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School’s Out! Get into Craft with the kids!

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Schools Out! Get into craft with the kids

School’s out! I know the feeling from both sides! As a teacher, I look forward to my breaks away from the intensity of school and as a mom I know I would love to just have a break but I am also glad to know that at least I’m only responsible for my own kids! Yay!

Sometimes I almost think I hear parents unanimously moaning and groaning at the prospect of having to ‘babysit’ their own children! Really!! And moaning too that teachers have too much time off. Trust me! We don’t!

Don’t fear! Help is here!

What you do is to come up with something of a schedule which you must sell to the kids in as attractive a way as possible. That’s what I do. Don’t wait for them to say ‘mom what are we going to do today?’ In fact, prior to the holiday period, we decide how we will fill each day. Give the kids a chance to have an input (dependent on their age and level of maturity of course). Allow them personal time, a chance to meet up with friends, time for group activities, outdoor fun, and our favourite – craft! That way, they get to do what they want to, with a little guidance from you!



In our family, we like to do a lot of different crafts. Did you see my recent post about button art? If you have unused buttons, it’s an impressive but simple way to use them up. You can also check out this post showing some cushions made by 11-year-olds. In this article, I will be sharing with you some craft ideas of what we have done in recent times to amuse ourselves.

Bottle craft

In our municipality, we are given various receptacles to use for recycling household waste. I do recycle and to be honest my receptacles are not usually full like the others in our neighborhood. That is because we actually follow the mantra: reduce, reuse, recycle.

I like to save as much as I can for our craft projects. bottle craft is easy and inexpensive to do with children.

We have recently looked at bottle craft. There are lots of images on the internet including on Pinterest. There are a number of things you can do with clean glass bottles in terms of decorating and repurposing them.

 

For the bottle craft we did, you will need:

Clean glass bottles or just wash any glass bottles you have

White primer

Paint Brushes

Acrylic paint

Spray varnish

First, paint or spray the cleaned bottles with the primer and allow that to dry.

Craft supplies for bottle art

Next use an acrylic paint colour of your choice to paint the bottles. For this particular set, we chose blue. (The bottles were originally a dark green)



During the drying process, we thought of ideas for designs for the bottle. We decided on a type of Japanese art we had seen on Pinterest.

After that coat is dry, we then painted the design with black, pink, yellow and white.

Doing craft with acrylic paint is so easy and so effective

The final part of the project is to add the spray varnish. Ensure this is done in a well-ventilated area, preferably outside. The varnish adds a sheen to the finished project and also seals it. Simple, but effective. What do you think?

  

Decoupage Furniture

Deco what? Decoupage! That is the French art of decorating with paper. We have recently discovered and started this type of craft too and then even more recently branched out to doing decoupage to furniture. My suggestion, straight off the bat, is that you should try a simple project first because a large piece of furniture might make you disillusioned with decoupage.

Well, the colour scheme in our kitchen is black and white. Years ago I had bought a black and white window blind which was too long so I had cut it myself. I didn’t have any plan for the piece I cut off but I still stored it away.

Using the leftover from this fabric for my window blinds, I put Pinterest to action by doing some craft on a stool for my kitchen.  

Come seven years later, I went and got it to decoupage a kitchen stool. Now, this is an old wooden stool that we inherited when we purchased another house. It just needed some loving to put some life back into it and to make it part of the scheme in the kitchen.

You can see the picture of the stool below.

You can do some decoupage on old furniture such as this stool. Do as much or as little as you want with it.



For this project you will need:

Mod podge

Spray varnish

Chalk paint

Fabric/paper with designs on/wallpaper

A small item of furniture

Fabric scissors and  paper scissors

How we did it

To decoupage it we first cleaned it with soapy water.

Whilst it was being dried, we cut some designs out of the fabric from the kitchen blinds.

We then used the white primer to paint the stool both on the top and the bottom, waiting first for each section to dry.

After the primer, we applied the white chalk paint to the stool and allowed it to dry. That did not take too long, but we still left it a day.

The next day we played around with how the design should look and then photographed what we thought was the best looking one so we would remember when decoupaging.

With Mod Podge, we then applied the design to the stool.

   I'm very pleased with the decoupage craft work on this stool.

After that process, the glue was left to set.

After drying, the stool is placed outside where it is well ventilated and sprayed with the varnish, which gives it a gloss finish as well as seals it.

We are very proud of those two projects we worked on during the break from school and hope you enjoy learning about them too and are willing to try them out when next the kids get a break from school.

I am linking up with The Organized Dream this week.

Let us know what you think in the comment box below.

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Comments

  1. Shub says

    May 1, 2017 at 10:32 am

    Awesome ideas! My daughter is big time in such art. Will show her this post as a reference..

    Reply
  2. Christine says

    May 1, 2017 at 5:01 pm

    I never thought of doing that to a stool before. That looks great. I am so trying this.

    Reply
  3. DONNA WRAY says

    May 1, 2017 at 5:16 pm

    I LOVE THE BOTLES AND THE STOOL, THEY WERE REALLY CUTE AND LOOKED SO OUTSTANDING.

    Reply
  4. Candice says

    May 1, 2017 at 5:20 pm

    Fun ideas to do with kids! My kids would love it!

    Reply
  5. paris says

    May 1, 2017 at 5:21 pm

    I feel like my kids are a little too you for these, but I love the ideas so I might just do them myself!

    Reply
  6. Emmi says

    May 2, 2017 at 9:03 pm

    These are great ideas! I’m a teacher who will be saying goodbye to her students for the summer soon. I’ll pass these ideas on to some parents!

    Reply
  7. Nicole says

    February 19, 2018 at 4:03 pm

    These look like fun! 🙂 The bottle craft one is so pretty.

    Reply
    • Joleisa says

      March 3, 2018 at 8:54 pm

      Thanks Nicole

      Reply
  8. Kate | The Organized Dream says

    June 24, 2018 at 10:13 pm

    Thanks for linking up to the Make Life party. You’re one of the features this week! Thanks for joining me and I hope to see you again tonight starting at 8 p.m.

    Reply
    • Joleisa says

      June 27, 2018 at 5:33 pm

      Thanks for sharing my post, Kate. I did check it out and some of the others too. Hopefully, we will pop by soon again.

      Reply
  9. Eric Gamble says

    April 9, 2020 at 1:42 am

    Aye Carumba Joleisa, you are going to kill me if I keep reading your posts with Darcee sitting next to me! She LOVED your Decoupage work with the old stool! I personally love refinishing old hard wood furniture if you sand it down and bring out it’s original character but I will have to admit that the work you did on that stool does look cool.
    I can just imagine Darcee making me cut out 100s of patterns & designs so she can wood glue them to our old furniture! haha
    Eric Gamble recently posted…Top 5 Reasons To Visit The Caribbean!My Profile

    Reply

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Hi, we're Jo and Leisa, twin sisters and authors of Joleisa.com. Originally from the sandy beaches of Jamaica we now reside in England where we followed our calling to teach. But sometimes that call changes and our new passion is writing. We're here to give the ups and downs of it all with our lifestyle tips and tricks to help you avoid the sour lemons that can get in our way of frugal budgeting, intentional living and happiness. Join us and learn more about how we found the simplest ways to achieve easy living. Read More…

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