Foam sheet or paper Dinosaur with movable parts and button toes.

Materials required:

• Coloured card or Foam Sheets
• Scissors
• Hole Punch
• Pattern from here: http://crafts.kaboose.com/img/craft_images/moveable_paper_dinosaur.pdf
• Buttons (one for eye and some for toenails)
• Googly eye
• 4 x split pins

Method:

1.  Cut out all the pieces as per pattern and punch holes as per pattern.

  

2.  Match up all the holes and work out where you will put the spikes on the back

3.  Glue down the spikes.  Glue down the extra button where the eye will go and then glue on the googly eye.



4.  Glue on the buttons for toenails.

5.  Where the holes line up put in the split pins.  (mine were a little long but worked ok).

6.  My kids were happy for them to be plain but you could easily use sequins for scales etc to add another dimension. 

The boys loved doing the dinosaur roar!!!!

Cardstock Robots with button parts

 

Materials required

• Scissors
• Glue
• Various Cardstock (the shinier the better)
• Assorted Buttons
• Pipe cleaners
• Sticky dots
• Scatter stars (or sticker stars)
• Black heavy paper for background

Method: 

1.  Firstly cut out a oval head shape. 

2  Just below the centre cut the oval in half

3  Assemble it so that it looks like the robot has an open mouth.  When happy glue it onto the paper....see below:

4.  Then cut out some feet, hands and a rectangle body. Place them slightly apart on the page and glue down

5.  Between the body and hands/feet glue down pieces of pipecleaner.  You can twirl them if you wish.

6.  Stick on the 2 stickers for eyes and add some button eyes. 

7.  Cut a smaller rectangle and place it onto the body of the robot and then glue it down.  Add some buttons for the robot components and also glue in place.

8.  Finally add some scatter starts to the page so it looks like the robot is standing against a twinkling sky.  You can also add other items such as rockets etc :)

The Girl Robot

The Boy Robot

Contact headdress / Crown

Following on from the whole contact art theme I thought we could do something different and create some headdresses / crowns using the same principal.

You can use whatever you like but we used feathers and buttons, 2 coloured strips of paper and a strip of contact (and sticky tape to keep it in place)

1. Precut your strips of paper and contact. Make them roughly the same size although it doesn't matter if the contact is slightly wider. Probably a couple of inches wide should do it. You need to cut a couple of strips of coloured paper so that you can add a bit on to fit it around your child's head.
2. Remove the contact backing and secure either end to your work surface (sticky side up).
3. Decorate using buttons and feathers.
4. Use your coloured paper strip to stick over the top of the buttons and feathers. The contact not completely covered by items will help to secure it to the coloured paper but push on it firmly.
5. Run a bit of tape across the bottom and across the top of coloured paper if you think it needs it.
6. Measure around your child's head and add the extra paper to the edge if required. Tape when you are happy it fits correctly.

And now you are done. You can make all sorts of crowns or whatever using this method. Best of all glue free so relatively mess free! See another one below.... Good luck!

Collage on contact

These 2 collages were completed by my other twin son and were just amazing. At just turned 2 years of age Logan spent a good 2 hours creating these masterpieces. He did not leave a sticky spot uncovered. They were stuck directly to the face up contact and he was so attentive to the task that when he was finished he was most upset. I think he would have done another one to the same degree. They were a roaring success. I just put a pile of different odds and sods in a container and he helped himself to what he wanted. Where contact would be used with a 2 year old I would use paste on coloured card for older children. Very simple but very effective.

Cardboard Tube Flowers

• You will need a flower shape. You can print off a template here:
  http://familyfun.go.com/assets/cms/pdf/printables/0207_egggarden.pdf
• Cut out 2 flower shapes in whatever coloured paper/card you have
• Cardboard tube
• Green coloured card/paper
• Cotton Wool
• Buttons
• Glue
• Scissors

Now cut out a piece of Green paper the right size to wrap around the cardboard tube. Cover the paper in glue and then roll the tube over it. If there is any excess cut it off.

Cover the top edge of the cardboard tube in glue and then stick the first flower shape onto it. Press all around the edge of the top of tube so that it sits firmly.

Add a second amount of glue to the centre of the first flower shape that you stuck on.

Now attach the second flower shape but only onto the middle of the first shape.

Add another layer of glue to the middle of the flower. A nice squirt here. We will attach 3 cotton balls to make the centre of flower.

Another reasonable amount of glue squirted over the top of the cotton balls (don't use a brush as the cotton wool will stick to it and it will become a mess) then start sticking on some buttons.

We finished it by cutting out a couple of leaf shapes and sticking it to the green paper covered cardboard tube. And that's all there is to it............done!!

Mother's Day Flower

My daughter and I had so much fun making the beautiful flower. We found instructions from the "Kaboose" website and modified ours slightly.

These photo's below are ours and we used a terracotta pot, stuck some buttons around the lip of it, lined the pot with tissue paper and raffia and filled with pebbles. The stem of the flower was a twig that we spray painted green and we used a hot glue gun for the majority of the project. The centre of the flower lifted to display a verse underneath.

It turned out great! The mothers loved it.

See their website below for more details including template for flower.

http://crafts.kaboose.com/Paper-Flower-Mothers-Day-Card.html