Miss Meghan’s Craft Corner ~ Sail Boat

I’m posting this a few days early, as I have like 900 other blogs queued up to post over the next few days.  Ahhh, crazy busy!

For my library’s May/June magazine I am sharing a fun sail boat craft I found at Family Fun.  It was super easy to make and the girls loved sailing it.  The fact that it actually worked and didn’t immediately sink or fall over is perhaps the most amazing part of this whole project!  Especially when working with small children…  I just loved making this craft with the girls and they are really enjoying playing with their boats 🙂

In her Baking With Miss Lucy section of the magazine, Lucy shared a fun recipe for celery sailing ships.  We thought it would be fun and summery to go with a boat theme 🙂

Sailing Boat Craft

Materials needed:
Small foil pan, like the size of a loaf of bread
non hardening modeling clay
plastic folder (like an old school folder)
Bamboo Skewer or chopstick or thin dowel rod (about 9 inches tall)
long length of string (so you don’t loose your boat)
scissors
permanent marker

1.  Cut out a tall triangle shape from your folder.  You can use the permanent marker to make a shape first or just eyeball it (my preferred method).  Make sure it’s about 2 inches shorter than your stick..  If you have stickers or other colors of permanent marker you can decorate your sail as well 🙂

2.  Fold the sail in half vertically and make a small slit about 1 inch from the top and a second slit about an inch from the bottom.  This is where the dowel rod will go through the sail.

3.  Take the foil pan and pinch one of the short ends a little to make a ship’s bow.

4.  Place a small circle of clay (about an inch) in the bottom of the boat.

5.  Thread the stick through the folder leaving the extra length of stick at the bottom.

6.  Insert the base of the stick into the clay ball.

7.  Poke a hole in the bow of the foil boat and tie your string to it.  Make the length of the string as long as you would like it to be.

The best part is that the boats can actually carry small animals in them. We let an ostrich take a ride in one of the boats!

We took our boats out back to the canal and the girls had a great time “sailing” them, mostly the boats just kind of hung out near the edge of the yard. The girls are planning on taking their boats to the beach tomorrow to try them out there 🙂

Happy girls (and ducks) with their boats and shiny eyes

It was a beautiful night for a sail 🙂

Fun new blocks

So I’ve been doing a lot of scrapbooking and scrapbook kit making lately and was ready for a much needed break from the computer and into a more tangible creative outlet.  So I finally got around to making these really fun blocks I saw at the Case Western Reserve Historical Museum.  You can see the original ones here.

I bought a nice piece of wood from Home Depot and cut it down to be little flat squares.  Then I printed out buildings that Fiona and I decided upon.  She wanted American Girl Place and I also suggested our houses, the grandparents’ houses, the library, and a few of our favorite museums.

I cut out these images and used Mod Podge to adhere them to the blocks.  Lexi helped paint on the glue.

After the Mod Podge dried I added a layer of clear spray paint to keep the Mod Podge from sticking to itself when the blocks are piled up together.

This was super easy to do and the blocks are so much fun to play with.  We tried them out with the Brio train and they look great with the set!  I plan to add more pictures of buildings to the backs of each block so they look nice from both sides when being played with.

Busy Busy Little Elves

CAUTION:  Not to be read by relatives who do not want their Christmas surprise spoiled!!!  Also skip this Sunday’s scrapbooking blog.  But if you want a preview of what you are getting, or are my mom who already knows, feel free to read on 🙂

We’ve been super busy here getting ready for Christmas and making tons of cool gifts for family and secret snowflakes at work 🙂  So I want to share some of the fun things we are doing now, as well as a fun project from a couple years ago…

Today I want to show you these great pine trees…

While searching Pinterest for cool ideas for the library’s winter reading theme decorations, I found this cool tree idea and decided I had to try it.

The original design called for a Styrofoam cone to be used as the frame underneath the felt leaves.  I decided to make my cone out of heavy card stock paper, mostly because it was cheaper and because that’s what I had on hand and was to excited to begin the project to wait until I had time to get to a craft store.  So paper it was.

The other change I made was to make U shaped leaves instead of circles. and to hot glue them on instead of pinning.  I also added a little glitter to the edges of about half the leaves, because honestly, can you ever have enough glitter in life?

With the help of a fabulous co-worker we got two mini trees and one large tree put together in no time, and the trees turned out spectacular, I was so excited.

I loooooved the trees so much I decided to make them as gifts for our assorted family members as well as my secret snowflake person at work (she figured out it was me as soon as she saw the tree so it’s safe to post about it).  Fiona had the great idea to put a star on top of a small stick and insert it through the top of the tree.  And the best part is when my husband suggested mini lights to put on the tree.  He knows that I like lights as much as glitter, so I was intrigued at once.  We stopped by Target and found the perfect little battery powered mini Christmas lights.  We got some in white and multi-colored.  When I got home I punched small holes in my trees and put the lights through from the inside.  It was magical!

So I’d like to share the steps I took to make these cute and festive little trees.  Fiona is my model for arranging the leaves.  It was a great project to work on together. 🙂

Step one:  Make a cone out of paper.  The easiest way to do this is to make a large circle, cut out 1/4 of it and roll it up with the center as the top of the tree.

Step two: Cut U shaped pieces of felt in several sizes.  Larger ones for the bottom and smaller towards the top.

Step Three: Put a little glitter on the bottom edge of about half of the leaves.

Step four: Put a line of glue on the back of the top of the U and begin attaching them to your tree starting at the bottom.  Be sure to overlap a little to cover up your paper.

Step five:  When you reach the top leave the last half inch or so empty.  Make a three petaled shape leaf (see photo) to put at the top and fold it down to cover the last empty space.  Cut a small hole in the top if you want a star.

Step six:  We found some perfect scrapbooking stars on sale at Michaels to use for our tree topper.  I hot glued them to a thin dowel rod and put a matching star shaped piece of yellow felt on the back so it looks more finished than a sticker glued to a dowel rod.  Set aside until after lights are added.

Time for some lights!

Step seven:  I used a large darning needle and a knitting needle-the same diameter as the lights-to poke holes in the paper.  I arranged the holes over the entire tree, being careful not to go to close to the top where my hand wouldn’t fit from the inside.  Put the holes between the leaves so the lights aren’t covered up by felt.  Insert the lights from the inside of the tree.  The base of the tree will cover the battery case.

I got the little mini lights from Target

All done!  I’ll tell you about the cute little penguin in a future post 🙂

Watch for a few more crafts to get you ready for Christmas gift giving.