Weekend Makes

Have the holiday catalogs started to arrive at your home yet? They've been coming in faster than I can recycle them without the kids seeing in our neck of the woods. Thus the kids have been reading and marking, with various writing instruments and symbols, to let us know what they want and in what ranked order.

Part of me wants to put the kibosh on such practice for the mere fact that I find it bratty and entitled, the other really wants to know what they want so I can pass along their wishes to inquiring minds. They've both had heavy hands at the art and crafts items though, which always makes me happy. Particularly that they've each starred (in pen and pencil!), circled, and x'd a child's potters wheel. I loved throwing pottery when I was young, but I'd rather get them in a studio than practice at home. But it got clay on my mind. And therefore into the Weekend Makes. Here's to keeping their creative (rather than commercial) spirit going!

1 / Kane has been studying Picasso at school lately and has become obsessed with drawing "Picasso faces." This tree ornament project is right up his alley. 2 / I love this idea of saving your kiddo's doodles by transferring them to polymer clay. 3 / these clay beads are so simple, but look so great! 4 / these gold place cards are just in time for the holidays 5 / a hedgehog with organizational capability!!

I Got Five On It: Cinco de Mayo Pottery

Mom is still in arts and crafts recovery after my second birthday party (you can see below that most of the decorations are still up!), but with Cinco de Mayo coming up this weekend, we pulled it together to make some (very) loosely Mexican-inspired pottery.  We found what looked to be a relatively easy recipe for making clay -- here's what you'll need:

- 4 cups flour

- 1 cup salt

- about 1 3/4 cups water (you'll likely need to add more when working with the clay)

Combine the flour and salt.  Then slowly add in water while stirring.  Shape into whatever you like.  Then cook pottery pieces at 200 F for 10 - 20 minutes (NOTE: we ended up cooking ours for several hours, leaving them out over night, and then putting them back in the oven the next day --- and they still weren't completely dry).  

After mom mixed the clay up, she told us we were going to try and make two different kinds of bowls -- pinch bowls and coiled bowls.  Kane said "um.  no, i'm going to make volcanoes.  pirate volcanoes."  Mom at least convinced him to make a pirate ship, which sort of resembles an oblong bowl.  But he then insisted on making a "pirate island" and some small "dinghies."  I helped mom make some coils for the coiled pots, but I really wasn't that into it.  

But we were both much more into painting the pottery once it had FINALLY dried.  Mom gave us red, green and white BioColor paint to use -- we were trying to keep it somewhat related to Cinco de Mayo.  I asked mom for pink paint about 7,000 times, but she didn't cave.  Once I realized that I was stuck with the colors I had, I actually really got into it.  And I spent much more time painting carefully, holding the pieces in my left hand and painting with my right, than I do when we just paint on paper.  Kane painted his pirate ship and made a hole for the mast.  The island got a nice coat of green paint and he painted water swirling around it on the table.

We're letting the paint dry a bit more and then mom plans to give them a good coat of Mod Podge (btw, have you seen this blog devoted entirely to crafting with Mod Podge? awesome).

These aren't the prettiest pieces of pottery we've ever seen, but we had fun and it was our first foray into clay.  I have a feeling we'll be trying out some new recipes, too -- we had a hard time getting this to dry (although a lot of that probably had to do with our construction) and it's pretty lumpy.  Oh well, hopefully daddy will still put one on his desk as a Cinco de Mayo paperclip holder!

Want to give them a go yourself?  Scroll to the bottom for links to BioColor and Mod Podge at Discount School Supply!

Yo:  We are now Discount School Supply affiliates and the links below to DSS are affiliate links.  If you click on any of these links (or the general DSS link on the right hand side of our blog) and make a purchase, we will receive a small percentage of the sale from DSS.  So do us a solid and help support our arts and crafts habit -- if you are going to buy something from DSS, do it through Not-So-SAHM!

no, not going to roll it into a ball to make a bowl.  i'm making an island.

try a little fingerpainting first.

the Cinco de Mayo pirate ship.

dinghies

these colors will go with everything, right?

BioColor Paint 16oz. - Set of 11 BioColor does it all! It's so versatile - use with brushes spatulas or our paint accessories. It spreads and adheres easily to paper plastic wood metal cardboard. It shines brilliantly when dry and won't crack or fade with age! Use for fabric painting sticker art and marbling projects or make multi-colored putty!

Mod Podge - Gloss - 16 oz Create groovy crafts in a flash with this 3-in-1 glue sealer and finish! Quick-dries clear on decoupage collages and albums for a glossy polished look. Glues to a variety of surfaces. 16 oz.