This is a great project for bored kids. If they can do the whole project from tracing to painting/drawing it can keep them occupied for hours! For smaller children an adult may need to do the tracing and cutting part…

To start I downloaded a paper doll template from Family Fun. I LOVE their magazine! You could free hand a design and cut that out to.

Using the printable doll on its own to color in is another awesome activity but I wanted to use up some paper bags we had laying around the house. I cut out the template and traced one half of her onto folded a paper bag… the cut edge goes along the fold.

After cutting out the doll you can paint her, color, her or use markers to fill her in… whatever your heart desires. My daughter opted to use water colors with plant based dyes.

Enjoy!

How to Make a Nature Themed Picture Frame with Sticks and Twigs

Nature in all its beauty and glory offers us all sorts of art and craft supplies – all you have to do is find and collect them. One of the most functional items you can make with natural twigs and sticks is a picture frame. You can make this as big or as small as you like; you can keep it or give it as a gift. You can make several in graduated sizes, or using different types of twigs.

Here is a list of supplies you’ll need, and directions on how to assemble the frame. Use your imagination – take the following suggestions and individualize them to make a frame that fits your style.

Supplies:

* Twelve straight sticks in two different lengths (for example, six 8-inch sticks and six 6-inch ones), from 1/4 to 1/2 inches thick. For a square frame, use sticks that are all the same length.
* Natural twine
* Glue gun and hot glue
* Ruler
* Moss, small pine cones, feathers, acorns, etc. (optional)
* Newspaper, large piece of brown paper, old sheet, etc. (This is to protect your indoor work area from bits of twigs, glue, and such)

Directions:

1. Gather various twigs, sticks, and optional decorations, making sure the sticks are as straight as possible.
2. Lay out the newspaper or sheet over your work area.
3. Strip leaves from sticks.
4. Break sticks into uniform lengths.
5. Lay out the sticks in a rough square or rectangle, using three sticks per side.
6. Use the ruler to obtain a frame opening that is the size of the photo or picture you want to frame. The twigs and sticks can overlap at the corners as much as you like.
7. Using the glue gun, glue the corners of the frame together and leave it to dry.
8. When the glue is dry, wrap the twine around the glued corners – you can tie it in bows on the front of the frame, or tie the twine in the back in a knot, or some other creative look.
9. On the front of the frame, glue pieces of moss, pinecones, and other interesting things you found outside. You can use these items to cover gaps in the twigs.10. When your decorations are dry, turn the frame over so that the back is facing up. Glue the photo (or use poster putty for a less permanent mount) to the back of the frame so that it faces forward.

These directions are basic; there are all sorts of creative ways you can make a picture frame from sticks. You can adapt this project to your classroom if you are a teacher, or as a fun project for any group of kids. Adults can enjoy this project as well, working in groups or on your own. As people are becoming more interested in natural, eco-friendly furnishings and decorations, this project fits right in.

Photo Credit: JeanM1

How cute are these?!!! This crafty blogger strung up some peanuts, embroidered them a little felt scarf, gave them a face with a sharpie pen, and fitted them with a crown. Adorable!

Visit What Makes Me Happy for instructions.

What are rainsticks?

According to Wikipedia a rainstick is a long, hollow tube which is filled with small baubles such as beads or beans and has small pins or thorns arranged helically on its inside surface. When the stick is upended, the beads fall to the other end of the tube, making a sound reminiscent of a rainstorm as they bounce off the pins.

What you need to make your own rainstick:

* A tube of some sort… like a wrapping paper tube or even better, a mailing tube.
* Nails or tacs
* Paint
* Beans, pebbles, or rice

I did this project with my own kids not to long ago and we hammered a couple dozen, small nails into our cardboard mailing tubes, then we filled them with a cup or so of rice, tested to hear the lovely sounds they made, and painted with Tempura paints. Here are some pictures. The kids are quite proud of their rainsticks and we had a blast making them. They are out trying to invoke the rain spirits right now!

If you have any mailing tubes laying around this is a great way to recycle them. The other ingredients are pretty cheap if you are looking for budget crafts and toys.

Here is a video with a bit of a history lesson on rainsticks. Enjoy!

Do you like to feed birds throughout the winter so that you can enjoy the wonders of nature all year long?

In some parts of the country, the mast – or nuts and fruits produced in the wild – is at a 40-year low. This means a lot of wild birds will be very hungry this winter. You can help feed them, save money (commercial bird food is expensive) and decrease waste by using your kitchen scraps this winter.

* What You’ll Need

-Fat

You will need something to bind your table scraps together into a cake. The best thing to use is some kind of solid fat. Birds enjoy suet or lard – don’t use vegetable fat. You can save the fat you generate in your kitchen from cooking meat – pan drippings, bacon fat, etc. The high fat content helps birds stay warm. The ideal ratio is 1/3 fat to 2/3 table scraps. (Wild birds don’t need to watch their waistlines!)

-Container

Try using an old yogurt, cottage cheese, or sour cream container. You will need something light, durable and flexible.

-String

-Miscellaneous table scraps

You can use fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, cornmeal, oatmeal, bread, etc. – cooked or raw. (more ideas below)

* Method

The basic method is the same regardless of the scraps you use.

1. Punch a hole in the bottom of the yogurt (or whatever) container.

2. Thread a string through the hole, pulling it up and out of the top of the container. Tie a knot at the base to keep the string from slipping through. You will need a few inches of string above the rim of the container.

3. Soften the fat by melting in a saucepan or microwaving it. Then, stir in your scraps – chop them into small bits if necessary. You can use a blender if you like.

4. Pour the fat-and-scrap mixture into the container, holding the string so that it is roughly in the center of the mixture.

5. Refrigerate the fat or leave it to cool at room temperature. Leaving it overnight on a countertop on a cold winter’s night should do the trick.

6. Invert the container and remove the now solid fat mixture. Voila, you have a bird cake on a string! Hang it outside near a branch using the excess string and observe.

If you want to attract tree-clingers such as wrens and nuthatches, you can smear the mixture right into the bark of a tree.

* More Ideas for Bird Cake Mixtures

Here are some suggestions for bird cakes that you can try. You can also combine the various ingredients in these recipes to attract a wider variety of birds, and to use the scraps you have on hand.

Fruit cake

To the fat, add leftover raisins, cranberries, cranberry sauce, holiday mincemeat, apple pie, chopped apple or pear cores and peels (seeds removed), etc.

Nut cake

Stir in chopped nuts of any variety – sunflower seeds and peanuts are especially popular.

Bread cake

This is a good way to use leftover stale bread. Crumble it into the fat mixture.

Grain cake

Mix in leftover oatmeal, cooked rice, cornbread, cornmeal, pancakes, etc. into the fat. Millet, cooked or raw, is a healthy-for-humans grain that is popular with birds. Try mixing in pasta, too.

Cheese cake

Add leftover cheese to your fat mixture, grated or chopped, any hard variety.

Vegetable cake

This is a good way to use leftover salad, broccoli, spinach, and so forth. Chop it up and stir it in!

Summer or winter, flying your own kite is an option. As long as the day is dry, there is wind, and you and your kids are bundled up appropriately for the cold, you can make and fly a kite. There are some really wonderful designs and ideas for home-made kites, and they do not have to be complicated. Here are some ideas to get you started on making your own killer kite!

Regardless of the style of kite you choose to make, the list of supplies is essentially the same:

- Plastic straws or wooden dowels (for the frame)

- Paper or plastic sheets (for the body of the kite)

- String (for the bridle and to hold onto the kite)

- Glue (for stabilizing the frame)

- Scissors (to cut paper or plastic sheets)

- Utility knife (to cut notches in the straws or dowels)

- Ribbon (for the tail)

- Paints, crayons, markers, and other decorative materials that are flat and light

Make a cross shape with the plastic straws or dowels, and criss-cross the joint with string to hold it together. Stabilize the joint with a drop of glue.

Cut notches in the bottoms of the dowels or straws using the utility knife. Then, run string through these notches to make a classic kite shape (like a diamond). Bring the ends of the string toward the middle, cross them over the middle joint, and tie in a knot.

Now, cut out the paper or plastic in the same shape as your frame, only bigger by an inch or two. Decorate it, and then glue it onto the frame.

Punch a small hole in the top and bottom points of the paper or plastic part of the kite. Run a piece of string through these holes so that the string goes underneath the kite. Make it loose enough to get your fingers under, but not so loose that it flops around under the frame. Cut the string off and tie knots to keep it from slipping through the holes. This piece of string is called the “bridle” of the kite, and is where you attach the long string to hold it.

In the middle of the bridle, tie another piece of string. This is your flying string, and will need to be long. You can wind the excess around a toilet paper tube, wooden block, or other piece of scrap wood or cardboard.

To the bottom tip of the kite, tie a piece of string that is about the same length as your kite. You can tie ribbons to it for decoration and added weight. This is the “tail,” and it helps balance your kite.

If you have trouble visualizing some of the above steps, there are a lot of visual tutorials online that can help.

Now bundle up, get outside, and enjoy the winter wind! You can even make this a community event, inviting people to make their own kites and participate.

Have you ever been to a classroom, Sunday school room, or even in your own child’s room and found a box of crayon “bits”? Often without wrappers, these stubs are still technically useful, but they are hard to grip and no one knows what the colors are. Thus they tend to remain unused until they are thrown away. But there are options to tossing unusable crayon stubs. They can be recycled at home or at special centers for this very purpose. Here are some ways this can be done.

1. Crazy Crayons

This recycling effort has stopped more than 46,000 pounds of discarded crayons from making their way into landfills. That’s a lot of wax! A company called LAF Lines Ltd has developed a Crayon Recycling Program: you send LAF Lines Ltd your discarded crayon stubs, and they in turn send the stubs to a company that recycles them into Crazy Crayons. These two businesses work together to produce unique crayon creations.

2. Where do they get all those crayons?

The Crayon Recycling Program collects all of those crayon stubs through schools and individuals who participate. School children and teachers collect the stubs in boxes and send them to LAF Lines Ltd. If you are thinking of implementing this for your classroom, preschool, daycare, homeschool, etc., here are some guidelines and suggestions for sending the crayon stubs through the mail:

-Use sturdy cardboard – crayons are surprisingly heavy.

-If there are wrappers on the crayons, leave them on. This makes it easier for the folks at LAF Lines Ltd to sort them.

-Use UPS ground to send your packages of crayons, and call ahead to arrange for your shipment. Since you are sending your crayons to a business, you may get a break on postage.

-Consolidate your crayons into one box to save shipping – but don’t exceed the Post Office’s 70-pound limit.

-Fit the crayon stubs snugly together to minimize the chance of the box getting crushed.

For more information about this recycling program, visit www.crazycrayons.com.

3. Ways to recycle at home

If you are unable to participate in the above program (say you only have a dozen or so crayon bits), there are some ways you can recycle them at home. Here is an interesting idea for turning your crayons into candles.

To do this craft, you will need:

-a shoebox

-sand (such as you might use in a child’s sandbox)

-string (for a wick)

-old soup cans or other heat-resistant, metal cans

-white paraffin used for candle making (available at hobby stores)

Halfway fill the shoebox with sand. Dig a small, circular depression in the sand, about the size of an orange. Push your finger into the bottom of the depression in 3 or 4 places. These will be the candle’s “legs,” so try to space them evenly and make them the same length.

Cut a wick from the string and gently insert it into the sand in the middle of your mold.

In a skillet (electric skillets work especially well), bring several inches of water to a boil and keep it at a low simmer. Halfway fill the soup can(s) with small pieces of paraffin and crayon stubs. Set the cans into the hot water and melt.

Using a hot pad, lift out the soup can and pour the liquid wax into the sand mold.

When the wax is solid again, gently dig your candle out from the sand.

There is no need to let those bothersome crayon stubs be a waste!