Hand Made Gift Wrap

In our family there are a flurry of birthdays from May through till August. With so much gift giving, there comes a need for much gift wrapping, and I took the opportunity to let the kids do a little craft. (plus it provided half an hour of entertainment - perfect when I needed to sit down and feed the baby). The hand painted wrap by Beau at Christmas was a lot of fun, but Noah is loving his new-learned writing skills and so we decided on crayons and pencils for this round of DIY-gift-wrap.

There was name writing, hand and foot tracing and Octonaut drawing. Even ambidextrous colouring at one point. It was all alot of fun. The boys were very proud of all their colouring and writing.

The presents looked great and were enthusiastically received by all the birthday people. I believe this wrapping has even been recycled as a wall hanging in my nephews nursery!

Have you done any fun craft activities with the kids laterly?

Hand Painted Christmas Wrap

Once again Pinterest has inspired a craft project with my kids. I saw this pin for graffiti gift wrap created by the blogger's kids. I was impressed the blogger had let her kids undertake this craft activity in what appeared to be the living room of their house or apartment in Dallas-Fort Worth. Seeing how my son painted himself as much as the paper - not to mention me, the exterior wall on the house, balcony railing, outdoor plastic furniture and the window - I was certainly glad to have a backyard for this project!

And what fun we had! Once I had convinced Beau I really did want him to paint the large roll of paper on the ground (he seemed surprisingly reluctant to put brush to paint to paper...?), he dove in and started painting and splogging away. Then he accidentally painted my arm, and all attention was off the paper and onto painting himself! And everything in the vicinity! Thank goodness for washable finger paints!

But with Beau's splogges and finger painting, a few stars and spirals from me, we had some pretty great looking gift wrap paintings. (It just got too messy to photograph during the red painting)!

Whilst Beau took his nap these sheets of art turned into Christmas wrapping! Merry Christmas!!

I wonder whose doorstep these presents will arrive on...?

Crayon Art C/O Pinterest

Of late, I have become quite fascinated with the world of Pinterest. There is a myriad, a kaleidoscope even, of DIY craft ideas and art projects. One of the first ones I saw was this amazing art with crayons and I have been dying to try it out.

Of course I was hindered for several weeks by the lack of crayons available in retail outlets around the Northern Beaches of Sydney, and gone are the days of Amazon.com delivering next day (sad face). But I finally found a pack of 64 crayons at Humphreys on Manly Corso, along with a canvas and I was all set to go.

Whilst I invited my 2 year old son to help me glue to crayons to the canvas, we both realised pretty quickly I was not actually going to let him do much participating. So whilst he played with the spare paint brushes, I glued the crayons to the canvas.

Then we had to wait for the glue to dry.

I finally got back to the task at hand whilst Noah was having a rare nap, but I soon realised watching the crayons melt down the canvas would be more fun with him beside me. So I woke him up. He was not very impressed with me, and less impressed when I suggested he sit on the stool to watch and help. The hair dryer was too loud and he was hungry. But he had to agree that the colours were pretty spectacular sliding down the white canvas.

What a fun project (for me anyway) and I know this will look great in the kids playroom!