Valentine's Boxes {Craft Project}

*This post was available as an Early Access offering from my Patreon page.  If you would like to get first access to free tutorials, patterns and more, please check it out!  https://www.patreon.com/AtmosphericNoiseStudios 

Everyone has been there.  It's the night before Valentine's day and you need a box to take to school and receive all your treats in, but you didn't plan ahead and now you need to rush to cobble something together.  I'm here to tell you, it doesn't need to be difficult and you can make something cool with materials you have in your own house.

Valentine's Boxes Craft Project

Materials Needed:

A cereal box

Brown Kraft paper

Stickers or colored papers

Scissors

Glue

Start with your cereal box and cut a hole where ever you would like people to insert the Valentines.  We did ours on the front side of the box.

Wrap the box in Kraft paper like you would a present, but apply glue under the paper so it adheres to the box.  Find the hole you cut in the cardboard box and cut a slit in the middle of it.

Fold the paper into the box and glue down for a nice opening.

Let your child use their imagination and place stickers, paper cutouts and draw on the box as they want to.

I added a piece of ribbon to the top of the box to serve as a carrying handle.

Enjoy your Valentine's box that you made in less than an hour!!

Sock Snowman Craft

These were such a fun craft to make.  It is one of those crafts where you can really use your imagination and with the amount of socks that you can buy, the sky is the limit!!!

Here are the materials you will need:

White tube socks

Fun socks

Rubber bands or yarn

Ribbon and any other embellishment that you want

Rice

Puffy Fabric Paint in black and orange

How to assemble your snowmen:

Start with an empty sock and fill it with rice, tying the top of the sock.

Stand the snowman up and using rubber bands or yarn, tie tightly where you want the "balls" of his body to be.  You can also cut off excess sock above the knot for his head (but do leave some to fold back over the knot.

Cut the ankle off of a sock and use the tube as a shirt for your snowman.  Here I also used a strip of the sock to make a scarf.

Cut the toe off of a sock and use it as a hat.  This could be the same sock or a different sock for fun! Use the puffy fabric paint to dot on eyes, mouth and nose of your snowman.

I spent the most time on this snowman below.  I found the tuxedo sock and knew I had to make him really fun.  I did not trim the top of the sock, instead I filled it with extra filling to make his hat stand super tall.  I also sprayed him lightly with fake snow so it would look like he had been outside, and dusted his cheeks with makeup to give him rosy cheeks.

Overall, these were a super fun decoration and as you can see every snowman came out differently!  It was so much fun!

Guest Post: Arts and Crafts with Belarusian Children

Arts and Crafts with Belarusian Children

This article was written by Ella Rose West, author of the Selfish Mum parenting blog – Ella posts about all things travel, family and home related, and believes passionately in mums living life to the full!

So my best friend did a crazy thing recently and volunteered to let 2 little girls from a village in Belarus stay with her for 4 weeks. Why? I asked her. Why not? she replied. And that’s why I love her.

Chernobyl Children’s Charity

Let me explain about the girls. They’re from a village in Belarus that is still suffering from the explosion and subsequent radiation leak at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. The radiations is still present in the air they breathe back home, in their water supply, and the ground they grow food in, so the villagers are generally very ill, and also very poor. There are charities in many Western countries that bring children across for a month to provide them with better nutrition that helps boost their immune systems and can add years on to their lives. It’s definitely worth checking out in Google!

Babysitting the Kids

She’d asked me in advance whether I’d be her “official” babysitter for the girls, meaning, could she get me CBR checked by the charity so she could dump them on me at a moment’s notice. Great friend – or glutton for punishment – I said yes.

And so that is how I ended up looking after two little girls who barely spoke any English for an evening. Thank God for Google Translate – we coped.

Our Paintings

Ok, so it wasn’t a moment’s notice, she had a work friend’s leaving meal (or something like that) planned in advance, so I knew this day was coming. She’d told me they love to do arts and crafts activities, and so I bought materials, and we made beautiful pictures of the local skyline to take home as souvenirs of their time in the UK.

How to Create the Painting

1. Start by using red paint and lots of water. Do side to side strokes from the top of the page to about two-thirds of the way down. Make sure the paint is a brighter, darker red at the top and becomes paler as you move down the page.

2. Use blue paint and do the exact same thing but from the bottom of your page working upwards to where the red paint ends.

3. Find something circular to draw around to mark the sun, and use a pencil to mark the outline. Colour in using yellow paint.

4. Add some yellow strokes into the red sky and blue sea, brighter nearer to the sun and fading out further away.

5. Add a couple of easy black birds in the sky using black paint.

6. On black paper, draw some of your area’s local landmarks. Cut the silhouettes out and stick them onto the painting.

Voila!