Spooky Soaps

A friend got me thinking about soaps again. Here are some spooky soaps embedded with toy finger puppets. My son loved them! He was excited to use his new soap and very anxious to get to the toy. It will be a lesson in patience. I tried to explain that it will take a while before the toy will "come out." It will be a good motivator for hand washing during this crazy flu season.

By the way, I used a muffin pan for the molds.

Beary Cute

Photo from Familyfun.com

I love this idea that I saw in Family Fun magazine. I know that teddy grahams and gummy bears still have sugar but I bet it's less sugary than most Valentine's Day candies! This is a cute and easy treat to send with your kids for their buddies on Valentine's Day.

Details and instructions here.

Valentine's Day Candle Holder

Hello! We are back with a very cute and easy Valentine's candle holder.

Here's what you will need:
Glass votive/tea light holders (I used Galej from Ikea, $1.49 for 4)
Thin paper (tissue paper, decorative paper, whatever you like)
Scissors
Glue

Start by cutting out some hearts. My preferred method is to fold the paper over and cut 1/2 a heart on the fold (so that the fold becomes the center of the heart). Since you are using a thinner paper, you can layer a few sheets at a time. I used my curved scissors to help with cutting the curves of the heart.

Next I glued a few hearts to the outside of the glass candle holder.

Then I cut a piece of tissue paper, large enough to wrap around the glass.

I glued the tissue paper to the holder and then trimmed the paper at the top and bottom.

I added a few more hearts on the outside of the tissue paper to add some dimension.

For another version, I used a two-sided handmade mulberry paper. I cut hearts out in various sizes and glued those directly to the holder.

Here's how both versions turned out:

Welcome to the year of the Ox!

Happy New Year! Today marks the beginning of the year of the Ox.

The Ox is the sign of prosperity through fortitude and hard work. This powerful sign is a born leader, being quite dependable and possessing an innate ability to achieve great things. As one might guess, such people are dependable, calm, and modest. Like their animal namesake, the Ox is unswervingly patient, tireless in their work, and capable of enduring any amount of hardship without complaint.

You can go here if you would like to find out your sign and read more about it.

I was born in the year of the Rat. Although I don't love the thought of being a "rat" based on our preconceptions, I find that I agree with the positive attributes of being meticulous, hardworking and industrious. (I like to ignore those negative attributes - hopefully they aren't true!) Linh is a Dragon (as is her mom as well as my son) and the description of generous, loyal and self-assured are right on. My husband is an Ox, and he is absolutely dependable, but everyone's heard the term "stubborn as an ox", it's so true!

With all of that being said, here is a cute felt ox to commemorate this new year.

photo from kaboose.com

Felt Fortune Cookies

So I was back on kaboose.com today looking at some of their cute Chinese New Year crafts and found felt fortune cookies! Think about it... you can have them around, feel the spirit of the coming holiday without ruining your resolution! Gotta love it!

Lucky Money Envelopes

Chinese New Year is almost like Christmas for Asian kids. We Vietnamese call it "Tet." I remember during that time of year there was food and festivity and most importantly (to us kids) there was the lucky money envelopes, or as we call it in Vietnamese "li see." We had to earn it though, by folding our arms, giving a little speech wishing our family friends and relatives a healthy and prosperous year, and generally looking cute. Then we would collect the "li see" envelopes and see what crisp new denominations of bills were inside. Of course, even that tradition became Americanized when one year a relative filled our "li see" envelope with a crisp gift certificate to McDonald's!

You can make your own lucky money envelopes by going to this site where you can print templates, cut them out, and fold them.

Craft Quickie Thursday - Paper Lanterns

Traci's post about paper plum blossoms brought back memories. My beloved grandma used to make these. I wish I had saved some, or at least had pictures of some she had made.

Anyways...it's CRAFT QUICKIE THURSDAY which means something easy! Something quick! Something "Chinese New Year" related! PAPER LANTERNS!


Photo from About.com

The best part about this one is everyone should have the supplies on hand:

• 1 Piece of Paper (You can use bond paper, construction paper, or even cardstock. For best results, use a piece approximately 8.5" x 11")
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Scissors
• Markers or Crayons (Optional)
• Stapler or Tape

You can find the easy, excellent step-by-step instructions with photos over at about.com.

Chinese New Year - Plum Blossoms

I love these simple Plum Blossom decorations.


Photo from kaboose.com

You will need:
-Brown chenille stems
-Pink tissue paper
-White craft glue
-Styrofoam ball, cut if half
-Scissors
-Paint brush
-Brown Paint

How to make it:
-Cut chenille stems into unequal lengths, some long some medium.
-Twist two unlike lengths together and bend and twist ends to make them look like branches.
-Cut pink tissue paper into ½” squares.
-Lay branches onto work surface and line with a layer of white glue. Do not put glue on the stem. -Place the handle end of a thin paintbrush into the center of a tissue paper square. Twist the tissue paper around the handle.
-While tissue paper is still on the end of the paintbrush handle, dot it onto the glue on the branch. Tissue paper should stick to the glue and slide right off the handle. Leave a space between tissue paper flowers and repeat process. Let dry.
-Turn branches over and repeat on other side.
-Paint the Styrofoam ball with brown paint and let dry.
-Insert branches into Styrofoam ball.

These make great table decorations for any Chinese New Year celebration, then keep them and reuse them in the spring.

Happy Inauguration Day!

I'm taking a quick departure from Chinese New Year crafts to wish you a Happy Inauguration Day! Can you believe it's finally here?

How excited are you? Excited enough to make an Obama symbol/logo paper plate?


Photo from Kaboose.com

For this and other Inauguration Day crafts at Kaboose.com, click here.

Chinese New Year - Welcome Door Hanger

To start off Chinese New Year week, we've got this cute Welcome Door Hanger. I found it on kaboose.com.



Here's what you need:
-Red door hanger (available at a craft store, or make your own from red foam or paper)
-Gold glitter glue
-Orange foam circles in various sizes
-White craft glue
-Pattern

Here's how to make it:
-Print out the pattern of Chinese letters. This spells out "Welcome."
-Use the pattern and a pencil or pen to draw the Chinese letters onto the door hanger.
-Using gold glitter glue, carefully trace the Chinese letters. Decorate the rest of the door hanger as you like. The sample shows a border around the hanger and decoration on the corners.
-Allow the glitter glue to dry for at least three hours.
-When glitter glue is dry, glue the orange circles onto the lower half of the door hanger. The larger circles are oranges and they represent wealth. The smaller circles are tangerines, which are symbolic of good luck.

Chinese New Year Week

Monday, January 26th marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year. 2009 will be the year of the Ox. We will spend the next week highlighting crafts that celebrate this holiday. Most will be kid-friendly so hopefully you can share these with your family.

Snowman Soup

This is a great idea that one of my son’s teachers gave to the class before winter break. We’ve made it a few times now that the weather is colder (or at least cold for San Diego) and he loves it. Now I’m passing it along to you.

Ingredients:
1 package of hot chocolate mix
A few chocolate kisses (2-4 work well)
A small amount of mini marshmallows
1 Candy cane



Here are the instructions for making Snowman Soup:

When it's so cold that
you holler and whoop,
It's time to bring out
the Snowman Soup!

Pour the packet into a mug.
Add the snowballs too.
Then throw in the kisses
from the snowman to you!

Now add some hot water
And use the cane to stir it.
Sip slowly and soon you'll
feel the warm winter spirit!

Here’s one idea for quick, inexpensive packaging if you want to give it as a gift. Just print the “instructions” out with some clip art or rubber stamp an image on it and place everything in a zipper bag.



Quick, easy and yummy! I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

Card Collage

This one is an oldie but goody. You can also use your holiday cards to create a collage. I put mine in my scrapbook but you could do a variation of this to frame, or to hang as a decoration for next year.



If you happen to own a square punch, it will make this project super easy. Otherwise, you could find a small square object you could use to trace, or use a ruler to measure and cut squares. Use some adhesive to attach it to some cardstock and you're done!

Idea and tutorial found at Ali Edward's Blog.

Recycle your Holiday Cards Part 2 - Gift Tags

So, I’m going to continue on where Linh left off yesterday with another use for all those holiday cards – Gift Tags!

To start, just gather a few of your cards:



Next, cut them into a shape that works with the design on the card:



Be creative… you can cut them in squares, circles (using those awesome Creative Memories Mat and Blades that Linh showed you yesterday) or anything that you can come up with.

Now all you need to do is decorate them. Embellish (or don’t embellish if you are a minimalist) to your heart’s content. Rubber stamp, add some glitter… punch a hole, add some ribbon and you are good to go!



Here are a few things to keep in mind...

• Some of the cards may have writing on the back - just add a layer of cardstock. It will add some dimension and take care of hiding anything that you don’t want shown.


• Have different types of pens available; the kind you use will depend on the type of paper the card is made from. Gel pens and Sharpies tend to write on most surfaces, but try it on a scrap of paper before writing directly on the tag if you are unsure.


• If you don’t want to use ribbon (hopefully you kept all the left over ribbon from the gifts your family received so you won’t have to deplete your stock), you can use double-sided tape and adhere it directly to your gift.

If you take on this project now, you will have one less thing to do (or buy) next December - and that is always a good thing!

So, we’ve given you 2 different ideas of what you can do with the holiday cards you’ve received… let us know - what else do you do with yours?

Recycle your Holiday Cards Part 1 – Ornaments

Are you wondering what to do with all those holiday cards you received? You can easily turn them into next year's ornaments! I picked out a few of our cards from this year:



I used my Creative Memories Mat and Blades (love these!) to cut out circles:



If you do not have some sort of shapes cutting system, you can just as easily use any round object to trace a circle and cut out.

I cut a small strip of cardstock and taped it to back of the round cutouts and then punched a hole in the top of the strip:



I used a white marker pen to put a dotted edge around the one that was a photo. You can get creative and embellish or you can just thread some yarn or string through the hole and voila - you have a few more ornaments for next year's tree!



I would have put these on my tree for a picture but I took my tree down the day after Christmas!

Start to finish this only took me a few minutes and you only really need supplies that most people have on hand:

• holiday cards
• something round so that you can trace a circle
• scissors
• cardstock
• string or yarn
• a hole punch
• scotch tape
  

If you create some of your own ornaments, please come back and share what you've done. We'd love to see them!

Tags: recycle, repurpose, christmas, cards, ornaments, crafts