Invention kit party bags

Well, I left this until the very last moment! I'm not sure if this is the norm all across America or if it's done anywhere else in the world either, but here locally in the elementary schools, kids bring in treat bags for their friends when it's their own birthday. Carys is about to turn seven and she wanted to make each of her classmates an "invention kit". She's really into making things, totally random things, mind bogglingly weird things with all the bits and pieces of craft supplies and recycling that we have in our home, so it seemed like a natural sort of gift to come from her.

My first thought was "How do I make this not look like a bag of bits and bobs of random rubbish?" I personally loved the idea of an invention kit vs the usual plastic party bag misc, but I didn't want her friends to think "Why are you giving me paperclips and string you weirdo?", so I figured a bit of creative marketing might do the trick.

The other reason I liked the idea was that we could put it together quite cheaply for a class of 24 kids. I had quite a lot of stuff around already that we could use in the kits, so it only took $4 spent in Daiso for the bags and candy, plus another $10 in the Dollar Tree for extra bits.

In the bags are:

• Paper (origami sheets and strips)
• Craft foam
• card (coloured index card)
• Goggly eyes
• Rubber bands
• A balloon
• Metalic tie tags
• Paper clips
• Straws
• Glitter glue
• A Magnet
• Popsicle sticks
• Crayons
• Double sided sticky foam pads
• Pom poms
• Adhesive Jewels
• String
• A mini flourescent cable tie
• Foam stickers
• Pipe cleaners
• Modeling clay
• 2 different candies

Quite a lot fits in the little bag! I won't lie, it took a while to divide up all the bits into the 24 bags and make the paper topper for the kit, but it was done in a couple of hours, so not all that bad really.

I put together the label for the top of the bag to personalise the gift and to make it look a bit like a proper craft kit so the kids are more enthused with the notion of an open ended, inventing project. They are just printed on regular printer paper, two to a sheet, folded over and then stapled onto the top of the bag. This is the back of the label that lists the contents.

I actually had enough supplies to make 30 bags, which is great because we have some freinds coming over for Pizza and a movie on her actual birthday, which is Saturday, so they can have a kit each too.

We've been planning and making her birthday present again this year. You might remember the Falcon dollhouse and Star Wars peg dolls from last year, well this year we've attempted something a bit bigger and significantly more ambitious, so with a three month old also in the picture, it'll be interesting to see if we can get it finished in time. By the way, the aforementioned three month old just keeps getting more and more delicious every day and looks so much like her biggest sister, the birthday girl did at that age!

The photo on the left was taken almost seven years ago! Seven! Brain cannot compute!

DIY cloth pirate maps

Yarrrr! Talk like a pirate day be just around the corner Mateys!

September 19th to be exact. We've been making our own pirate treasure hunting maps over at Alpha Mom this year. It's a very simple project, using things you likely have around the house anyway. These maps will stand the test of time too, because they are cloth and so can't be ripped easily and can also be laundered, providing a keepsake of your child's artwork as well as a nifty play thing.

So me hearties, click over to Alpha Mom to see my post there on how we made these.

Also, if you are new around these parts, you might want to check out last year's Talk Like A Pirate Day craft that I did over there, making rolled newspaper pirate swords and pirate girl bandana skirts for all your feminine swashbuckling needs :)

The technique used to make these maps is one that we've used in the past to make skirts for the kids out of their own artwork, but as you can see, it's such a flexible and easy way to get designs onto cloth, kids can use it to create pretty much anything their hearts desire.

Ooooh, you could even make a pirate map skirt or shorts ;)

"Make Stuff Together" Giveaway winner.

Aaaaaand the winner of the copy of "Make Stuff Together" that isn't covered in jammy fingerprints iiiiiiiis...

Carrie, who was chosen by random.org as the sixth commenter on the thread, and said:
"What an interesting book! It sounds right up my alley."

So Carrie, if you send me the address of your alley I shall send your copy of this lovely book right up it as soon as I can get to the post office :)

You can email me at filthwizardry at gmail dot com.

Thank you to all of you that commented. It's always nice to be able to see who some of my readers are, because I know a lot of you will have blogs of your own and it's nice to be able to click through and check them out. I've got more time to do that sort of thing now that I have to sit down to breastfeed several times a day :) Now I just need to get better at one handed typing, so that I can reply to my emails at a better pace!

For those of you that didn't win the draw but are still interested in purchasing a copy of Bernadette and Kathie's book, here's the link to it's page on Amazon (not an affiliate thing) and I'll have another craft project for you on here tomorrow :)

"Make Stuff Together" Book Giveaway

Here we are! That illusive book review that has taken me so long to write up.

I was approached by Bernadette Noll and Kathie Sever, the authors of “Make Something Together” a few months ago, before their book was released. They asked if I would like to be part of their book blog tour and although I have never said yes to a giveaway on Filth Wizardry before, and I was just about to give birth, I wanted to say yes to this particular book. The way they described it to me, it sounded quite lovely and totally in keeping with the vibe of our home, so I wanted to be involved in helping to promote it in some way.

Now that things have reached some sort of rhythm in the newborn department and I’ve had a chance to really sit down and read through the book and see how the projects and philosophy are applicable to our own family, I’m ready and able to write about it and of course offer a copy of the book to one lucky commenter on this post.

Bernadette and Kathie, the authors of this book, have had a lot of experience with collaborative crafting, especially with children. Bernadette co-founded Slow Family Living and Kathie is the creator of Ramonsterwear. Together they have formed Future Craft Collective to find ways that families can be creative together in a sustainable fashion. At the start of the book, before you get to the detail of the individual projects, they take the time to share their experiences and talk about the “why” and “what to expect” aspects of creating with your family. This part of the book, as well as being very well written is also extremely encouraging to those that are nervous about setting the right environment for a pleasant crafting experience when children are involved.

I think the thing that I like most about this book is that it is relevant to a large range of ages and abilities. Out of the 24 projects, some are simple projects that younger children can use as an initiation into sewing and to gain confidence quickly, but there are also more complicated projects that preteens will be able to throw themselves into. As much as I can see me and my five and six year old making some of these things together, I can equally imagine that the book is still going to be in use when my older girls are ten and eleven and they have their little five year old sister to help join in with the making too.

The other thing that stood out to me when I read through this book was that the projects are all real keepers. You're upcycling, reusing and recycling materials, but in a way that creates family items that will really become part of the home atmosphere and traditions. Most of the upcycling that I do with the kids when we craft is making things that are fun and yes they use recycled materials most of the time, but they aren't things that I can see us having and still using say ten years from now. In contrast to our usual fun with recycling, I'm excited to make some items from this book, such as the table runner and napkins or the family flags, that can be more permanent creative fixtures in our family's home for years to come.

I've wanted to sit down at the sewing machine with my older girls, who are five and six years old for some time now, but deciding on what we should try and how to go about it has delayed me taking the plunge. I think it's this book that's going to ease us into the process of sewing together and I'm looking forward to it!

If you'd like a chance to win your own copy of "Making Stuff Together" then just leave a comment on this post and I'll announce a winner on Wednesday next week.

Disclosure: Bernadette and Kathie gave me a copy of this book for myself as well as one to give away on Filth Wizardry, but all the views I have expressed above are my own and this also means that the book the winner gets won't have little jammy fingerprints all over it from my children ;)

Stamping with Lego and craft foam

Hello! Long time no blog! Delyth is six weeks old now and we've been enjoying both the scrummy new baby and the summer vacation. I have got plenty that I want to get up on Filth Wizardry in the next month, even a book giveaway, which I've never done before. It's a cracking book, so that'll be coming soon (a month after I intended, but you know... baby, so bear with me), but in the mean time, here's a simple craft we came up with, that you've likely got all the bits to do already, and if you don't then they are nice and cheap.

You will need:

• a stamp pad. If you've got more than one colour, all the better.
• Craft foam sheets
• Random bits of Lego
• A roll of clear contact paper (sticky back plastic if you are from the 1980s Blue Peter generation like I am)

You've probably noticed that we like playing with Lego in ways other than it was intended. For example, here, here, here and here. I'm also a big fan of making art projects be open to creative diversity, so although the kids love stamping things with stamp pads, we don't have many store bought rubber stamps. If you've been reading Filth Wizardry for a while then you might remember the stamping with plasticine that we did last year. That is still a very popular way to use the stamp pads with the kids, mainly because the possibilities are limitless with it, but it's a very organic, fluid kind of art that you can create in that way.

In contrast to that, I've wanted to find a way that the kids can experiment with the geometric shapes of the bases and tops of various Lego pieces. Lego blocks are already designed to fit together, all measuring multiples of a unit length, so constructing art with them should be interesting. Back in October last year we tried it on paper, but with a silicon baking sheet under the paper to give the needed "squidge" for the solid plastic Lego to make good contact for a decent looking stamp. It was ok, but not brilliant and I never got around to blogging about it. You can see the result in this picture. The good thing about this method was that the kids could colour in their creations with pencils after if they wanted.

This week I remembered that we had some craft foam that hadn't yet been chopped up and used in the bathroom like this, so we tried stamping directly onto the craft foam and it worked beautifully. Just the right amount of squidge for the ink to make really good contact and print cleanly. The other great thing is that it's very easy to clean the water based ink off the Lego pieces after you're done. We just wiped ours clean with a baby wipe.

We had a handful of stamp pads from the dollar store and a roll of clear contact paper to cover the artwork and make useful items from it such as coasters, place mats, book marks and picture frames. The Dollar Tree by us sells stamp pads, packs of craft foam and rolls of contact paper, so if you have some Lego you could do this with a bunch of kids for as little as three dollars.

My six year old was into using the pieces to make representations of objects like flowers, butterflies, people and clouds, but my five year old seemed to enjoy a more abstract approach. They made themselves place mats, but you could easily make a mouse pad as a gift in this way.

You do have to cover the printed foam with the clear contact paper though, because although the stamps take well to the foam, the foam is not going to hold a water based stamp permanently, so the sticky back plastic over the top protects it from getting smudged. I was worried that the contact paper might not adhere well to the craft foam, but it actually sticks to it really well.

You don't have to just do dark coloured stamps on light coloured craft foam either. I had a white stamp pad that we tried on black craft foam and that worked really well too. While the kids were making their place mats, I made a couple of coasters. The large circle was made by dabbing the stamp pad around the rim of a cup. I couldn't resist the urge to see if I could make a millenium falcon coaster, and I think it worked out reasonably recognisable, at least to Star Wars fans anyway.

The kids also made some bookmarks to give to grandma and grandpa.

It's an easy way to decorate a little craft foam photo frame too.

If you've given me enough of your time to get this far down a rather lengthy post then let me reward you with a photo of a cute baby!

I'm sure we'll be having more fun with this way of stamping in the future. If you don't have stamp pads or Lego handy, you can also make all these things without the stamping, by just using Sharpie markers to draw on the craft foam and covering that with the contact paper.

I've got another Lego craft option to blog about, but if I add it onto the bottom of here it'll be the world's longest blog post and I may never get it finished, so hopefully I'll get to that another day (if I can stop staring at my baby long enough)

Can you think of anything else that we could use besides Lego to make interesting stamps with on craft foam?

Alphamom guest post and DIY mobile

I just wrote another post over at Alpha Mom, showing how we made some window decorations and beaded butterflies using the plastic from gallon milk jugs. You can read about how we made them and get the free butterflies template here.

We'll definitely be making more to hang in our windows in the future, and I doubt a milk jug will make it into our recycling bin without being used for this purpose again! I just need to get about a thousand more suction cups to keep up with the girl's creating.

We used our butterflies to hang on a mobile for the third mini Filth Wizard, so in addition to the tutorial over at Alpha Mom, I thought I'd share with you a few pictures showing how we put the mobile together once we had made the butterflies. Here it is from the baby's veiwing angle, looking up from the chest of draws we have in our bedroom where the changing pad is.

I used a few things that I'd found in thrift stores to put it together. The main ring was part of a medium sized embroidery hoop that I wrapped in green cotton yarn.

Then used a random small wooden ring that Paul had found in a big bag of misc wooden items at the thrift store to hang the mobile up from a hanging basket bracket.

I'd also found some wooden curtain rings with little metal clips at the thrift store and thought if I covered those with some bright yarn remnants then they would look pretty and also allow us to swap out whatever was hanging from the mobile whenever we wanted. My two older girls are very into the idea of making new things to clip up there for the baby to see.

Once I tied all that lot on the mobile and hung it up, I thought it would be nice to have a little bit of decoration around the main hoop, so I cut out some felt leaves and made six little crochet flowers to attach using the mini flower tutorial over at Attic 24.

Here it is all finished and hung up in the corner of our bedroom along with the rocker and towel rail we put up for hanging her clothes.

Have any of you made your own mobiles for your babies? I'd love to see some of them if you have! It'll be interesting to see what my older two girls come up with to hang on this one when they get bored with the butterflies.

Thank you all for your congratulations and warm well wishing on the arrival of Delyth :) You're a lovely lot! It's nice to hear that a lot of you have more children than hands and are enjoying every minute of it too. Delyth is still an easy going little scamp and we're having a very relaxing and quite mellow start to the school summer vacation with her. She was two weeks old yesterday and Paul's been back at work this week, but thanks to some wonderful friends who have made us dinner on a few nights and another that had the big kids over to play for a few hours on Tuesday, I'm not feeling maxed out and have been able to have kids over to our place to play and get out a bit with them too. The trip I mentioned that we were going to attempt on Monday to the wild animal exhibit at the local library went much better than I had anticipated. No one was eaten by the artic lynx and no one broke the armadillo. Success!

She likes her recycled t-shirt sleep gown :)

Made using the tutorial and pattern here at "This mama makes stuff".

Baby is here, and thank you LiEr!

Delyth Lyn arrived at 10.30pm on 15th June. She was the biggest of my three girls at 8lb 4oz and is also the most chilled out of my babies so far. In case anyone is curious, Delyth is another fairly common Welsh name, just like Carys and Ffion. It is pronounced "Dell-ith". I feel very lucky indeed that she is so calm and happy, given that my first daughter screamed incessantly for her first three months of life. Her demeanor is certainly making my first few days as a mum of three a lot easier to manage than I was anticipating. Here's the little love before she was even a day old...

The big sisters are in heaven! They felt like they were waiting an eternity to be able to meet her. 9 months must seem like forever to a five and a six year old. Now that we have her to cuddle and fuss over, Carys and Ffion are made up.

She hasn't worn much of the knitting and crochet that I made for her while I was pregnant yet, but she does love the blanket that I hooked a couple of months ago :) It was a free pattern I downloaded from Ravelry called "Rainbow Ripple baby blanket" by Celeste Young, and was very quick to make. It only took three skeins of Caron Simply Soft yarn.

We made it to the hospital to have her, but only just. I was admitted at 9.30 and had her just before 10.30. They had just about enough time to get me in a room and in a gown and get the doctor in there! We had to fill in all the hospital admissions paperwork after she was born. It was also the first time I've managed to give birth without being pumped full of Pitocin and I have to say, it was a totally different experience. No pitocin and no time meant no epidural and I found it so so much nicer that way. I'm just so happy that my body co-operated this time around and I got to give birth with minimal medical intervention, albeit rather hurredly! It's made recovery a lot faster for me and I can't help wondering if Delyth's Zen composure is somehow linked to not being put through a long and intense labour with medication like my other two had, then again, maybe it's just who she is. I almost can't imagine having a calm child!?! The other two are raging stuntwomen, so I don't really expect it to last ;)

I have a blogosphere thank you that I want to send out to LiEr, who many of you know writes Ikatbag, where she makes fabulous sewn creations, plus plenty of recycley toy goodness that of course I'm well impressed and enthused by. LiEr, being really sweet and lovely just sent us a welcome to the world baby Boardman parcel, full of gorgeous things that she'd sewn. I've taken a photo so that you can see how totally cute this stuff is.

Six reversible bibs in many different prints of brushed cotton, a snuggly fleece blanky, and one of her fleecy baby balls with ribbon tags and a jingly bell inside. She also put in a cute little homemade card for us and a load of cool little wooden shapes for the big kids to paint up and play with. Thank you LiEr! The personal value of handmade gifts is immense and I'm really touched that you did this for us. I hope that I can get something in the mail to you and your girls soon too. I have to figure out nursing in a sling so that I have both hands free to knit and crochet ;)

Oooh, and I thought you'd get a kick out of seeing how alike my girls looked as newborns. Most people comment that we have a brunette now, but both my other two started out with dark hair like their dad's too but had started to go blonde by about eight or nine months old.

Paul goes back to work on Monday, so we'll see how well I cope with more children than hands when that happens! We've actually got plans to go to see a wild animal exhibit that's being brought to the local library. I'm curious to see how wrong that can go, given that last time I took my kids to an animal exhibit at the library when they were toddlers, we had to leave because their volume settings were malfunctioning and the igunanas were terrified.