Mommy & Me Spring Craft Ideas

Both of my girls are very into doing crafts so I'm always looking for ideas in magazines or sometimes I just take stock of what we have sitting around the house and find a way to use it. Here are two crafts we did this week that are appropriate for preschoolers.

Kid-painted flower vases/pots

Supplies
-recycled glass jars
-kid's washable craft paint
-acrylic sealer

Super easy craft that bought me about 30 minutes to clean the kitchen:) Just gave the girls their jars and paint and let them be creative. Once the paint dried, I sprayed them with a few coats of acrylic sealer (found at any craft store). We originally planned to fill them with soil and then plant a flower or seed, but the weather hasn't been great this week so we haven't been able to get outside. Instead, I filled them with water, cut some flowers from the yard, and put the vases on our dining room table. Both girls are so proud.




















































Easter Front Door Sign

Supplies
-old frame
-white paint
-patterned paper
-sewing machine
-flowers (fabric or cut from paper)
-buttons and other embellishments
-felt
-ric rac

This idea came from this month's issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine. As much as I love our end result, I'm much more proud of the fact that I actually followed through and made this! I see ideas all the time that go into my "to do with kids" folder and they just never happen. Bella and I worked on this together tonight and it only took about an hour. This one definitely requires more work from mom with the preschooler being the helper. Bella's tasks were painting the frame (I touched it up), selecting the flowers and centers, choosing the buttons for the outside of the frame, and keeping track of the eggs after they were cut:)

How you do this one will vary a lot depending on what kind of tools you have. I'm a big scrapbooker so I have access to my die cut machine but you could just as easily cut the eggs by hand.

First, we painted the frame white and tried not to make it look perfect. Then, cut our felt to the size of the frame. Sewed flower stems but those without access to a sewing machine could use a marker, stitch by hand, use wire, ribbon, etc. Then I used my Cricut to cut the eggs and glue dots to place them on the felt. Bella chose the flowers from my ginormous stash and centers from my embellishments and then we attached those to the felt with glue dots as well. We used a rubon I had on hand that says "Happy Easter" but you could just as easily print this from your computer. Last step was to put the felt into the frame (I chose to use the glass to help protect my flowers and eggs from the elements since I'm hanging it on my front door) and then attach ric rac and buttons to the outside. Tomorrow I'll use a staple gun to attach ribbon to the back of the frame and then hang it:)

First pic is the magazine inspiration, the second two are our frame.