Category: crafts for kids

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We are Maganlal Dresswala

Check this out1. Sher Khan from The Jungle Book
2. Mowgli from The Jungle Book
3. Ladybird (2 sets)
4. Bee
5. Octopus
6. Jelly Fish
7. Air Hostess
8. Pilot
9. A river
10. An astronaut
11. Planet Venus
12. A Russian dancer
13. Spiderman
14. Nurse
15. Baker (2 sets)
16. Queen of Hearts
17. SpiderThat’s our DIY fancy dress inventory. Crazy isn’t it? The kids have worn all of those over the years, of course not counting the ones I’ve rented/borrowed from kind friends. Add to this sets from varied annual day programmes and you’ll know why the kids’ cupboards are overflowing with clothes they do not wear, and this in just the four years since they started school.

I really should host a dress-up party for the kids and their friends.

Getting back to where I left off in my last post — the fancy dress was a grand success. They looked glittery enough and scary enough to each of their complete satisfaction. Here’s how they looked..

A crown, a cape, an apron and a heart worn over a red and white dress.
N painted a thermacol plate with hearts and also made some playdough tarts (which were demolished before they got back home).
I swear I didn’t ask her to show off her cape.

 

That’s the spider. Erstwhile octopus tentacles were covered with black ribbon and poof! they turned into spider legs. H wore them with slings. A piece of black cloth with the web, a hole cut out for the head to go in and tied at the sides with black ribbon, worn over a black T shirt. This one was easy.

 

Obviously, this then is our entry for Shruti’s Artsy Craftsy Challenge .
A glittery Queen of Hearts crown
Scallops cut into some red chart paper.
Paint on fevicol and spread glitter. Shake off the excess (and store for a glittery craft another day).

 

Paint on silver hearts
Add tiny hearts cut out from silver paper.
We’re planning to help N’s friends make similar crowns, the colour preferences are already pouring in. My only reservation is the glitter. It has a nasty habit of spreading itself all over the house. It’s been two days since I finished that crown off and I’m still trying to get it off me.
IT JUST DOESN’T GO.
Even though this was easy enough N didn’t help with it at all so we’ll probably have to have another entry. I had fun, though.
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Crafty Sunday

My weekend resolution   seemed in trouble this week as we were expecting guests but a last minute cancellation meant we could do our weekly craft. Here it is… a peacock out of some cardboard and plastic spoons. It is everything Naisha could ever have wanted in terms of colour and glitter.

Naisha drew this peacock on a bit of cardboard.. a bit crooked but never mind.

We cut it out and glued on plastic spoons. I never thought they’d hold but they did, beautifully.
You have to be generous with the fevicol.

Paint it blue/green/gold/glittery.. whatever you have. Naisha was too impatient to try more detailing.

Her favourite part.. thumb printing the peacock feathers…

… like this

Then some blue glitter

A yellow beak and yellow feet..

And of course the sequins.
The bestest part of all – I found googly eyes, finally. (at Hypercity, Pune) So we had to use one.

.. And it’s done. It looks much better than the picture.. my photography skills leave much to be desired.
That reflection will be the death of me.. sigh!

Linking this to Shruti’s Artsy Craftsy Challenge .
 

 
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A weekend resolution and some ice cream

The kids are in grade 1 and I feel they’re teenagers already — they barely have time. Hence my resolution for every weekend is to try out one craft activity with Naisha and one easy recipe with Hrit.

Here’s the craft for the week… ice cream cones out of egg cartons.

We made the cones out of handmade paper and reversed it for two different kinds of cones. Then we chopped off the tops to get an even circle at the top.

We cut out the cartons and painted them over for the ice cream scoops. Obviously we had bring out the glitter paints. Only we spilled some of the purple so we had a bit too much of shiny ‘black currant’ :-). “Thank God we don’t have to eat them,” said Naisha. Yes she’s not too fond of that flavour.

Then we stuck them onto the cones. Finally we added some pompoms for the cherry and we were done.

The kids are still fighting on which of their friends/teachers should get which ones. To Naisha’s immense annoyance Hrit chose the pink and the purple. So I suppose he achieved his purpose.  Despite much rona dhona the issue still needs to be settled.
Linking this to Shruti’s Artsy Craftsy Challenge .
With Hrit I’m pretty much at a loss. We ended up boiling water and making Maggi. Talk about starting from the basics :-). I’ve been searching all over the Net for some kid-friendly recipes with little success. Ideas, anyone?
 
Edited to add: Our ice cream cones won the craftsy challeneg. Yay!
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Crafty Sunday

This is a post long overdue. It would have died a quiet death like so many before it had the last date for Shruti’s Artsy Craftsy February challenge not come up. Here it is.. my entry.

In a moment of weakness I promised N we’d make some nice ‘hearty’ crafts for Valentine’s day this year. I keep having these moments of madness and I keep living to regret them too. This time H fell ill and drove all thoughts of celebration out of my mind.

However N wasn’t about to forget my promise. Not just that, she also invited some of her friends. “We’ll all make ‘sooper’ things with my mama,” she told them all. So it was that the Sunday before Valentine’s Day a group of girls descended with their paints and brushes ready for some action.

Seeing there was no way I could wriggle out of this one I left H to watch the television and thought we’d make something quick and easy and get it over with.

Here’s my bunch of girls all set.

We started off with simple heart badges. We cut out heart shapes from coloured paper and the girls decorated them as they pleased with the name of the receiver in the centre. Finally we put on tiny bows and the badges were done. They didn’t seem too impressive till we saw almost all the children of the society wearing them in the evening. Pretty cute.

Next we did table place mats. I brought out old magazines and ad fliers that had come in with the newspapers on Sunday and cut out heart shapes. The girls got mat-sized chart paper/ handmade paper to stick on the hearts. There were ‘pizza hearts’ and ‘sunset hearts’ and when I couldn’t keep up with them I simply did some from coloured paper. The older ones went ahead and drew some figures too. What fun.

Finally we put some ribbon and got them laminated.

BTW a bunch of girls is not easy to handle. One of them wanted to make seven mats because she had seven members in her family. Another one requested, “May I make a small one for my baby sister at least?” I know now why I enevr made it to teaching. How on earth do you handle so many children? And worse, the requests are made so sweetly you don’t want to break even one heart.

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Quick kifayati costumes for kids

I quite liked the sound of that headline heh heh, always had a thing for alliterations. When I was working I had to restrain myself all the time from overdoing it.

Anyway coming to the point – I found four sheets of black chart paper bought god knows when for god knows what and decided to have a bug bash for the kids. All I had in mind was a lady-bug and a bee. However, with kids, things never work out to plan. N’s friend V dropped in and picked the lady-bug ‘costume’. N chose to be the bee. Those took just about ten minutes each despite the kids’ ‘help’.

H was left without a costume.. No we couldn’t have two of the same thing. He “thinked” and “thinked” what he wanted to be. First he wanted to be a cockroach (yikes), then a stick insect, “because they are the longest insects in the world”. He’s right by the way. Then he wanted to be a ‘cricketer’ (he mixed up the insect and the sport).

Finally he settled for a frog, “because frogs eat bees and lady bugs and are stronger” and being stronger than the girls is of course the ultimate ambition of his life. So a frog he was.

You know what’s the best part?.. Give the kids a start and they can take the game much further than you ever thought. The girls ran around “sucking nectar from flowers” … oops… ‘flew’ around.

H played the perfect spoil sport insisting that lady bugs couldn’t really fly, that they weren’t black with red spots but red with black spots. Sigh! I had no red paper, so I shushed him the best I could.

N’s going to have trouble having friends over if H doesn’t reform soon enough.

Then he hopped around with his tongue hung out threatening to “eat them both in a gulp”. He showed off his ‘flippers’ and did a bit of swimming too.

Then my niece dropped in and we dug up some pink paper and did a butterfly for her… not as good as the others but fun nonetheless. She enjoyed decorating the wings and the glitter… girls! They’re all the same.

All in all, a great day. How good the costumes were, remains debatable considering V’s mom thought it was an armour she was wearing and couldn’t fathom why a soldier was running around with her arms held out ‘smelling’ flowers, so that’s there!

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