A couple of days ago, I placed an add in the San Leandro Freecycle group looking for craft supplies. Now that the girls and I are crafting so much, supplies are running out quick. For those of you who don’t know freecycle, it’s basically a mailing list through which you give away the stuff you no longer need/want and get stuff from others who are in the same situation. You pretty much can give away anything through freecycle, I’ve seen half-empty bottles of shampoo being taken, though that’s not been the case for some of my stuff. C’est la vie.
You can also request items in freecycle, and my posting for craft supplies was answered by two great ladies who gave us very cool scrapbooking and general craft items. I want to thank them both very much here – I know the girls and I will have a great time with the material we got.
And hey, if you read this and have extra craft supplies there around, we’d love to get it 🙂
Category: Crafts (Page 7 of 9)
I learned this “craft” from our daycare provider which had Camila do it when she was quite young (2?). All you need is some paint (we used a combination of acrylic and whatever paint you use to paint wood, what we had at home) and a rock. Fortunately, the lady who used to live in our house until she died (at 95!) was a huge rock collector (mind you, not “pretty” rocks, just random rocks she gathered in the California desserts), so we have quite a few rocks around. You can paint whichever designs you want on the rocks, both girls chose to do ladybugs, but later Camila did a bumble bee as well. Both girls had a great time doing it, and after they’re done I can put the rocks where they were before in the garden 🙂
Mika’s ladybug is the one above and Camila’s, of course, is the one below 🙂
I was just thinking that all the emphasis on crafts I’ve had for the last few weeks, all the kits I’ve bought the kits and the different crafts I’ve done with them, may lead some people to believe that I am crafty. Nothing could be further from the truth. When I was a kid, my worst subject in school was Drawing, to the point that even today I draw like a five year old. My second worst subject in school was Actividades Prácticas, “practical activities”, which could be described as “crafts”. I can’t tell you how bad I was at it. With the exception of a collage of Nefertiti that I made in 7th grade and a clay figurine of “the Devil as a serpent in Paradise”, I was never able to do anything good. Even the devil figurine came about because I was trying to make a face and what turned out look so gaunt that it could be the devil – so I made it horns and, because I knew that making a body was beyond me, I made a serpent shape to which I stuck the head. My art teacher actually liked it 🙂
But anyway, the point is that I suck at crafts but the kits I’ve bought are for little kids and doing what a 7-year old is expected to be able to do is not that hard. And crafts gives me something to do with the kids that is not overwhelmingly boring. But lord, I’m definitely not crafty.
Well, it turns out that both girls love scrapbooking and are thrilled with their kits. Mika decorated the front of her otherwise boring album with stickers, and has already finished 14 scrapbook pages (fortunately it will take 100! – the one I got for Camila only takes 20!). Alas, she’s not very careful when she does it by herself, but we just did a couple of pages together and I think they turned out quite well.
I made the mistake of getting glitter for the kids. They’ve LOVED using it, but now my whole living room is covered with sprinkles. Mika will vacuum when she’s done, but I don’t see them getting out of the little crevices between floor boards. I guess this is one way to have a sparkling house 😉
I think the kids love scrapbooking because it’s 1) quite easy and appropriate for all developmental levels and 2) more creative than some of the other crafts where pretty much all you do is follow directions.
In any case, I’m glad we’ve found something that we can do together and that they enjoy so much. 🙂
Here is one of Camila’s pages:
And here one of Mika’s:
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