Lydia Gets Crafty

I am on a Pinterest roll this week...the rainy weekend and my husband working 20 hours only added fuel to my craft desire. A friend of mine who is an art therpist had her little girl paint toilet paper rolls and make trees. I loved the idea so that was our first project. I set Lydia up with her paints and gave her the rolls. She really thought it was fun to paint a nonflat object. She happily brushed away and then continued to paint right on to the bottom sheet that I always add for her.

After the clean up, I had cut out some treetops for her and introduced her to glue. Clearly she is a little young to use the glue herself, but I explained to her that it was sticky. So I would squirt the glue and she would add the pompom. She made an apple tree as we were working a little on the color red, then a multicolored tree which I was thinking could be citrus tree, well for the most part. The final tree I had these large triangle sparkles and went ahead and placed glue all over for her. These were so much easier because they are thin so they did stick instantly which was a tougher concept with the other material. The final step was for me to staple them together. When my parents came over she rush over and grabbed the trees and took them to Abuelo proudly showing her art.

Since my mom and Eliot are so diligent about things I had gather many of the rolls, so I have started searching for additional crafts. I found inspiration to make owls that looked to be super cute. I just eyed how to make them and it turned out find. So I bent in the centers of one side of the roll and put a piece of tape there. I let her paint her heart out again and then when they were dry, I had her glue the eyes, wings, and beak. Eliot did help paint the one that looks the most even. However, now I know that i may have been easier to let her paint first then bend the tops into the ears but it really worked out well regardless. Again, I precut everthing so she was really just place them on the right spot.  Lydia is really getting the idea behind the glue. They turned out adorable.

We used them to identify their eyes, nose and what sound they make which are already routine questions, but addittedly I was tickled when we popped one on her hand to play. I hadn't even thought of that.