.A. Time flies, so "they" say, and as I get older, it flies faster and faster. With Halloween now over, I know that Christmas will be here before we know it. It always seems that from Halloween to Christmas is a blur. So although Christmas music is playing at the stores, I'm going to to go back in time four days and share a few Halloween projects.

My Halloween card this year was inspired by Pinterest. I know one of my nephews got a kick out of the "googly eyes."

These candy coffins were made using my Cricut cartridge. 

And finally, my costume...a cupcake! The bottom is a plastic tub with the bottom cut off. It was then covered with silver wrapping paper (the cupcake liner) and hung in place with suspenders. The frosting was made by sewing scalloped pieces of quilt batting onto a men's 3X t-shirt and has sprinkles of colored straws decorating it. The cherry on top is a dollar store hat with a pipe cleaner stem. It was a hit in my school's Halloween parade!

Halloween ended after seven bags of candy were handed out and I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow!

Enjoy and THANKS for visiting!

Chris

Memory Keeper

This project is for my second grade classroom. For several years now my school has had all students do an end of the year writing sample about their favorite memory from that grade. So we always start off by brainstorming events we can remember. This year I thought we could record special events on index cards as they happen and keep them in this memory box to read at the end of the year. Of course, now that I came up with this idea, I have probably jinxed myself and our end of the year writing sample topic will probably change. Oh well, it will be fun anyway and I had a chance to be creative and feel like I was getting ready for school to start at the same time.

This started out as a plain, white, metal container. I painted the top and bottom edge yellow. After applying the paper, I also mod podged the entire thing before embellishing.

Enjoy and THANKS for visiting!
Chris

More from Craft Your Art Out!

Three more mornings of craft Your Art Out flew by. The eleven girls were kept busy creating at least 3 projects a day. Below are pictures of many of the projects we did. Somehow I was kept busy too and forgot to take pictures of several of our crafts.

Water Sponges - a favorite, simply and easily made by cutting 3 sponges lengthwise into thirds. Stack them in mixed order, three on-top of three (makes a cube.) Then tie tightly with fishing line. It will take shape as you tie it. Wet, throw, repeat.

 Here's a mini-clipboard and magnet. The clipboard is just a thin piece of wood covered with scrapbook paper and a ribbon adorned clip holds papers in place. The magnet is made by gluing paper and a magnet on the back of those larger sized clear stones (like melted marbles) from the dollar store.

These are hair ties. A couple of ribbons and several beads and you're all set!

Homemade whiteboards made from cutting and drilling a large sheet of shower board (purchased at any home store.) These were decorated with vinyl pieces I had from Uppercase Living. I would suggest adding a marker with velcro.

Dog toys braided from strips of fleece. Cat toys were also made by tying smaller strips of fleece and feathers to a dowel rod using elastic string.

Enjoy and THANKS for visiting1
Chris

Craft Your Art Out!

I had the pleasure of working with 11 girls for a new session with the Victor Parks and Rec. It was a quiet group that opened up over the 4 days. Day 1 was a "road trip/vacation" theme. We made Tic Tac Totes (a travel game), funky multi-colored crayons and water bottle carriers.

Tic Tac Totes were made from small (6" X 6") totes, ribbon strips, puffy paint and pom poms for game pieces that were stored inside the totes. I'm amazed that puffy paint is still used and that even the 2nd grade girls could use it well. Here's the final results...

The crayons were done by putting broken up pieces of old crayons in a mini muffin pan and melting them down on low heat for a short time in the oven. Honestly they didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. I think the colors ended up mixing too much. Luckily the girls liked them none the less.

Lastly, the water bottle carriers. These were an innovation I came up with using thin, rectangular mousepads and that ol' camp favorite - boondogle (sp?). You know it,it's that plastic string stuff. Anyway, hole punches were done along the bottom and sides, making it easier to "sew" together, and then the a hanging string was braided together to a desired length. (P.S. the bottom was gathered with it's own piece to form the bottom.)

Suffice it to say, we were busy for a full 2 hours. More to come on our other creations.

Enjoy and THANKS for visiting!
Chris

One final project for the kiddos!

Hi! This was the last project I did with the 3 girls I had in my Victor Parks & Rec class. We spent 4 mornings together, but somehow I forgot to take a picture of their projects for Day 3 and I didn't have an example to show. On the 3rd day, the girls did a chipboard mini-album. They adhered papers on with Mod Podge and went crazy with a variety of embellishments. (Bling, bling, bling!)

So, a paperbag album was the project for Day 4. I decided to use white paperbags and it was no surprise that they absolutely loved the pink & purple papers we used. The inserts with tabs that went into the bags' open ends were also a big hit. One of the girls actually came up with the idea of placing the album title on an angle (love it). And luckily their moms are all determined to print pictures for the girls to put in their albums.

Enjoy and THANKS for visiting!

Chris

Day 2 of creating with kiddos!

The fun with my little group of girls continued with 3 paper crafting projects. I must give credit to others who taught me these at sometime over the years. Two, if not all 3, were from Amy, a terrific CTMH consultant-friend.

This is a book mark using a giant paper clip. (Paper clips were found at Wal-Mart.)

Next is a double picture frame made from coasters. This shows the original finished project. The pink & turquoise papers are the ones we actually used (and the girls really liked). I should have taken a picture of one of the girls' projects, because I did not complete one like theirs. 

Finally, we did  a "pocket-sized" mini scrapbook that closed with velcro. They loved stamping the large flower and then stamping the outline of the flower in a different color - they thought that was really cool!

There's more to come another day.
Enjoy and THANKS for visiting!
Chris