Myra From My Little Mochi kindly sent us this tutorial.

This is an easy winter craft I did with my son. Unfortunately, we don’t have pinecones in our part of the world, but if you do in yours it would make for a nice joint nature walk and craft to go look for a variety of different shaped pinecones.

You will need:
Tan polymer clay for face, ears, legs
Black polymer clay for nose
Pinecone
Large (4 mm) black beads for eyes
Powder blush/rouge
Small paint brush
Drinking straw for mouth
Toothpick for details
White tacky glue

For younger kids it might be good to prep the materials ahead
of time. Once all the materials are assembled it goes together
fairly quickly. And be sure the area is well ventilated during the
baking process.

Form the ball into a cone shape and firmly press it into the flat side of the pinecone. Use your thumb to further press and spread the outer edges of the cone onto the pinecone. Using your fingers slightly pinch the point of the cone upward to form an upturned nose.

Press the small and large logs into the bottom of the pinecone. Make sure the legs are placed so that the hedgehog is well balanced and won’t fall forward.

Use the toothpick to add details to the feet.

Slightly press the tiny balls onto the top of the head and then use the back of a small paint brush to create an indention for the inner ears.

Use the toothpick to slightly score the tip of the cone/nose and then place a small ball of black polymer clay onto the scored area for the nose.

Press the black beads onto the face for the eyes.

This is a trick I use to make a quick and easy mouth. Use a pair of scissors to cut away half of the tip of a drinking straw to create a “U” shape and then press the “U” tip of the straw into the face for the mouth. Perfect mouth every time!

Prior to baking, use a small paintbrush and lightly apply blush to the inside of the ears and on the cheeks. Blow away any excess powder.

Bake according to manufacturer’s instructions in a well ventilated area.

Note: the pinecone may expand a bit during the baking process. Should any of the pieces fall off or come loose, use white tacky glue to re-attach to the pinecone.

All pau!

This is the world’s easiest craft activity. I showed AJ how to do this the other day and what took me two minutes to demonstrate, occupied her for an enormous amount of time.

You will need:
Paper
White crayon
Water colour paints
Jar of water
Brushes

It’s as simple as this - draw a picture or write a message in white crayon on to white paper and then paint over the design to reveal it. For little kids, it’s really just like magic.
AJ particularly liked it when it became part of a game - secret messages were revealed (this one above is a love letter) or guesses were made. Below you can see the result of “Why is the little girl cross?” paint, paint, paint reveal: “Because she forgot to put the raisin eyes on the gingerbread men!”. My attempt is in the top right corner of the picture; “Why is the little fish so happy?”, paint and reveal; “Because his Mummy just arrived to pick him up from fishy kinder”.

There’s a lovely post over on whipup about creating more detailed wax resist paintings using coloured crayons to great effect.

From the Australian Women’s Weekly. Published by ACP Magazines Ltd.

Kath here from whipup doing some Kiddley stuff.

I was really excited to see that this classic has been reprinted. The Best of Children’s Art & Crafts is a fabulous collection of craft activities for kids aged 2-8 - parents too. Step by step instructions designed to stimulate imagination and confidence assist with coordination, concentration and problem solving and to encourage experimentation. Good instructions with easy recipes and hints on cleaning up, excellent photos of real kids making these projects.

The projects themselves really range from fun, messy and sensory to the more complex creative projects. But the really good thing is that even the more difficult projects have different levels suitable for younger ones and the easy projects can be taken to higher levels if needed.

For example this finger painting recipe and instructions which is also available online on the women’s weekly website.

Some other projects that will be keeping our family busy during the upcoming holiday season include:
- fingerprint drawings (turning finger prints into animals, people and other characters)

- blot painting (fold a piece of paper in half, open in up and blob on some paint, then fold the paper back together and press it around, then open it to discover the painting)

- marbling (trays of water with coloured ink gently swirled around on the surface, lay a piece of paper on top and then lift it up again and see the marbled design)

- play dough printing (make shapes from playdough, press them into paint and then use them to make a design)

- printing from other objects such as leaves, fish and old kitchen utensils

- paper dyeing (using absorbant paper folded a few times, dip the corners into food colouring mixed with water and open it to see the design it makes)

- box sculptures (using tissue boxes, toilet paper rolls etc paint and glue and tape them together to make all sort of things)

- peg people and rock creatures (paint and decorated pegs and river stones to make fun creatures and characters)

- nature weaving (make a frame from sticks and string and then thread leaves and flowers in and out of the strings).

I think we should definitely make some slime and some goop for some messy outdoor play, and when it rains we will try our hand at leaf rubbings and some sock hand puppets. There are tons more ideas in here, most of which involve recycled materials or household objects and DIY materials such as making your own non toxic paints and glue. An excellent book with projects for years to come.

You can find Kathreen over at her glorious group blog whipup. Thanks Kath!

This is a quick update to let you know how our mantel village is coming along. Here is our first cardboard house - a work in progress - as it still needs stuff stuck all over it (glitter, stars, origami paper scraps etc) to bring it to it’s full potential. I just want to warn you that ruling up and cutting out the houses from cardboard takes a bit of time, so this might be best done in advance, not while you have a small child champing at your side saying “How much longer? COME ON MUM!”.

Also, Tobey kindly pointed out yesterday in the comments that you can find a full set of instructions for a cardboard village on HGTV’s site.

I have been admiring photos of little model christmas villages for a while now. There’s nothing more incongruous than creating a snowy, wintry scene on an Australian mantel piece in the middle of a heat wave, but that’s what we may be doing this year.

Blair’s scene from last year (above) has stuck in my mind, and perhaps one day I will find some time to create something half as beautiful, delicate and detailed as this tiny village. This year, however, we are taking some inspiration from Noriko Takahashi’s lovely simple houses (via. Molly Chicken).

Using the dimensions for the larger sized model, I am going to cut out four houses from thick card, glue them together and then let AJ decorate them to her hear’s content. We’ll be using stuff including paint, glitter, star stickers, bits cut from old Christmas cards, fake flowers and so on. After they are finished I am going to place them on the mantel piece with a string of Christmas lights run through them to illuminate them, and hopefully it will all look smashing. They might end up looking a little bit like a row of beach boxes but perhaps that is a suitably Southern Hemisphere kind of Christmas scene. I will have to keep you posted as I started cutting out the houses late yesterday afternoon from foam core and maybe my knife isn’t so good, but I found it to be incredibly difficult. I am off today to get some card instead.

Kiddley reader Barbara wrote in to let us know about Reverse Garbage co-ops. Reverse Garbage collects high quality industrial materials that would otherwise end up as landfill and sells them at a low price to the general public. The Marrikville co-op in NSW collects the equivalent of one swimming pool in volume of material every week. Reverse Garbage can be a boon for artists, tinkerers, and makers, and as Barbara notes, it’s an excellent place to source materials for kid-craft.

Burke’s Backyard has a listing of Reverse Garbage co-ops around Australia and the Brisbane co-op will mail barrels of material around the country. For readers outside of Australia, do you have similar co-op schemes where you are? If so, let us know in the comments so that others in your area can find out about them.

It’s time to start making Christmas cards so that they are ready to be mailed out in time for the holidays.

Things to remember when making Holiday cards with your kids:
1) If you have a lot of relatives and friends, mass production is an important factor. While it would be nice to give everyone a specially designed and created unique card, it isn’t always practical. Think about stencils, stamps and printing to help things move along quickly.

2) Keep your cards to a standard postage size otherwise you may find yourself shelling out a lot more than you expected at the post office.

3) If you are creating collaged cards made with things from nature, and you want to send them overseas, check international quarantine laws about posting plant matter.

Here are some great ideas for making Christmas cards with your kids from around the web:

Better Homes and Gardens shows us how to do make these ornament inspired collage cards:

While this following card looks a little generic, I can imagine that if you got your kids making it, with some colourful start stickers, using their own handwriting for the “Merry Christmas” you would have a very quick and appealing card. Potentially a good one for mass production:

Here is a simple way to create an embossed christmas tree for the front of your cards:

And also from Familyfun.com is this idea for reproducing a collection of your kids’ artwork on to one card:

Some other resources:

One million combination ideas for making Christmas cards.

Pictures to print out and use as part of your cards

Martha Stewart’s list of Christmas cards and tags projects.

I spent hours playing with my paper dolls as a child. I would use an old pair of blunt ended nail scissors to carefully snip dozens of little outfits out of paper doll books and then dress them with complicated dramas playing out in my mind.

I have made two pages of blank templates for a paper doll and her clothes. All you need to do is download and print them off. You may need to help your kids snip them out and then they are ready to be decorated and dressed in extraordinary combinations. You can see AJ and my interpretations in the photo above.

You may need Acrobat Reader to open the file.

The main figure (top left) would work best printed or stuck onto sturdy card stock so it doesn’t flop around annoyingly. I have included such fun features as an 80s bubble skirt, a bear costume and a tiara.

We had some little friends over on Tuesday to help make some simple decorations for AJ’s upcoming Halloween party. I came up with a few ideas for some decorations which smaller kids with limited scissor skills and limited attention spans might enjoy making.

Egg carton spiders (inspired by Kiddley reader House & Baby) were the biggest hit while the papier mache pumpkins (inspired by an old copy of Martha Stewart and Not Martha) were a tad fiddly for little fingers.

But back to the egg carton spiders.

You will need:
An egg carton
Scissors
Kids’ scissors
Black paint and brushes
Black cardboard or black pipe-cleaners
Googly eyes or white round stickers

First you will need to cut up the egg carton into segments for your kids. The egg cartons we get here in Australia are pretty sturdy so need a bit of determination to cut apart.

Now the kids can turn them upside down and paint the outside black. There is much fun and mess to be had at this stage.

These need to be left to dry for a while. In the mean time cut up strips of black cardboard for legs (unless you are using pipe-cleaners). When the egg carton pieces are dry attach the legs with glue or sticky tape to the inside of the cups.

On the outside glue on the googly eyes or stick on the white stickers and draw in a pupil.

Easy!

If you want to hang them, you will need a sturdy needle and some thread to push up through the centre of the spider.

If you are a regular visitor to Kiddley, you might remember that a couple of weeks ago I carved some heads out of apples and put them in the cupboard under the sink to let them shrink. And here they are - looking terrifying in a pot plant ready for Halloween.