Gone Crazy for Crayola

We did some major cleaning over the weekend. We went through all the toys and arts and crafts stuff. And we have WAY too many crayons and colored pencils! It’s ridiculous. THOUSANDS! And I can’t bear to just throw them away. There may be kids with no crayons somewhere…

I need to part with some. Or ask Pinterest for something crafty to do with them. I could even donate them….but to who?

My collection is out of control! It’s so bad, I think some of them are from my childhood crayon collection. Really.

I guess some people collect shoes…I collect crayons, colored pencils, pens, notebooks, books. I am a nerd…but totally loving it.

If you have any creative or crafty or donating ideas let me know in the comments. I am up for just about anything!

And what do other people do with all their kids’ crayons? Do you just throw them away?

And don’t get me wrong, we use them. We just don’t need this many. (And I’m running out of space.)

xxx

Five Stars for Magna Doodles

The boys were sprawled out on the living room floor, heads bent and getting along wonderfully. “Wow!” is all I could say and wish this happened more often. They were taking turns, there was no arguing, and they were really into what they were doing.

They were drawing on the Magna Doodle! And they were doing some really cute drawings. They would fill up the screen and show me their work, proud smiles plastering their cute little faces and their blue eyes lighting up.

But every time they would go to move the little orange handle across the screen to erase, I would silently cringe, wishing I could save that one for the scrapbook. But they created more little masterpieces over and over again.

Bradley eventually got bored and left the toy all to Collin. And even without his brother, Collin sat and drew pictures for a good 20 minutes, which is really good for this busy toddler who seems to never sit still unless Umi Zoomie or Bubble Guppies is on.

Collin and his creations, which are planes by the way.

So I give the Magna Doodle five stars for keeping my kids busy, playing cooperatively together, and using their imaginations. They drew planes and cars and people and animals and shapes and all kinds of stuff.

The downside, Mommy can’t save their little masterpieces. UNLESS I take a picture! (which I finally smarted up and started doing.)

The other amazing thing about this toy is that it is durable. Bradley got it for his second birthday, and he is almost seven…so the toy is about five years old. We have lost all the magnetic shapes or the dogs have eaten them, but it still works great after all these years, minus that it doesn’t erase completely and give you a clean plastic sheen-  you can still kind of see the old marks-  but the kids don’t seem to notice or know any difference.

I love little hands and their creations. Priceless!

xxx

Paper Mache Pumpkin

I have always wanted to make something paper mache. So Bradley and I made a paper mache pumpkin for Halloween. It was a lot of fun…AND really messy, but that’s half the fun.

Bradley insisted it had lots of blood. That’s a boy for you.

One thing I learned when it was all done, which I didn’t think about at the beginning, was to make a flat bottom on it. Our pumpkin has a rounded botton from the balloon and it doesn’t sit up right. You have to lean it up against something. That’s alright though, it’s still cute and we had so much fun.

I love the conversations we have while doing projects. I learn alot about what he is thinking. Check out the video below. You have to watch towards the end because he totally cracks me up when I asked him what kind of face he wanted to make for his pumpkin.

Did you make anything crafty this Halloween?

Thanks for reading and watching.

xxx

I’m Just Doodling

In Memory of Grandma Jean

August 18, 1928 – July 27, 2011

We made her a scrapbook for her birthday and matted some of her trees.

She would always say, “I’m just doodling.” But to me all her “doodles” are a work of art. They’re unique, like a signature. They are all her.

You could find them doodled on the newspaper, winding their branches through columns and supporting a title. You could find them on the back of receipts in blue ink. You could find them on paper towels as you cleared the table, light pencil markings instead of a spaghetti stain. You could find them on the back of envelopes or unopened mail. You could find them in sketchbooks, upside down, sideways, and every which way. Pencil, ink, markers; all sorts of mediums will do. Mix and match them, doodle some flowers or ducks on them, add a picket fence and an old barn in the background. But they were always trees; bare branched trees reaching to the sky, gnarly trees resting below, skinny trees, fat trees, free-flowing trees. They were always trees…  occasionally you would come across one with leaves, but most of the time they were bare branched trees, bare naked trees, skeletal trees, robust old trees, dead trees, skinny trees, trees trees, trees… I remember the lines, lots and lots of lines, engraving the bark into the paper, marking their passage of time. 

“I’m just doodling,” she would say. 

But I wont find her sitting in her light beige leather recliner anymore; sketchbook propped up on her knees and colored pencils on each end table next to her, and in her chair, and underneath the recliner. They were everywhere. Drawers were filled with colored pencils, markers, pens,  crochet hooks, candy for her and the grandkids, and who knows what else in her little art drawers…jewelry, kleenex, a baggie full of change, a pack of saltines, you just never know.

I remember when I was little trying to copy her trees. The side of my palm would have pencil all over it because I would smear it through the whole picture, trying to go back and make it better.  It was close, but just not the same. They are as unique as nature makes them, they are one of a kind. They are my grandma.

I love and miss you, Grandma.

xxx

Rainy Day Play-Doh

It was a rainy Friday morning. I sat on the kitchen floor rolling Play-Doh into small coils; green, blue, yellow, and pink – for the stripes on our snake. Bradley was rolling the bright red/orange  into a body for our snake. 

He saw the pictures of different creations on the side of the box and really wanted to make them. So we started off with the snake, then made the frog, a flower, and a fish. He was so proud of his creations and so was I. We did a great job. Collin had fun, too. He mostly made a mess. He is really good at mixing all of the colors together. He did make something, too. And I was shocked. He copied off of Bradley’s fish and mostly had all the right parts. I gave him the dots for the body and smooshed it together. I don’t know if his creation was a coincidence or not, but I was impressed…and still am.

Check out our creations below:

  

And, next but not least, is Collin’s fish below.

Pretty impressive for an almost 2-year-old. It could have been a coincidence, or maybe he is just a little artist. He was copying the things we were doing. I will settle for a little artist.

We have more plans on new creations for the next rainy day. They will all be multi-colored because Collin managed to mix all the Play-Doh colors this time. 🙂

xxx

Hand Made Mother’s Day

One of my favorite Mother’s Day presents Bradley brought home from school the other day. A surprise hiding in his book bag, crushed and bent. A large piece of red construction paper, laminated and rolled up with the teacher’s writing on the outside – Happy Mother’s Day. How nice. When I opened it and saw the wonderful artwork drawn by my son, a picture of me…AND a nice little paragraph about his dear ol’ mom, ME…well, it brought tears to my eyes. It was the cutest thing I have ever seen. It is one of my favorite keepsakes so far (I need to frame this one). I love that darn kid so much!

He was so proud of his present. Too cute!

o.k. , so I’m not 18. I’m 23.  😉  hee hee. When I first read that it brought tears of joy and laughter.

The best gifts have no price tags…they are made by little hands and come from the heart. Priceless.

xxx

Bubble Art

Sometimes I think I have these great ideas, and then they turn out not so great. This was one of those not so great ideas, which I didn’t find out until after we started. It turned into a colored bubbly mess. But we did have fun and got some cute results. * Note: I have seen this project done before with success. Just wasn’t happening for us yesterday. And now Crayola has come out with colored bubbles.*

Basically the idea is to put food coloring into a bubble solution. When you blow the bubbles you catch them with a piece of paper and it leaves a colored circle. It is really cute. But our bubbles kept splattering all over us and we had red and blue speckled faces and arms. Collin spilled (go figure) and part of our sidewalk is blue for the time being. Also, Murphy, our dog, kept catching the bubbles in his mouth. I’m sure he had a blue and red tongue, possibly purple. lol.

But when it was all said and done, we had fun and our pictures turned out cute. Check them out below.

I was hoping you would be able to see the colors blend. Oh well, maybe next time…if we try this project again. I will have to plan better.

What kinds of catastrophes have you made in the name of art?

xxx