Pipe Cleaner Hand Puppet

Or you can call it the "Almost Naked Hand Puppet". You can even fool the dog with this one. It's so simple a Cave-Crafter can do it. OK, OK, all kidding aside this is a simple kid project with fun results. Materials are 2 pipe cleaners (any color), two white buttons (3/4"), two black buttons (about 1/4" or so), fast tack glue, and a few pony beads to go into the hair.

First take two pipe cleaners bend in the middle and wrap around your middle finger (not tight). Twist at the top to make a ring around your finger. Glue the two black beads inside the white beads. Position the black beads off to the side then let them dry. Loop both sets of pipe cleaners into a curve to form eye sockets for buttons. Glue buttons into curves, making curves tight to hold eye in place. Twist sets of pipe cleaners together again. With ends that are left, spread out and bend a little to form hair. Push pony beads onto 4 hair strands. Try on your Hand Puppet and have fun.

Trendy Easy Skirts with leggings

My granddaughter and I saw these skirts in all the hip stores for teens and they weren't cheap. I told my Kate we could make them cheaper and she could pick out the fabric. The waistbands are made of 3" black elastic and the skirt part are double-knit fabric (2 pieces, 13 inches X 1 1/2 yards). Sew the 2 pieces together, right-sides together, at 13 inch edge. Gather one of the lengthwise edges (1 1/2 yards). Then pull up strings to measure close to skirt width. With right sides together sew other side seam almost up to top,(do not sew over gathering threads yet, you may have to gather them more or let out some gathers to fit). Measure the black elastic around the low waist or high hip area and add 1 1/2 inches for overlap and fold over. Sew the waistband together by folding over 1/2 inch then overlapping the other end of elastic. Make two rows of stitches 1/2 inch apart to re-enforce waistband. Fit the skirt to the waistband, pin in place, spread out gathers to be equal all the way around skirt. With black thread in sewing machine, sewing skirt to waistband from inside skirt where you can see gathers, making sure to hide gathering threads under band. First stitch line should be 1/2 inch from bottom edge of waistband. Now, turn over to right side and top stitch on waistband close to bottom edge of waistband and straighten gathers as you go. To hem, you can use a serger, great if you have one, if not set your machine on zig-zag, wide width at about medium stitch length and sew at the very edge of the skirt. It will make a "serger like" hem.

Little Button Box

Simple and easy. Metal mint box spray painted gold and covered with special buttons of all shapes and sizes but with something in common. Here the something in common is the colors. Then add a ribbon to the edge, glue in place. For the inside, glue pieces of felt, cut to fit the bottom top and sides. Thats it, you have a cute little tresure box.

Paper Mosaic Flower Frame

Pick out a picture, draw out basic shapes on the frame, then cut out colored paper shapes to match the colors of the picture. Slightly sand frame and paint white or any color you wish. Overlap paper pieces whenever needed, it's difficult to butt them up to one another and match them perfectly and overlapping gives it more depth. You can also photo-copy the picture to 100% of your frame and trace the flowers, then trace each piece you want to cut out. Little kids could do this project with less complicated shapes like simple petals and leaves, suns, moons, stars, clouds, or geometric shapes and making patterns.

I have also done paper mosaic by drawing the flower on paper mache boxes and then tearing the paper in little pieces and making it into a actual mosaic. Here is a picture of a project I'm working on using that technique.

Glue on all the pieces of paper using Mod Podge then cover entire piece once again with Mod Podge. Let dry completely.