Puffy Paint Bottle Cap Stamps

Make Custom Stamps with trash and puffy paint. Looks like fun! Tutorial at Pretty Little Things.

Wowser Wednesday - Fancy Yarn Skein Winder

If you are big into yarn craft and want a Tiltaswift, a yarn skein carousel for winding yarn, there are two tutorial on Webecca Says using household items.

Print Specialty Paper

Don't need a whole a pad of specialty paper for graphing, musical scoring, kid's handwriting practice, Yahtzee scoring, etc.?

Then Print a page off from the internet.

The home page just shows you the most popular ones, look at the left hand column for the categories of paper you can print to find what you want.

Wowser Wednesday -Soap Art

Since this week is all about soap, just thought I'd share a bunch of links to some really neat soap carvings.

Incredible Soap Art

Soap Art

Want to make flower shaped soap? Here is a whole gallery of ideas.

Make Your Own Water Paint Coloring Book

I had some watercolor pencils and a kiddo who likes to paint. (I've made her cheap watercolors in this post and cheap and tasty fingerpaints in these posts.) And decided to try and convert a coloring book to a paint with water book.

So I outlined and colored in the areas that would be shaded and thought the water colors would bleed over into the uncolored portion. About 50% of the picture.

But it didn't do it enough for my satisfaction, especially the lighter colors, so I tried again covering about 80% of the picture and had my toddler water brush it.

Before After

Not extraordinary, so now you know. Although it was a fun excuse for Mom to color, although she prefers the color range choices of a 96 color crayon box.

And then of course, the munchkin spent the next 30 minutes using her wet brush to paint the pages in the coloring book sans color.

So, even cheaper water color book option - hand the three year old a blank coloring book, a bowl of water and a brush and let her imagination provide the colors.

UPDATE: I stumbled back upon where I got the idea. Off of inspired ideas, she uses watercolor paper and draws the pictures. Maybe the watercolor paper would make them turn out better, but all my girl wants to color is princesses and butterfly fairies, don't have time to free hand draw that, so I think I'll stick with the coloring book method.

Wowser Wednesday - Scrabble Tile Jewlery Pendants

Got a handful of scrabble tiles and no desire to play the game any longer? Convert them into jewelery, better yet, use pretty junk mail catalogs for the pictures on the pendants.

Here's the tutorial from Makes and Takes.

Reader Suggestion Friday - Crochet with Plastic Bags

A reader's friend uses plastic bags to crochet durable reusable grocery bags. (I use t-shirts for my reusable grocery bags)

If you would like to see a photo tutorial on how to cut bags to reuse as yarn go here.

Recycle Cindy from myrecycledbags.com crocheted a clothespin bag for her clothesline with this method. (I used a toddler's dress for my clothespin bag)

Check out the rest of Cindy's site, cool reuse projects, some of which I think I am going to do, which of course I'll post when I do them.

Tasty Finger Paint

Want to occupy your toddler with finger paints that are non-toxic and easy to make? I posted a cheap one yesterday and a tasty one today. These are not paints that will keep, so if you expect a masterpiece that you will want to keep forever, these are not the paints.

Tasty Finger Paint

White creamy food (like pudding, yogurt or as I used, sour cream) and food coloring

Place drops of food coloring in small bowls of pudding/yogurt. Paint on wax paper or baking cookie sheets. Wash soon so no bugs are attracted to the artwork.

Cheap Finger Paint

Want to occupy your toddler with finger paints that are non-toxic and easy to make? I have a cheap one today and a tasty one tomorrow. These are not paints that will keep, so if you expect a masterpiece that you will want to keep forever, these are not the paints.

Cheap Finger Paint

Flour, water and food coloring.

Mix just enough water into flour to make a paste and drop in food coloring. No worries if they ingest it. Use on paper, waxed paper, cookie sheets, etc.

Pizza Box Art Storage

Wonder how to store all the lovely art work you get from your kids? Maybe a take out Pizza box would work well for you? Nice big space for pictures, paintings, collages; sturdy packaging to keep it from getting crushed and thin enough to fit in odd spaces, like under a bed. Just make sure to choose ones that didn't get pizza grease on it.

Wowser Wednesday - Knit Clothing with Plastic Bags

Somehow I don't think this would be very comfortable, but still, wow! She knit these outfits from plastic grocery bags. I doubt any of you will have the time for such a silly project, but they are cool to look at.

Ooo, Ooo! I am thinking . . . . doll clothes! Huh? Huh?

Visit the whole album by Cathy Kasdan.

Toddler Watercolor Paint

My toddler got a hold of my basting brushes and wanted to paint as I was cooking. So quickly, I grabbed two small bowls, put a drop of food coloring in each one and filled with water. It obviously hardly colors anything (and hopefully won't stain anything), but it gave her "paint colors" since I know she wouldn't have been fooled by water. I sat her down with a piece of newspaper and she colored away for quite a bit of time getting the floor sopping wet which I later just cleaned up with rest of the newspaper and a rag, no staining, yeah! Good thing I used food coloring since I caught her a little later sucking the water out of the paint brush.

Phone Book Glue Catcher for Scrapbooking and other Crafts

I'm making a physical scrapbook for someone this Christmas. I hate the fact that when you use a glue stick and you want to get the very edges of the object you are gluing down glued, your table or papers all start getting sticky.

So to keep that from happening, take an old phone book and use that as your gluing surface. When it gets too sticky, tear out the page and throw it away!