Clay Pot Christmas Tree

A friend of mine did this craft with her children and I thought it was the cutest idea to make a Christmas tree out of small clay pots, so I headed to the craft store and made my purchases.  The best part about this is that I think the biggest pot was only $1 and they went down from there, so it was really inexpensive!  These are pictures from my trial-run with Alexandria to see how it turned out and it came out so well that I bought an extra set of materials for her and Emma to make another one while we're on holiday next week.  We gave this one as a present to the woman who watches Alexandria during the day and she loved it!

Things you'll need:
 - green and red paint (with or without glitter)
 - paint brushes
 - glue or glue gun
 - bag of various sizes of glitter pom-pom balls
 - 1 big clay pot (1st level or bottom of tree)
 - 2 medium clay pots (2nd level of tree and tree stand)
 - 1 small clay pot (3rd level of tree)
 - 1 extra small clay pot (4th level or top of tree)

First things first are the clay pots.  I was afforded this being easier for me in the store since there was an example of this craft on display right with the clay pots.  All you have to do is stack them up with the various sizes to make sure everything fits just right.  They pretty much should only sit about an inch or less of overlap when you stack them up.  The one for the red base shown above should be sized so that it hits directly on the ridge of the pot that is sitting upside-down on top of it.  It didn't matter if the pots were different colors since you're painting over them anyway.  Keep in mind that the base and the second layer of the tree are the same size pot.

I had Alexandria paint all of the clay pots while they were still separate so that she wouldn't get drips of paint stuck under the ridges that would drip down and dry that way.  We only did one layer of paint (green or red depending on what pot) on each pot and then I actually used a colored glitter paint as a second coat to add some shine.  Below you can see the pot on the left that has only a layer of green paint (I used Crayola washable paint) and then next to it is another pot that has a layer of green paint and another layer of green glitter paint.  I really liked the shine that the glitter paint gave to the pots, so I'd definitely recommend using it!  I did let the pots dry for quite awhile in between coats and before I moved on to the next part.

Next was the trickiest part; stacking the pots and figuring out a way to glue them together!  I used a glue gun for this and after a bit of trial and error, I found a way that worked.  First I'd stack two of the clay pots together and see where on the inside of the one sitting on top was rubbing the other so I knew where I had to place the glue.  Then I applied a large dot (size of a dime) of glue with the hot glue gun at 4 various points around the inside of the clay pot going on top where it was going to hit pot that it was stacking on top of.  Hold the pot so that you can see the inside while you're applying the glue and then quickly flip it over onto the other pot it's stacking on top of.  Because of the large dot of glue, it doesn't dry right away and will drip down to hold the two pots together once you stack them.  Make sure to quickly make any adjustments if it's crooked or sitting odd before the glue dries!  I tried other various ways to put the glue onto the pot and try to get them to stay together and nothing else worked.  Again, I let the tree sit for awhile to make sure that the glue dried fully before moving on to the final step.

Using the glue gun, Alexandria would point to where she wanted to place a glitter pom-pom ball on the tree, I'd put a small spot of glue on the tree and she'd stick the ball to the glue.  Obviously, be very careful with this since the glue is extremely hot; you may just want to have your child point and then apply the ball yourself.

I was stumped for what to put at the top; I considered trying to find a small ornamental start to put on top, a snowflake pin, and various other ideas.  It ended up that the first place Alexandria wanted to place a pom-pom ball was smack in the middle on top!  I thought she had a great idea, so I found the largest yellow glitter pom-pom ball and we used that as the topper; worked perfectly!

We both really enjoyed making this craft and Emma is extremely excited to be making one of her own next week.  For how inexpensive this is, it would make a great long-lasting decoration or even a good Christmas gift!

Q-tip Snowflakes!

Do you have a big box of Qtips in your house that need to be used up in places other than ears?  I ran across this craft in my Disney Family Fun magazine that I received this month and was intrigued.  In the least, it got Alexandria to use some new craft tools and items in addition to teaching me a lesson to read directions!!!

Things you'll need:
 - Q-tips
 - Glitter Glue (or regular glue and glitter separate)
 - Paper (or plastic wrap if you want to follow Disney's directions)

Using the pattern for a snowflake that you can see in the picture to the right, start in the middle by putting a big circle of glue in the middle of the paper or plastic wrap.  I chose to create my snowflake on paper because I didn't read the directions, but Disney tells you to create the snowflake on the plastic wrap.  The advantage of paper is that it's more sturdy and you can cut around the edge of the snowflakes to get rid of the extra paper around the outside; the advantage of plastic wrap is that at the end you can peel the snowflake off and easily hang/display it without any paper in between the q-tips.  To each is own...whichever you'd like to proceed with is fine.

OK, so back to the big circle of glue in the middle of whatever medium you've chosen to create your snowflake on.  I trialed a few ways to place the q-tips in the glue.  One way was just by setting them in and adding more glue on top; the other was by placing the q-tip in the glue and rolling it around so that it was then covered with glue on all sides.  I ended up sticking with the rolling method and then adding glue on top as needed when there wasn't enough coverage.  Add the q-tips to the middle placed in the appropriate direction and then continue outward with your design by adding more circles of glue at the new 'joints' or 'junctures' until you finish the pattern.

If you used regular glue, then you'll need to sprinkle the glitter on the spots where there is glue; if you used glitter glue then you're done!  I'd suggest leaving the excess glitter on the paper/plastic until it is dried and then shaking it off to put away once the design is more stable.  I added an extra line of glitter glue to both sides of all of the q-tips to add some more color to the design.

After it's dried (I'd give it overnight at least), if you used paper you can either leave it as is or trim around the edge of the snowflake with your scissors to cut it out.  I considered using a exact o-blade to cut out in the middle of the designs, but I felt it would make it too flimsy.

So there you have it, a beautiful quick and cheap snowflake decoration for the winter! 

Here's a picture of the original snowflake craft from the Disney Family Fun magazine.  They used the plastic wrap as a backing and different colors of glitter & glue to hold the q-tips together.  This would be neat to hang with string from a light or the ceiling for the holidays!

Or if you have younger children who are not quite ready to follow these types of directions, you have a beautiful glitter glue, q-tip, and glitter pom-pom piece of artwork! :)

Crafting with Leaves

In an attempt to integrate the multitude of fallen leaves into our crafting, I picked up a few on my way home with the girls to use in a craft.

Things you'll need:
 - Leaves (recently fallen so they won't crumble)
 - Different paint colors
 - Paintbrush(es)
 - Paper
 - Crayons
 
The first thing we tried was your typical leaf rub by placing a leaf under a piece of paper and then rubbing the side of a crayon on the paper over top of where the leaf is under the paper.  This picks up the veins and stem of the leaf showing up darker with color.  Emma had much more success with this than Alex who quickly stopped paying attention, so we moved on!

My next idea was to use the leaves as stamps.  The girls painted one side of a leaf of their choice and then pressed the painted side down onto the paper pushing with their hands on the leaf and then picking it up by the stem.  This again was much easier for Emma and she got really creative with it and made a flower out of the leaf prints which is the first picture you see in this post and below is a picture of the work in progress.

Alexandria is much more of a 'paint my hand and stamp' kind of painter with all of the hand crafts we've done, so she proceeded to move on to that while I tried to get Emma to use the leaves as paint brushes by dipping the edges into paint and then using them as a brush on the paper (below is a picture of Emma leaf painting).  Long story short, a bunch of different ideas and the best one that came out was the stamps.  All in all it was a great time with some natural items incorporated; a great way to keep using the leaves in different ways to keep your children's interest.

 ...wonder if the tongue sticking out helps? :)