Craft time with the Kiddos

Homeschooling offers a lot of opportunities to slow down and concentrate on some things important to your family. This year my daughter decided she wanted to send some Thanksgiving cards to some of the people who we don't see on Thanksgiving - just to let them know we are thankful for them. How sweet is that? So of course I obliged. We found some super cute felt turkey stickers at Michael's to help streamline our efforts. I have found that if a project takes more than 30 minutes, the kids lose interest. So sometimes I need to cut corners and buy stickers instead of making super-elaborate die-cuts or things like that.

So here we are... we started with a few Close to My Heart ink pads, some Kraft cards and envelopes, felt turkey stickers, some $1 section leaf stamps, acrylic block and stamp cleaning goodies. (Please note that M is in her dance outfit because we were doing this right before we had to run off to dance lessons! :) I don't let her just roam around the house in a blue leotard every day.)



M random stamped different colors of leaves on the cards, after all cards were random stamped in that color she would clean the stamp and pick out the next stamp pad and stamp she wanted to use. Doing one color stamp at a time prevents messing up my ink pads and makes for HAPPY-mom-and-daughter-craft-time. :)


Then J wanted to get in on the action, so I helped him stamp a leaf on the back of the envelopes. That was just enough for him to be excited about doing it. His attention span is about the length of an ant.... so 8 leaves was just enough and he was down from the table flying his airplane in no time.



Putting on the turkeys... almost done!


Here we are --- the final product! She was so happy with her creation. She picked 8 special (and very random) people to send these to... hope everyone had a Happy and Blessed Thanksgiving!

Funky Shoes!

Okay folks... today I'm venturing off of my normal papercrafting to show you something I'm sort of excited about doing for my daughter.
If you've seen all of the 'back to school' commercials this year I'm sure you've seen those crazy Skechers commercials with the 'Twinkle Toes' shoes. My daughter really REALLY wanted a pair because they are bright and sparkly, what girl wouldn't want a pair of fun sparkly shoes? After looking at the prices I said nope, sorry kid. She's growing at an amazingly fast speed and I'm just not into spending that much on a pair of shoes she's not going to wear out.

My solution: 'bling out' a pair of $10 glittery shoes from Old Navy. (The shoes I found were on sale from $14.50 during ON's BTS sale, hopefully you can still snag some online! They came in a few colors and were SUPER cute!)

Here's what I started with --
Shoes
Hotfix gems (The ones in the picture are from the Imaginisce I-Rock line - you can use any hotfix gems)
Hotfix tool
Ribbon (I used American Crafts Premium ribbon - make sure its nice and thick ribbon so it won't fray when using it as shoelaces)


Hotfix the stones onto the toes based on the directions for your hotfix tool...


Remove white/boring shoelaces and replace them with some fabulous ribbon. To make it easier to lace up I folded the ribbon in half and taped the edge...


I knotted the ends of the shoelaces/ribbons and made sure to heat seal them so they won't fray. :)

Here's the final product - I think she's going to be pretty excited!


If I didn't already have a Hotfix tool, ribbon, and the hotfix crystals, this project would have cost me around $25-30 (including the shoes) which would still have been less than a pair of Twinkle toes. :) Make sure if you are purchasing a hotfix tool you grab a coupon online for 40% off an item at Michael's or wherever your favorite craft store is! The gems I used I bought at Archiver's and you can usually find a 30% off one item coupon online for them too. Hope that helps!!