Craft Project: Beautifying Our Yard in a Creative Way

We made some pour paint flower pots last spring. I decided it would be fun to make some more this spring, including some large pots for flowers in our yard. I'm excited to brighten up our yard this year! Now, I just have to keep my three year old from plucking all the flowers when he's outside playing. LOL!

Every time we do a pour paint project, I am just enamored with the paint. I LOVE watching what it does, how it pools, drips over the side, and ultimately the final product it creates.

We even got my husband in on the project this time!

 I loved the glitter pot he made!

 Finished pots waiting to dry....

 

And here are the pots in our yard with flowers in them! 

PLEASE NOTE: If you are storing your pots outside in the elements be sure to spray them with clear polyeurathane spray to seal the paint or a terra cotta pottery spray to seal. We also discovered that the acrylic paint holds up much better than the Michael's tempera paint.

It was quite the process to get our landscape bed back to looking good! We had totally let it go last year and it was so overgrown with weeds and grass. We turned it all over, I laid newspaper down, and added the wood chips.

BEFORE

DURING

AFTER

We also created painted glass garden plates for Mother's Day gifts and made a few for our house as well. Here they are in all their finished glory!

Our complete front landscape bed with painted pots and garden art!

And our final project for the front yard this year....a tic tac toe landscape bed complete with its own painted pots to hold the tic tac toe rocks and another garden plate.

The girls each painted their own set of rocks for the tic tac toe game.

I sealed the painted rocks with clear polyeurathane spray. And here's a close-up of my 9 year old's garden plate. She wanted to paint fish on the plate, but I was worried about being able to seal it properly. So we used foamies stickers and I sprayed them with the polyeurathane spray. I'm crossing my fingers that they hold up through our Minnesota summer weather and strong storms. In my original post about the garden plates, I used UV6800 glue to adhere the coupling to the plate. However, a couple of the gift plates we made didn't hold up to the elements. So now I'm trying gorilla glue. We'll see how that works!

Craft Project: Custom Felt Wall Hanging

After my friend, Patty saw the felt stocking I made my niece, Eliana, she contacted me and asked me if I might be up for creating something for her daughter's bedroom. She loved the tactile 3-dimensional nature of the stocking I made and wanted to mimic that in the wall hanging.

Her daughter, Mary Rose was born blind because she has a mutation in the CEP290 gene. Mary Rose has overcome so many challenges already in her life and still works to overcome others. We first met Patty, Mary Rose, and their family four years ago when my younger daughter was in the same preschool class. They enjoyed each other's company for two years in preschool and sadly they go to different schools and haven't seen much of each other the last couple years. We have stayed in touch, and Lily and I have happily participated in Mary Rose's From Darkness to Light Walk.

My daughter Lily (in pink coat), with Mary Rose (blue coat) and Elizabeth, another friend from the same preschool class.

Mary Rose with her whole family!

Patty contacted me to make the wall hanging for Mary Rose and I jumped at the chance thinking it would be a really fun project. When we met to talk about what she had in mind, Patty brought this t-shirt that had been hanging in Mary Rose's room since she outgrew it.

It says believe in braille under the word. So cool! We talked about how we could incorporate the shirt in the wall hanging. At first, we talked about making the "believe" the center of the canvas and then just putting some flowers and ribbons in a swag around it, maybe some buttons too. But each time I sat down to think about the project, I had this image in my head that I just couldn't get past. I scrapped the original more abstract idea and created something a little more literal. I know Patty thinks about Mary Rose's future and how she will be able to get along in the world as she gets older. And I know Patty has a very strong faith. I wanted to remind her that if you believe hard enough, Mary Rose will be able to one day leave the "nest" so to speak and fly off on her own.

I had many of the materials already from other projects I've created. But I did ask the woman at the fabric store what the best adhesives were for what I had in mind. Once I had gathered everything and created felt flowers similar to Eliana's stocking, I laid everything out without making anything permanent.

Then I showed it to Patty, not sure what she would think. I was worried it would be way too literal and not at all what she had envisioned. But she LOVED it! So I set out to attach everything permanently.

Starting with the blue felt background. I used Super77 multiple purpose spray adhesive, I sprayed the canvas and then the felt. I left the felt on the floor and then placed the canvas upside down on top of the sprayed felt. Gently, I stretched the fabric around the edges of the canvas and adhered it to the back using the spray glue.

I use Fabri-tac to adhere the flannel tree material (I cut the tree freehand). I used the craft stick to smooth it all out.

Then came the scary part. I was soooo nervous about cutting the t-shirt and putting it on the canvas board. I had my husband cut the 8x 10 board down to the size I needed.

I trimmed the t-shirt and used the Super 77 spray adhesive to adhere the shirt to the board. Then used the fabri-tac to glue the ribbon around the outside.

Whew! It all worked out fine. But I was pretty anxious all during this part!

After that I just glued all the bird, ribbon, and flower pieces on with the fabri-tac. And here is the final product!

 

This image doesn't do it justice because you can't really see how tactile it is or how 3-dimensional. So I took a few more images to try and convey that.

I embroidered and stuffed the birds to make them stand out a bit. And I embroidered the leaves to give them some added texture.

I cannot tell you how excited I was at the fabric store when I found the hard plastic flower buttons! I thought that would be such a great tactile thing for Mary Rose!

So there it is in all its glory! I'm sad to say that Patty, Mary Rose and their family are moving to Texas in a few weeks. Not sure when I'll see them again. But I'm so happy for them. It should be a great move for their family. And Mary Rose will have a wonderful canvas to hang in her new room. One she can touch and feel to her heart's content! Thank you so much for involving me in this project, Patty. I cannot tell you how fulfilling and rewarding it was for me to create it. :-)

Summer Sensory Play: Blue Water Table Fun

Now that it is finally getting warm enough to be outside, we have really been utilizing our water table and deck. My son is a bit of a wild man (to say the least) and VERY sensory seeking (hence being very active) so sometimes it's nice to just open the door and let him do what he wants on our deck. It's fully enclosed with no stairs or gate down to the yard. So it's like a giant play yard. Nice for me when I need to get something done in the kitchen, cook dinner, or work on school work with the girls. Kellan LOVES being out there. And he LOVES playing in the water table out there. We're starting a routine that at 8:30am the morning television watching ends, and after next week when the girls are home for the summer, we'll do our summer school work at that time. Kellan will play on the deck and all should be happy!

So this week I've started getting him used to this new routine. I'm doing a blue themed week. The other great thing about the water table is I can easily put some warm water from the kitchen sink in the table. This kind of extends the play a bit more.

 Playing with chalk in the water was fun because it turned the water blue!

 We have white beans in his sensory box in the house and he decided to add a handful to the table.

One day I did more of a sensory bin idea with putting blue objects in, including a magnet and magnetic discs. He really seemed to like that!

Look for some more fun water table ideas as the summer progresses! Now, if all our rain would just stop and we had a few more warmer, sunnier days, I definitely wouldn't complain!

Sensory Activity: May Sensory Bin

I decided to do a sensory bin this month that was red/rescue vehicle themed! I hadn't used beans in awhile for box filler so I picked up some white beans at the store. Added some emergency vehicles, some wooden play pieces, magnetic dots and a magnetic tow truck piece from a puzzle we have, and there you have it!

Since I tend to keep our sensory box around for a month or so, I tend to switch things up a bit throughout the month. We started off with our new Flipzle puzzle in the box (I'll write a separate post on these fun and creative puzzles!). Then I removed it after some initial play.

I tend to overcrowd the sensory box at first because I come up with all these great things to have in there. But after initial photos, I tend to take some of it out. ;-)

Kellan likes this box quite bit. He mostly enjoys running his hands through the beans. But he always likes first investigating a sensory bin to see what I've included.

 He really liked the magnetic dots and tow truck magnet this time!

 He used the helicopter puzzle piece as a scooper.

 How the bin looked at the end of round 1 of play.

After a couple weeks, I taped some tubes to the side of the table. I thought it would be fun for him to pour the beans down the tubes. The clear tube is from our Marble Racers car track. He particularly liked being able to see the beans drop in the box through the tube.

 He experimented with using his hands and the scooper...