Last week, Galt Toys were looking to work with bloggers with young painters/artists aged between 5 and 12 years old to recreate Starry Night by Van Gogh. We were delighted to get chosen to blog about this fantastic artwork!
How to Personalised Upcycled Wine Glass
Recently, I was sent Scotch Magic tape to do an Easter Egg challenge but it seem there are many bloggers doing the same challenge. I decided to make something different so I asked my close friends for ideas and Pippa suggested to paint on glass instead of an egg. This sounded like a nice challenge so I used my one of the odd wine glasses and the Baker Ross liquid wax pens.
Easter Craft with Baker Ross and PG Tips
Yesterday, we invited friends over to celebrate my ‘25’ birthday with my homemade M&M cake and PG tips tea while kids had fun making Easter crafts!
A3 Personlised Art Frame
Both of my children always come back home with their school drawings which would be nice to pin up or frame. We often find that we have no wall or fridge space to spare to pin up their lovely drawings. Then I came across My 1st Years who specialise in personalised baby gifts and one of those gifts is this beautiful white A3 Personalised Art Frame.
How to make an Origami Chopstick Stand
Earlier this week, my mum and sister flew over to the UK to visit us. We took them on a road trip to visit Scotland. My sister is a proper Singaporean Chinese who can’t live without noodles or rice. So we went out to eat Chinese food for most of our meals on our trip. I came across an old fashion dumpling restaurant in Edinburgh and they have these paper wrappers for the chopstick. It has been a long time since I have seen these wrappers in restaurants. It triggered memories of how my Japanese friend taught me to make an Origami Chopstick stand. This is to keep the tip of the chopstick clean if the restaurant didn’t provide chopstick stands.
I only managed to get a single wrapper as my children kept stealing the wrappers to play with it. In the following pictures, the wrapper is quite creased. If I ever get hold of an original wrapper, I will take a better picture. So for now, please bear with it.
1. Stand
Fold the wrapper from one of the ends inwards to a length of 3 cm. Keep folding inwards for the rest of the length of the wrapper. Fold in half along down the length. Pinch in the sides to make it stand.
Interplay Craft Pirate Party Review
Hey! Hey! Ship Mate! Recently, I’ve found that more and more parents have been having themed birthday parties like pirate, princess, car, Disney, etc. Finding the right kits is essential! Besides getting right utensils, party bags, cakes or even clothing, you also need entertainment/craft time! Craft Party kits offer an ideal party time solution for keeping up to six kids entertained. This Pirate party kit contains everything needed and each child is able to take their own creation home.
3D Paper Cutting Chinese New Year Spring 春
Lunar New Year is also know as Chinese Spring Festival. It is a quite a long story as to why it is called Spring Festival but the short version is that it is mainly based on mainland Chinese ruling. Spring 春 is widely used on the Chinese New Year theme or Auspicious words on Festival Couplets (New Year’s wishes on pieces of red papers) like:
迎春接福 Yíng chún jiē fú – Greet the New Year and encounter happiness
春回大地 chūn huí dà dì – Spring has come back to the earth
Christmas Activities with Vertbaudet
This Christmas holiday period, Vertbaudet has created a new Christmas activities page to keep children busy in the run up to Christmas. There are 10 different activities – if you run out of ideas, why not have a look at their activities page and get inspired. Create and pin it on Pinterest. Then maybe they could ‘show and tell’ it to their class.
Each of the activities comes as a PDF file that are straightforward to print out. There is an Advent Calendar, Paper Garland, Paper Pompoms, Letters to Santa, Colouring Pictures, Christmas Gift Tags, Woollen Pompoms, Bake Some Biscuits, Christmas Carol and Paper Stars.
Our Saturday Christmas Activities using Stencil
It was another gloomy Saturday so we decided to stay at home to do art and craft and baking with the kids. It’s always a great way of spending family time together. At times, it can be quite stressful for me preparing the items before both children start pestering me. So I brought out all the stuff we needed the night before.
We started off making Christmas cards for our relatives in Singapore using a stencil to draw and write on the card. I still remember when I was very young we used to own a few huge stencils from Alphabet to Numbers. We used those with our school projects, posters and school bag. Now there are so many different types of stencils from letter stencils to cake stencils. After the kids finished using the stencils, they randomly pasted foam shapes, coloured paper and flowers on the Christmas card ready to send off to Singapore!
Moshi Monsters: Poppet Beads
Today, we decided to have a lazy Saturday day in with lots of activities and of course a movie and popcorn! Arts and crafts is always a regular activity we love to do as a family. This Poppet Beads set came at just the right time! This Moshi beads is from Vivid Toys and Games. There are 1400 beads in eight different colours. We placed each colour into different pots to help keep the table tidy! For the grown-ups, I found that having surgical forceps helped. It’s probably not a regular household item but a pair of tweezers would work just as well too!
DIY Circle Icing Cutter by Using a Syringe
Some of you might be aware that I am the host for the Something Special Twitter Party this coming Thursday! Now I am busying getting ready the games and party food. My children love to help me to bake, cook and decorate. We were given a pack of 12 fairy cakes and a pack of icing for this party. Although we love baking, I do not own any icing cutters, especially one so small for the Something Special spots. So my clever husband thought of using a syringe.
Eggnogg Colour In Review
This month has been an exciting month for us. We were away to attend events in London but we also had a few days in where we did activities together. Today, we decided to have a lazy Sunday and I took out the Eggnogg for them to colour in. If you have not heard of Eggnogg.co.uk, they have grown from developing a range of greeting cards to keeping little people busy with a unique range of colour-in products. The products have a no-nonsense attitude that both children and adults adore. The bold designs allow for scribbles to find their way between the lines, helping challenge the senses through colour, texture and humour.
My DIY Turnip for Lichfield Mandarin Club
Yesterday was our last lesson for our Lichfield Mandarin Club and we held an end of term party with food and performances from the children. After nine months of hard work, our children are able to speak Mandarin. They are still working on their writing but still we are very proud of their improvement.
After food, we had a performance by the children where we each performed an act. A few weeks ago, I was asked to make a turnip. I was thinking buying cream and green cloth for the act. In the end, I just found whatever I could around the house to make a turnip.
BrainBox Games Colour and Learn
Recently, we reviewed the BrainBox games My First Picture and ABC. Honestly, I did not know that they also have colouring books. I was given these two Colour and Learn Animals and Teddy Bears books for review. It is suitable for age 5 onwards. Each book has 24 tear out pictures. They are not just an original colouring book. They are educational and each picture is vividly imaginative. The animals are not the most realistic you will ever see, but this may be to allow for easier colouring.
Mister Maker Volume 5
Mister Maker Volume 5 was out on DVD last week 3rd June. It is yet another brilliant craft time with him. In this DVD, there are 5 episodes and each are over 19 minutes. There are over 20 art and craft ideas making a wobbly egg, ice cream cone, 3D ships, worms in a can etc. We are big fans of the Cbeebies channel and my children love to watch Mister Maker whenever it is on. We are delighted to get this for review.
After watching Mister Maker, both children like to try out one of Mister Maker’s ideas. Today, we made the ice cream cone game! It is very simple and we are suppose to make it in a minute. With two young children, this is unrealistic as we took at least 10 minutes of craft time.