Thank you to everyone for leaving a comment about your favourite kids craft activity and ingredients - so much inspiration … and thank you to kids craft weekly for the giveaways. - the five winners and their comments are listed below first [please email me ASAP whipup[at]gmail.com with your mailing address and full name etc. And listed below that are just some of the creative ways parents and kids create together … thank you all for a great month of kids crafts.

1. Rachael Said - Favourite everyday item would depend on the day and the craft! My kids definitely like string. My favourite kids’ craft project is the ones that the kids made out of their own imaginations. Can’t beat them.

2. Dawn Said - Our favorite everyday craft items are seashells (we live near the shore) and sticks — any kind of sticks including popsicle sticks, yard sticks, dowels — there is always something to make from them. My nomination for best kid’s craft project this month is that darn fish in a bag soap. How cool is that!

3. Desiree Says: Plastic drinking straws! Where do I start? Use them with paint, playdough, string, blow through them, cut them up, glue them… Our latest favorite project? Colored water “painting” on paper towels (using straws of course)!

4. Thien-Kim Said - Hmm, everyday crafting. I like to pull out the paints and let my toddler just smear paint on paper. She has a great time just dipping her fingers (ok, hands) into the paint, mixing it, swirling it, and spreading all over her paper. It’s just sooo juicy! I love watching her. I guess that’s my favorite kids’ craft project right now. Painting with no agenda, just having fun.

5. Rachel Said - Paper would have to be our all time favorite. Doesn’t matter if it’s construction, scrapbook or typing paper. They love the big paper that some shipping companies use to pack things with probably the most. We’ve made treasure maps and lifesize full body “portraits”.

other comments included:

- our current favourite is using freezer paper to transfer ‘original artworks’ onto t-shirts. My kids love to draw and very proudly display their own special t-shirts - good for presents and prolonging the life of special drawings.
- tissue paper and glue! Messy and fun!
- my favorite kids craft project is anything with popsicle sticks (you can do SO many things!)
- cooking ingredients. I love to make playdough, slime, salt dough and other fun mixtures to craft and play wth.
- Favourite crafting material? Paper, of course! Endlessly versatile. Cut it, paint it, fold it, draw it… What can’t you do with paper.
- leftover toilet paper + paper towel rolls. infinitely useful for crafting and imaginative play, especially for little pirates and star-gazers.
- As far as my favorite kids’ craft, I like the crazy crayons made from leftover crayon bits. Those are great.
- scissors are my favorite starting point……….a fresh notebook and a writing implement
- My favourite everyday item is things we find on our walks - sticks, bark, pebbles, leaves, seashells…we love making temporary sculptures in the garden and letting the garden gradually reclaim them.
- Favorite craft project is making books. My daughters (6 &4) love to make books for family and friends. They usually are about the individual person and the girls create collages about their stories. I love their creations and story writing ideas are endless!
- I love cardboard boxes (they can be cut up into pieces to make anything), egg cartons and toilet rolls. Recently I made a farmhouse, tractor and animals out of those items and my daughter loves it.
- My girls are always coming up with new ideas using crayons and found items, anything from beads to candy wrappers to toilet paper tubes.
- Our favorite everyday craft materials are tape, paper and string. My son can build all kinds of things with these - signs, bridges, buildings -
- My fave everyday item: cardboard box! You can add stuff to it, cut away from it, it can be transformed into anything from a doll’s house to a hiding place to something to store everything else into!
- I have to say my daughters favorite everyday craft item is the Popsicle sticks! It never fails that she can come up with a different idea or use for them every time!
- I asked my daughter about this and she said, “Blankets.” I never would have guessed this but she’s right. She makes temporary crafts all around our house out of blankets. She sets up little environments for herself and her friends.
- Some of our favorite projects aren’t really projects at all. We just sit down with a stack of scraps, a few embellishments, and have fun putting them together. I guess you could just call it collage.
- Favorite everday item: felt. You can glue it or sew it, you can make it soft and fuzzy with a needle point, and your can stick it to itself; we’ve made felt storyboards based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
- Our favorite around here would be yarn, especially the little leftovers from my projects. It’s amazing what kids can come up with.
- love love love potato stamps!
- My favorite kid craft (today) is making those crazy crayons by melting leftover crayon bitties into mini-muffin tins.

For my son’s seventh birthday party I wanted to make party favors that didn’t cost very much, were mostly hand made, and that weren’t stupid cheap plastic games that would break immediately. I made pirate booty bags out of some pirate fabric I already had, put some chocolate coins in each one, some fake dollar bills, a few plastic play rings, and one surprise bath bomb which the kids could use in their next bath and after watching the ball fizz for a couple of minutes in the bath a prize would drop out of the center of it.

Because the trinkets you use will be immediately immersed in water you need to choose water proof ones. Plastic bugs or rings (shown in this tutorial) are all good choices. They also need to be small. For all the kids I put a pirate button in the bath bomb, but for the birthday boy I hid a tiny corked bottle with a message inside it for him. He loved it!

This project is not difficult, but it has one tricky aspect to it which is that baking soda and citric acid combined will foam and fizz when in contact with too much moisture, which is what you want it to do in your bath. To get it to form balls you have to get it just wet enough, without setting off the chemical reaction that makes it expand. There is no exact science to knowing when the mixture is ready to form balls. Humidity levels in homes differ. It might take me fifteen sprays of witch hazel to get mine right, but that might not be true in your house. I highly recommend having a second person do the witch hazel spraying while you whisk it in simultaneously so that the moisture has no chance to set off a reaction. [might be a good way for the kids to help out -ed]

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To make this fun and easy marbleized paper you will need: 1/2 tsp alum (helps paint adhere to the paper), 2 cups liquid starch, liquid acrylic paints, a long wooden skewer, 9 X 13 pan and white copy paper cut to fit the inside your pan. You can change up the size of the pan; just keep the proportions of starch and alum the same. The starch should be 1 to 2 inches deep in your pan.

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I have had such a ball this month with the children’s crafts, but am now gearing up to Alt crafts month which I also looking forward to - so send in your submissions.

I wanted to also let you know about my posts last week for design*sponge where I was a guest for a week. Some of these post will be perfect for alt craft month but there are also some posts on my home and crafting with kids - so check them out.

Some last kiddies crafts that readers have sent in…

Patricia sent this in - egg carton turned into a heart

Alix sent this in - just thought I’d tell you about the car my son and I made. it isn’t a tutorial, more a description of the process and how we made the choices.

Mimi sent in this link to a fishing game tutorial

Amy sent in this - Hi there! I just wanted to share this simple craft my son Finn and I made recently…It was great to start the year off this way. It is a “helping bank”. I know it is not super artsy or amazing, but I know that this is children’s month and I thought you might want to see it. It was fun to make and the lesson was great.

At artstream, we use a lot of recycled objects as well as bonafide art materials to create with. Here is an easy reuse of the freebie foam core which most frame shops throw away. Go ask for some at your local shop. They will be happy to see you!

To make these mask/faces we sorted the bits into a few bins of small, medium and large shapes. For the actual “head” we had the children draw on a larger piece and we cut out that shape for them with adult size scissors. They glued on the features and used wooden skewers and toothpicks for hair. The foamcore board accepts the skewers easily on the edges as it comes with premade hole like formations. Paint, markers, or inks could be used to add color, as well as beads, ribbons and yarns added to the “hair”. Everything was glued on with a white glue although if you were in a hurry to finish, an adult could use hot glue. More photos of this process right here at flickr.

As part of our month of crafts for children, we will be posting links to cool ideas and inspiration as well as tutorials and articles. We are still taking tutorial and article ideas for the month so please email your ideas and stories to me at whipup[at]gmail.com.

Wendi wrote in with this great letter about how she helps her 5 year old to sew - they are currently making a quilt.

Hello lovely Whip Up people! I’ve been enjoying this month’s theme of crafting with kids and I thought I’d send you a link to the post I just wrote about sewing with my daughter. She’s five and she’s been sewing with a machine since she turned four. In my post I talk about the things I do that “help” her sew (like drawing the stitching line for her to follow) and how I rigged her machine to slow it down a bit.

This is an almost no-sew tutu project that is perfect for any kid who can tie a single knot (usually 5 years and up). This is perfect as a girl birthday party craft.

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I was making bugs for my mom. I know she likes ladybugs a lot, even though we live in a place where they invade your house by the hundreds! I really know what a ladybug looks like from seeing so many. I cut felt out free hand, and tried to make it look right. Then I sewed it all together. I like making stuffies a lot. I give them to my mom, and friends. I like designing them, because I don’t have to follow any directions! My mom helped me draw the pattern from the original, and wrote out the directions for making it.

Materials: felt – small amounts of red, black, white | ☺embroidery floss – black | size 26 tapestry needle recommended (The rounded point is better for younger needle workers and still pierces the felt just fine. It is also easier to thread than standard embroidery needle. | fiber fill or cotton balls to stuff with | scissors

Directions: Draw the pattern onto paper, or enlarge on a photocopier until you have it the size you want - make sure to make it a big bigger to allow for cutting and sewing.

Cut 2 of the head pattern from black felt. | Cut 2 of the eye pattern from white felt. | Cut 6 of the spot pattern from black felt. | Cut 1 of the body pattern from red felt. | Cut 1 of the body pattern from black felt.

HEAD: Stitch the eye pieces nto one of the head pieces, using black floss. Then stitch the head together – top to bottom using over cast stitch. Leave an opening for the stuffing. Stuff and close the rest of the way.

BODY: On the red body (top) piece, First use a running stitch and black embroidery floss to create a line along the dotted line on pattern. Then stitch the 6 black spots. Use the picture as a guide, or put them where you want! Stitch the top (red) to the bottom (black) leave an opening to stuff. Then close.

PUTTING HEAD ONTO BODY: Put the head into position at one end of the body and stitch using black embroidery floss.

HINT: Don’t worry about your stitches being perfect – it’s part of the charm!

About the maker: Becca is ten years old and in fifth grade. She likes to do crafts, embroider and to draw.

Secret Message Soap: A bribery idea. Trying to get your kids to wash their hands more? In this project we put a dollar bill in a lip balm container then embedded it in a bar of soap. Once the soap is all used up you get the dollar that has been safely stashed in the lip balm pot. This is also a fun idea for putting secret messages into soap.

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Playdough Soap - All you do is add cornstarch to regular melt & pour base and it turns into a malleable soap you can sculpt and play with! Let your kids sculpt their soap into any shape then let it air dry and they can use it in the bath.

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Airplane in the Clouds Soap a simple project of embedding toys in soap. A fun soap to get kids to wash up more so they can get a prize.

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As part of our month of crafts for children, we will be posting links to cool ideas and inspiration as well as tutorials and articles. We are still taking tutorial and article ideas for the month so please email your ideas and stories to me at whipup[at]gmail.com.

As cozy as spring documented her process of making paper with her kids, great instructions, and what a fabulous summers day kids activity.

This was my daughter’s idea. She wanted a kit for Christmas. I order the smallest kit and it was smaller than I expected, but I think also quite necessary. The screens included, along with the other tools, make for an easy project.

JC Handmade is sharing the sewing pattern/tutorial that she created for her Kidlet Wall Pocket Tidy Totes. The tutorial is a pdf download (3MB) and includes 41 full color photos to make the process as simple as pie.

The following tutorial was written by 6-year-old Marian Grace. Marian has kept an art blog for the last year, and is currently focusing it on her crafty preparations for a bone marrow transplant she is having in late March. As she explains here, she is using the time while she waits to raise money for crafts for hospitalized children, since her own artwork is such an important part of her life. She will first earn money, by selling her snowglobe kits, to buy new craft supplies for her own long in-patient stay (necessary to ensure that they are germ-free, as her problematic immune system is being dismantled), then donating the rest of her money to Caitlin’s Smiles, a local organization that donates thousands of bags of craft supplies a month to kids in hospitals.

The following tutorial is written by Marian with added clarifying details in brackets written by her mother.

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As part of our month of children’s crafts, crafty beats sent in a link to a matching memory game she made from plastic bottle tops for her kids to play with. This would be a great game for the kids to help make - cutting out or drawing pictures or words to glue into the bottle tops.

Corney-but a nice and easy craft for the kids to make. It’s about as simple as it looks-melt and pour soap in a little plastic baggie with a plastic fish in it. Tie the bag while it’s still liquid and voila! The hardest part is keeping the fishie upright while it solidifies.

Collect your items:
a double boiler if you are going to use a stove top, or a pyrex measuring jug for the microwave | a block of clear melt n’ pour soap | Lollipop bags (I actually found ones already in the shape of a fish bowl!) | plastic fish-smaller than 2 inches

Cut up the soap into one inch blocks and melt about 4-5 ounces per fish soap, following the directions on the soap for the microwave or over medium heat in the double boiler. As it melts set up your bag(s) so that you’ve rolled the top edges back out of the way and they are sitting upright. I use small desert dishes to hold each one.

Once the soap is liquid, pour it in the bag and drop in your fish. If the fish ends up sideways or (gasp!) upside down, use a plastic fork to poke it upright and then try to avoid moving it around. Very carefully use a twist tie (they should have come with the lollipop bags) and tie the top of the bag closed, which will push the soap up and create the look of a bag of water. Let it sit in the dish until hard.

If you have a really skinny fish that doesn’t want to stay upright, cut a couple of small blocks of soap and rather than melt it, put them into the bag with the fish sandwiched between them, then pour the melted soap over it very carefully.

About the maker: Angarad blogs at sweetWhen she is not making things, she is with her kids thinking about making things. She followed a dream she had been thinking about for years, and opened a craft center. Now she spends her time crafting and calling it work! Her passion is book binding, but she also has a weakness for all things made from fabric, wool and paper, she also knits like crazy.

My recommendations for books for crafting with and for children.

D.I.Y. Kids, Ellen Lupton & Julia Lupton, published by Princeton Architectural Press (website for the book and old blog).

The official blurb (an excerpt):

All over the world, parents are raising kids to get active and embrace the “design-it-yourself” spirit of homemade arts and crafts. … D.I.Y. Kids is designed to trigger imaginative play, without requiring fees, teams, or a minivan. It’s for parents, teachers, aunts and uncles, friends and babysitters, neighbors and citizens—anyone who wants to create a better world not only for, but also with, the next generation. Most of all, it is for kids who want to make their mark by exercising the arts of design with wit, intelligence, and style. read the review here.

Wholly Irresponsible Experiments by Sean Connolly published by Icon Books August 2007.

As a very irresponsible child my husband was the perfect person to review this book, with all the crazy experiments he got up to in his childhood involving gun powder and chemical explosions etc - I thought he would really dig this book. The title sure sounds interesting but in fact the experiments in the book are really quite responsible - and not in fact at all irresponsible. - read the full review here.

How to Make Books: Fold, Cut & Stitch Your Way to a One-of-a-Kind Book, written by Esther K. Smith from Purgatory Pie Press, with illustrations by Lindsay Stadig and photographs by David Michael Zimmerman and published by Potter craft.

This is one of those books that is a pleasure to hold and touch and you just want to keep on feeling it. … I was immediately taken with the very first chapter - ‘Instant books’ such a simple idea - folding a single piece of paper to make an instant book, zine, sketch book, note pad. I immediately made one from a scrap of paper, then I showed the children how to make them too and they spent the evening at home making little books and writing poetry, doing sketches and other secret children’s business. My 5 year old boy was so impressed with himself that he took his books to school the next day and taught the teachers and the class how to make them and now a whole bunch of pre-school kids are making their own books and writing and drawing their secret business. read the full review here.

The Boy Mechanic Makes Toys: 159 Games, Toys, Tricks, and Other Amusements (So Many Projects, Not Enough Time) (Paperback)
by The Editors of Popular Mechanics, published by Hearst (June 1, 2007).

This is an adventurous child’s dream book. Originally published in the early 1900’s it is part of a larger series of Boy Mechanic books. read the review here.

Making Books That Fly, Fold, Wrap, Hide, Pop Up, Twist & Turn: Books for Kids to Make (Paperback) by Gwen Diehn. Published by Sterling Publishing/Lark books.

This book is a book about making books, and includes ideas and topics for books and suggestions on presentation with explanations and ideas of various learning journeys on how children can present their ideas and research, story telling and artistic pursuits, thinking about the end result of the book as well as the contents, thinking about who the book is for and how it will be used. read the review here

Kids Knit: simple steps to nifty projects by Sarah Bradberry. Published by Sterling

While this book might be aimed at older children who are able to follow written instructions, I think it would also be good for parents who are wanting easy projects to teach younger children. read the review here.

from the Australian Women’s Weekly. Published by ACP Magazines Ltd.

I was really excited to see that this classic has been reprinted. It is a fabulous collection of craft activities for kids aged 2-8 - parents too. Step by step instructions designed to stimulate imagination and confidence assist with coordination, concentration and problem solving and to encourage experimentation. Good instructions with easy recipes and hints on cleaning up, excellent photos of real kids making these projects. read the full review here.

Soulemama, always an inspiration for me, has helped her children make the most wonderful calendar. The children did all the drawings during the year, and collected and collated the images for Amanda to scan. What a fabulous project to do with the kids.

As part of our month of crafts for children, we will be posting links to cool ideas and inspiration as well as tutorials and articles. We are still taking tutorial and article ideas for the month so please email your ideas and stories to me at whipup[at]gmail.com.

who would have thought that needle felting would be an ideal craft for kids - but looking at this great tutorial for needle felting a cute owl over at reprodepot blog - I think it would make a great project to do with some supervision for your kids.

As part of our month of crafts for children, we will be posting links to cool ideas and inspiration as well as tutorials and articles. We are still taking tutorial and article ideas for the month so please email your ideas and stories to me at whipup[at]gmail.com.

craftastica has an excellent tutorial about natural dyeing of eggs (easter is coming up…) - what a great project to do with your kids.

onions and red cabbage were the best, but i also had success with beets (brick red, but only after soaking for several hours — before that, a displeasing brown, alum or not), tumeric (very similar to yellow onions but less dappled and more likely to stain everything), and hibiscus tea. i expected the tea to result in purple or blue eggs, but instead got a sage green,

This is a fun exercise in finding shapes, both complex and simple for children (and I am guessing adults too!) using paper maps as your guide. Last week some of my students made these fun and fantastic artworks using a simple process with the maps I gave them. I asked them to open the maps and look at the rivers, railway lines and borders by squinting at them to find new shapes. Then they took a sharpie marker and drew the objects or shapes they were able to find. Then they cut out the new objects and used oil pastel on them to accent what they had found. Finally, they glued the new pieces down to large pieces of paper and finished off their collages. I was simply amazed at the variety of work which came from this project. More photos of this process are at my flickr.