This morning we awoke to find that it was snowing here in Little Rock! Now, we didn't get as much snow as northwest Arkansas, but we did get enough to start covering the streets. This is such a rare happening here that at the sight of snow falling (instead of freezing rain or sleet, which is usually what happens), I revert back to my childhood. Yay! A Snow Day!!!
Of course, today no schools were let out and it all began melting off just an hour or two later. It was fun while it lasted, right???
In addition to the snow, we also awoke to find that Liv had pink eye, which meant no school for her anyway. Not yay. I had plenty of school work to get caught up on, and I was really looking forward to having her at school so I could do it. Ah well, such is life... Liv did have fun playing around in the snow for a few minutes this morning, and I took the obligatory kid-out-in-the-snow photo:
And, finally, for the craft project mentioned in the title to this entry. My grandfather is in the hospital right now due to congestive heart failure. They've been pumping fluid out of him for several days now and he's actually on the mend. Anyway, Liv suggested that we make some paper flowers for him, like we did for my grandmother when it was her turn to be in the hospital. So out came my trusty Sizzix machine and some patterned paper, and this is what we came up with:
It's actually a very simple craft project. Just glue together layers of circles and flower shapes to make the flowers. Then, punch a 1/8 inch hole in the center of each and thread a pipe cleaner through. Bend over the top to make the little flower centers, and then make a little z-fold in the pipe cleaner on the bottom side of the flower to keep it from sliding all the way down. To make the little leaves, I just pinched out some of the pipe cleaner and twisted. Yay for easy craft projects!!!
It's actually a simple enough project that I'm trying to figure out if we can include these in our Jennifer Project. (The Jennifer Project will bring goodie bags to cystic fibrosis patients at Arkasnas Children's Hospital.) The only gotcha is that the kids won't have a hole punch to punch out the centers of the flowers. I'll have to ponder on that one. I'll either need to figure a way to assemble the flowers without a hole punch, OR a way to get the holes pre-punched while still allowing for creativity in assembling the layers of each bloom. Hmmm... Any ideas???
6 comments:
Love the 'obligitory picture of kid in the snow' picture :-)
Ok, how to assemble flower without hole punch tip: I think they still call them 'brads'. They look like a brass thumbtack with the tail of a bobby pin. Assemble flower layers, poke brad through (careful not to mess up Brad's hair---sorry, couldn't resist...), twist pipe cleaner around brad, and fold brad ends outward which hold pipecleaner to flower. I used to do this with 3 year olds when making pin-wheels. Instead of a fuzzy pipcleaner center to the flower you've got a shiny brass brad center, that'll be your only difference in final outcome...hope all that made sense :-)
i think all the kids got together and decided to have pink eye yesterday so they could play in the snow...nate was all gooey-eyed as well! this was his first real snow and he had a ball!
and i love the flowers, and julie anne's idea for the brad will be great for the jp!
Yup, go with the brads for the flowers, they're super cute and it looks like a fun project! ... I need a daughter to make pretty things like that with! All I ever get to do is paint trains and draw trucks!
Enjoy your snow, as I'm enjoying ours finally starting to melt!
Many blessings to your grandfather!
Oh, one more brad tip....go to the car dealerships and/or autoparts places and ask for any old bottles of auto touch up paint. They used to give them away for free or some other rediculously cheap price. Auto touch up piant will stick to the brads so if you don't want the centers of the flowers to be brass, you can pre-paint them and the kids can choose any color they wish.
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the brad idea!! Thanks, Julie Anne! I knew if I posted out here that someone would have some genius to share with me!
Off to punch flowers...
The brad idea is completely brilliant! And the flowers are ideal for the JP. In fact, those of us who have big flower and circle punches could help. I have a whole drawerful of small paper scraps that need to be put to use!
Post a Comment