Category: crafts for kids

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Cards for the dad

This post is for Shruti’s Artsy Craftsy October. I’m hoping it is just the first one.

Here are three cards the kids and I made for The Husband’s birthday..

The first one is by Naisha… The drawing is her’s. I cut it out and stuck it on handmade paper.. that makes the card look like a card.

THE FAMILY: I am taller than The Husband and Naisha has longer hair than me

Here’s Hrit’s. In case you were wondering.. that’s an underwater scene — the ocean full of water snakes and sharks.

And finally one made by three of us … a neck-tie card. The idea came from here.  http://crafts.kaboose.com/neck-tie-card.html. There was much secrecy with Naisha asking The Husband his favourite colour and then his second favourite colour.. for the shirt and the tie. It had to be dark blue and light blue… Men, I tell you, have no imagination! So that’s what our card turned out like.

I also found some pictures of rakhi cards that Naisha made.

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Back with flowers

Back after a long gap… and what better way than through Shruti’s Artsy Craftsy Challenge. Flowers it is.. I’d been promising Naisha that we’d make egg-carton flowers but had been putting it off for ages… months actually. I can’t begin to count how many cartons I’ve kept for weeks and then thrown out. Finally today since it was a a rainy day we planned not to go down to play and did this instead. The neighbour’s daughter joined us while Hrit was dispatched to the neighbour’s house (in exchange!) so we could work in peace. What fun.

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A summer project

Hrit Naisha are hugely into story-telling. They have been making up stories since when they were a little above two.. from simple tales to long winding complicated ones. Most children do that, I think. Naisha’s are full of prince and princesses and evil witches while Hrit sticks with aliens and monsters and scary/friendly wild animals.
We decided to turn one story of each of them into an illustrated book. What fun it turned out to be.
The stories were entirely their own… including the characters’ names! I wont tire you with the stories but they were very much in character with both of them.
I typed and printed them out and the kids stuck them on with the relevant pictures on sheets of paper. Finally I stapled the sheets together to make a ‘story book’. Pretty simple.
Hrit wanted to star in his book as the protagonist. He manfully sat through my amateur efforts at the ‘photo shoot’ after which I printed out the pictures. That was easy. Naisha decided to illustrate her books herself. It took me weeks to get her to make all of them. How many times do I have to make the prince? She’d ask. She did a pretty decent job in the end. The pictures were a bit crooked and the sticking a tad sloppy but the kids were thrilled.
Check out some pages from their books.

Hrit’s story first …

Kaku and the leopard

  

Once upon a time…



Hrit the actor
And now for Naisha’s tale. I was just so relieved it wasn’t about a damsel in distress.
Aurora and the prince

The evil witch trapped the prince on a tree

.. and then the evil bird flew away with the prince

Finally Aurora rescues her prince and then
it’s happily ever after
It turned out a great summer project.
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Dressed all fancy

I’m not really a competitive person at all. Yet of late I’ve enjoyed participating in a number of contests. There have been some writing competitions which I enjoy because they make me write about things I might not take up instinctively. Besides, they take my mind off the kids for a change. Some have taken me down memory lane back to my own childhood which is a great feeling.

And so now I take on another one. Shruti’s Artsy Craftsy Challenge .

This is my second time at Shruti’s. I enjoy her challenges most because I know I can never win these ones since I’m not really a ‘crafty’ person, so there’s no pressure. This one is about Kids’ Fancy Dress Costumes.

Here’s their first one. Hrit as Sher Khan and Naisha as Mowgli. The kids were in the Jungle Book phase and loved dressing up. I found these really easy to do.

For Sher Khan I got a yellow Tee and Tracks and painted on the stripes. The tail is made by twisting a clothes’-hanger in shape, wrapping newspaper to give it body, then putting on yellow paper and painted the stripes. I made a loop at the end and inserted a regular belt through it so Hrit could just tie it on. The headgear was a bonus.. I borrowed it from the local toy-library. Hrit refused to let me paint his face so this had to be it.

He just doesn’t look menacing.. a happy Sher Khan

Mowgli was a cakewalk. I simply used an old asymmetrical animal print skirt and tied it on. One can use any animal print cloth. It works just great.

No animosity here: Sher Khan and Mowgli cuddle up

Last year they had a theme.. insects. Hrit had these black overalls so I got satin ribbons stitched on and got black stockings on his hands to hide that bit of white. Some wire was twisted into wings. Dustbin bags went over the wires and I painted on yellow stripes. A readymade hairband completed the look.

The Bee
.. and the ladybird

Naisha was a Ladybird. She had a red dress on which I got black rounds stitched on, black stockings, red band and wings similar to Hrit’s with spots instead of stripes. That’s it.

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Getting artsy craftsy

I’d actually been meaning to do this post on kid crafts for Diwali. I’d written part of it too then just felt too lazy and gave it up. Thanks to Mindfulmeanderer  here I am doing it finally. Thanks Shruti for the push.

Designer Diyas

What we need: Plain diyas (they come at a rupee a piece), Acrylic paints, Rangeela glitter tubes.
What we did: We began with washing off the diyas so they absorb less paint. Then I got the kids to paint them.. you’ll see a lot of blues because my son was the more enthusiastic one! Then we did some simple designs with the glitter tubes. The nozzles are quite kid friendly but I did lend a hand.

We also did some diyas with sequins. The kids used toothpicks to apply fevicol and then stuck on the sequins. Kept them busy for hours while I got my cleaning done.

 

Diya streamers
What we need: Sheets of plain white paper, Oil pastels or water colours, Rangeela glitter tubes, Gota/ribbon
What we did: I drew a simple diya then cut it out. (I folded the paper over before cutting it out so I got multiple cutouts in one go). Then I got the kids to colour/paint them. Oil pastels work better than regular crayons. Then we outlined them with the glitter tubes and left them to dry. Finally, we punched holes and strung them out on the gota or ribbon.

Diwali cards

What we need: Paper, Oil pastels
What we did: I drew simple designs.. diyas, flowers, stars … sometimes I threw in a basic border and got them to colour it. Simple.
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