Have I mentioned I love fall crafts?? I have a zillion ideas and probably not enough time to do any of them. I did find a couple of really cute kids’ craft projects, and happened to have all the supplies for each of them on hand.
First: Construction Paper Pumpkins
I made these with Tobin while Luke was at school. I am a fan of Michals Craft Stores on Facebook, and they had a picture posted of a workshop they were doing for free in Canada. Someone in the comments asked if they’d post directions for those of us not in Canada – I took a closer look at the picture and thought, “I don’t need directions, I can figure that out!”
We used 1 sheet of orange construction paper, some green (for the leaf), a toilet paper roll (empty, of course), tape and crayons. First we colored all over the orange paper with different shades of orange crayon (Tobin liked getting to scribble everywhere…since that’s his primary method of coloring anyway!). While he was coloring, I cut out leaf shapes from the green, and he colored those. I cut the orange paper into 1” strips. We taped the top and bottom of each strip around the pumpkin, making these little friends:
The pics aren’t great because we made them several weeks ago, and they’re a little worse for the wear. But you can get the idea. It was a great toddler craft, and he is very proud.
If I had it to do again, I’d have cut a strip of the orange to cover the toilet paper roll. There were plenty of strips, it got harder as the roll was more full, so 1 piece of paper would still be enough – and you wouldn’t be able to see the roll.
Cute, easy, and using supplies I have on hand. My kind of kids’ craft!
So much my kind of kids’ craft that we did another that fits that criteria as well… This one came from my sweet friend Amy Bowman’s blog. Amy is battling cancer, and I didn’t even realize that she was a blogger as well until her diagnosis. But I LOVE her blog. It’s called New Nostalgia, and has lots of fun health/living/recipes information. She also hosts a party called “Anti-Procrastination Tuesdays”, encouraging us to share things that have been on our to-do list that are now DONE. I have nothing to share on that front :), but I like looking at other people’s progress!
Anyway, she posted about making these pumpkin luminaries and I realized I had all the supplies on hand for that as well. I did this with both boys, and they really enjoyed it. Like most Mod Podge crafts, this was kid friendly because the Podge dries clear.
I used this tutorial, but it’s pretty self explanatory. You just cut tissue paper (I used orange and brown) into strips the height of your mason jar (I did ~1” width). Mod Podge them around the jar, then cut your jack-o-lantern face out of black construction paper, and mod podge that on as well. The tutorial used paint for the top of the jar, but I thought that was too messy, so we just did strips of green tissue paper for that as well, taking care not to get any paper inside the jar so we could still put candles in there (because I didn’t want to mess with finding my Christmas lights this early.)
(doing a surprised face like his pumpkin :D)
The boys were proud, we had fun, quick clean up, and FREE.
That’s mine in the middle, Luke’s on the left, and Tobin’s on the right.
You can see that his was a terrible mess, especially up close, but they look quite good from farther away. You have to love the Podge!
