How to Fold Glass-like Stars

This is a continuation of my up-cycled cellophane packaging tutorials.  I am going to show you how to fold little stars with cellophane packaging.  Here is a tutorial on how to fold a paper star or a video version here.  With all these cellophane tutorials, it is always best to practice on paper first and get the hang of it before you venture off to cellophane.  Cellophane is much harder to work with because it is more slippery and stiff.

Note video tutorial is updated.

These are my pictures, but watching a video on how to do this is much easier.
1.  Use a ruled paper underneath as guidelines to cut cellophane into strips. The strips I cut were about .25 in.
2. For larger stars use wider ruled paper. Note that length of paper should be at least 30 times of width.
3. Take cellophane and "tie into a knot" and flatten.
4. Fold over the short end and then the long end along the edges
5.  Tuck end into flap.
6. Pinch into star shape.

Stay tuned to see what I do with all these cranes and stars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi_3UWG0zHEWheels on bus youtube video
Watch thse Disney Princess Toy Video Elsa Anna Frozen Playdoh

The Cheese Thief's Whereabouts x2 and a Small Tutorial

My dear readers, some of you may be wondering where I have been, others who have been reading this blog since the beginning might have an idea about my sudden disappearance from the blogosphere. The last time I took a hiatus from blogging I was pregnant with my second daughter. So this departure from blogging is no different from the first.  It's just multiplied by two.  While I was away from blogging I was busy "making" twins!

So introducing the two new members of my family Nathan and Owen.

Needless to say I've been busy.  My family of four turned into a family of six before a blink of an eye, and I have not had any time to craft.  I did manage to put together one tutorial today that I would like to share.  I purchased this clay/ play dough eraser making kit a while back and have been wanting to try it.  I couldn't come back into blogging without posting at least one tutorial :)  Enjoy! See video tutorial below or here.

Macaron eraser diy.  So fun!

This kit is the Sculpey eraser clay. The kit I bought is sold out on Amazon, but there are other types on Amazon.  This one looks like the same kit but in a different package.

To make the macaron, roll out one ball and two cylinder "snake" shapes.  The ball size is dependent on what size you want your macron.  I rolled out a .75 inch ball.  The snakes should be long enough to wrap around the circumference of the ball.

Cut the ball in half.  Remold the ball edges into nice half spheres, as cutting the will mush them a bit.

Wrap snakes around sphere.

Add texture to snake shape.  See video tutorial for exactly how I do this

Take alternate color and create flat circle shape for filling.

Bake according to instructions.  Again see video tutorial for exact instructions and tips.

I do hope to start up blogging again, but having four kids takes up the majority of my time.  I truly want to thank all the readers that are reading this post for sticking by my blog even when I haven't. Happy crafting!

DIY Rainbow Lavendar Bath Salts Tutorial

My friend Janet is so creative. I went to a rainbow and unicorn themed birthday party she threw for her daughter. The gave these really cool homemade lavender bath salts. She said that each jar was less than 40 cents to make and that's only because the jar cost 33 cents. She found most of the materials needed for this at the dollar store. Here are the instructions:

Materials:
2 lbs of Epson salt (Only one dollar at the Dollar Tree!)
Food Coloring
Glass containers (The ones in the picture below were only 3 for a dollar at the dollar store.  These are usually over a dollar each at Ikea.)
Lavender Essential Oil
Ziploc Bags or large bows for mixing

Separate Epson salt equally into ziploc bags, one for each color.  Place two drops of food coloring in each bag and shake the bag until mixed. Add one drop of essential oil and then mix again.  Pour into containers.

I really love this craft, it's something I am definitely going to do with my kids.  They would have so much fun pouring the colors like sand art.  It's actually a great and useful spin on sand art.  If you don't want to make rainbow bath salt you could also do this with my colored sugar tutorial.

Store Bought Fortune Cookies with Your Own Message

I love custom things.  I don't love paying the extra money for customization.  Here is a simple tutorial on how to take store bought fortune cookies, remove the fortune and add in your own.

First print out custom fortunes using any text editor.  I used the font Calibri in size 8.

Wet a paper towel and ring slightly.  You want the paper towel to be damp but not dripping wet.
Wrap towel around fortune cookie and microwave for 20 seconds.
Unwrap fortune cookie from towel carefully, towel may be hot.
The fortune cookie should now be pliable enough to open.
Quickly removed existing fortune cookie message and replace with your custom printed one.
Reshape fortune cookie (should be fairly simple, as the cookie already has its form) and hold for 10 seconds to keep form.
You want to do the last two steps quick, the fortune cookie cools very quickly.

Custom message fortune cookie.

Wrap damp towel over fortune cookie and microwave for 20 seconds.

Open fortune cookie, insert message, hold closed for 10 seconds.

Message in fortune cookie before closed.

Stay tuned, the next post will be on how to customize these fortune cookies by dipping them in chocolate and adding a gumpaste flower.

Woven Drinking Straw Heart

If you're at your McDonald's and the kid's need some entertaining, try weaving a heart out of some straws. All you need is two straws and scissors. You could also weave this heart from paper strips. Cut the strips to about 1 cm thick and 30 cms long. Follow the video tutorial on how to weave the heart below. This would be perfect to make one our two and stick them on a home made Valentine's Day card. You could also string them together and make heart garland.

First image is two drinking straws, one bent over the other to form a V.  Follow the video tutorial for further steps.

Direct youtube link to video tutorial.

Low Tech Cardboard Tv

It amazes me to look at the pile of toys in our living room.  The living room is basically Avery's play room with toys stacked up, in baskets and scattered all over the floor.  I don't even know why I bought a new rug, as almost every square inch of it is covered in a sea of toys.

Growing up I very few toys toys, not nearly as many as my peers and definitely significantly less than what my daughter Avery has now.  I use to dream of having a roomful of toys.  I was a bit envious and jealous of my friends whose parents could afford to buy them toys for Christmas and their birthday.  As I look back, I can see that what I lacked in toys I made up for with imagination.  I do credit many of the posts in this blog to the fact that I didn't have much growing up, but was able to I make much with the little that I had.

This is a toy that I made as a child, I recreated it so I could share it with Avery.  The basic concept is its a "low tech tv" that plays a film strip.

Materials:

One small cardboard box
2 cardboard toilet paper/paper towel tubes or wrapping paper cardboard tubes (needs to be longer than the width of small cardboard box
1 plastic cover from a toy box (optional - see red toy box "stainless steel play cookware"  image below for example)
Tape
Glue
Scissors or utility knife

Take box and open it up by carefully pulling apart the glues seams.

Cut 4 circles on the sides of the box the same diameter as the toilet paper roll.  Cut out a rectangle from the center of the box between the 4 circles.

This step is optional.  If you want a more realist looking tv you can create one from another piece of cardboard and some plastic film from a toy package.

Tape the "tv" onto the box.  If you did not create this you can skip down to the next step.

Find comic strips and pictures or make have your children draw up a story line.  Cut them out and tape it together into one long strip.  You want to make sure that your comic strips are about the same width as the opening you created.  I used a variety of things, comic strips, pictures printed from my printer, and a few drawings.  Tape each end of the strip to each cardboard tube.

Roll up the tube like shown above.  insert the rubes into the box and seal up the box using tape or glue.  Tape 

Once box is sealed the tv is ready for use.

My Little Pony Fashion Spa Day with Elsa and Ariel too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2os_1UVecwc

Frozen Fever Fashion Show with Elsa, Anna and Ariel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGioMsDFPJU

Japanese Eraser Collection with My Little Pony Pinkie Pie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpaNLkecT54

Easy Gift Wrapping and Salf Dough Gift Tags

When I did my salt dough gift tag tutorial I didn't post any pictures of how I used the salt dough gift tags. That's because this year I fell so behind in all of my Christmas shopping. I have been trying desperately to catch up and get all my holiday shopping complete.  I did manage to get a little more than half of my shopping done, so I'll show you some ideas on how to integrate the salt dough gift tags into your wrapping.  I'll also show you how to create some custom stamped wrapping paper of your own.

This rope that goes around the box is actually the handle from a shopping bag.  The paper is a brown paper bag.

I created a custom little pattern with some stamps and an ink pad.  I just love the look of brown paper bags as wrapping paper.

Left over yarn cheaper than ribbon.  I tape the ends so I can string it through.

Here are some of my wrapped gifts.  As you can see, I'm still quite behind and it's almost Christmas.

Salt dough recipe and tutorial here.

Bending Popsicle Sticks for a Wooden Helix Vase

The inspiration for this post comes from this blogger who showed how to make popsicle stick bracelets.  Bending popsicle sticks/tongue depressors seemed like a cool idea that I wanted to expand on.  I researched what the best way to bend wood (on a wood working forum), and came up with steam as a fast effective means to bending wood.   You can see my video tuorial on how to bend these craft sticks below.

The flowers on the right are fake so I did not add water to the vase.  If you are going to fill it with water I would find a smaller vase and put it inside.  Craft sticks are not finished wood and probably would not hold up to moisture well.

Used a steamer basket filled with enough tap water to last you about 20 min (or keep refilling water).  Steam sticks for 15 minutes and using heat resistant gloves remove from steam one at a time.  Bend popsicle sticks in same vase or similar sized vase that you want to decorate.  After sticks are bent and dry (about a day) you can spray stain them and seal them with polyurethane.  The words are wood burned on.  If you want to wood burn then do it before you bend the sticks.  I used a soldering iron to wood burn but I would not recommend it.  The soldering iron did not get hot enough and the stick was too long and hard to control.  Please see video tutorial for full details on bending wood.

You can put a whole message on the inside.  I was thinking about putting lyrics to a favorite song on each line.

Try different patterns.

Video Tutorial:

Custom Monogram Snowflake Tutorial

Here's a twist on the classic paper snowflake. Cut out your monogram on top.  I made a J for my husband and an A for my daughter.  This is a simple craft for a child old enough to use scissors.  If they aren't nimble enough to cut the letters, they can help cut the shapes for the center part of the snowflake.

1. Fold square paper in half
2. Fold in half again, then unfold
3. Take the left corner and fold 30 degrees, then fold the right corner 30 degrees from center (you could use a protractor, but I just eyeballed it
4. Fold in half one more time and cut across the top
5. Unfold and draw on the monogram letter
6. Cut the letter out
7. Fold in half again and cut diagonal so the letter is only attached by small section
8. Cut out little shapes for the snowflake
9. Unfold carefully

Easy Kids Craft - Foamies Ornament

With all the ornaments I have been making for my blog, my two year old daughter has been very curious and wanting to help. I decided to let her help me make some simple foamies ornaments. Just peal and stick. It kept her occupied for quite a long time.  After she finished begged us to go downstairs so she could hang on the tree.

This one is the ornament that Avery made.  I like the fact that she overlapped the foam, it gives it more dimension.

If you want to see Avery making the ornament here is a short video.

How to Fold an Eight Pointed Transforming Ninja Star

When I was making my ninja ornament, my husband said I should fold an origami ninja star to go along with the ninja.  I had no idea what he was talking about, so he showed me how to fold one.  I ran with the idea and made his ninja star into a book page-ninja star-transforming-wreath-ornament.  If you read my blog regularly, you will see that I just fused five ideas from my previous blog posts together.  Below are the links to my previous blog post.

Mini Wreath
Book Page
Ninja
Stars
Ornament

I love this "ninja" star because it slides in and out to make this cool octagon.  My husband wasn't too thrilled about the little bow I drew onto his fierce ninja star.

For this star you will need 8 sheets of square paper all the same size.  Follow the video tutorial below to learn how to fold them and construct the star.

This is how to assemble the first four pieces, you do the same for the next four.  Details are in the video.

Half transformed.