April Project :: Ocean Bottles

Here we are at the end of April already!!!  Holy moly, this month has flown by for us in the Albright house!  With such a nice response to last months project, I thought I'd choose another simple, good for ALL ages, favorite of ours :: Ocean sensory bottles!  My kids love to make these, and we have done a couple different variations, but this is a classic.

:: Supplies::

• Clear bottles with lids (for the littles, I use plastic with screw tops, but the big boys like glass with cork tops)
• Sand 
• Water
• Food coloring (blue and/or green work best for the ocean variety)
• Glitter
• Pebbles, shells, small plastic fish or other "ocean" decor  
• Glue gun (not pictured)

:: Process ::

There are a couple of ways to do this, and no way is necessarily better.  It really depends on your kids.  Some kids like to dump things out of the bottle, just as much as they like putting them in.  If this is the case, put sand and glitter in the bottle at the END.  If not, I like to funnel the sand in in the beginning to weight it down a little.  So I will give you instructions on how we did it, but know you can do it differently and it will still turn out!

• Take a piece of paper and roll it in a funnel shape to pour sand and glitter into the bottle.  About an inch or two of sand and a sprinkling of glitter.
• Let children put "ocean decorations" in the bottle.  (this is technically a choking hazard for children under 3, so if you have a kiddo who tends to put things in their mouth, wait on this craft.  Watch all small kiddos carefully regardless.  Also, this is GREAT for fine motor skills!)
  
• Fill bottle with water, leaving about 1/2" at the top.
• Add food coloring.  Just a drop, or the water gets too dark to see the decorations!

  

  This picture is directly before a spill.... sometimes this project is a little messy!

• Using hot glue, glue the top on.  I used glue on the inside of the cap before screwing it on, and then sealed the cap with another layer of glue.  Food coloring STAINS!
• After the glue is cool and dry, let your kiddo enjoy their creation!

  

  (notice the PRETTY custom braided charm bracelet?  This lady is never without.  Every girl should have at least one, in my humble opinion!)

Like I said, easy peasy and beautiful!  We have made red ones with dinosaurs and volcanic rocks, and a few with "our favorite things in our favorite color water" plus LOTS of ocean varieties.  They are lots of fun!  Hope you all enjoy it as much as we do!  See you next month!  

xoxo Emily

March Project :: Primary Color Mixing & Tape Resist

Hello there!  Time for the March Pretty Project.  I decided that I would share one of our favorite art activities for this month.  We use varying versions of this almost every single month.  My kiddos love to paint and tape resist is fun for all five of them!  Just Google "tape resist projects" or do a search on Pinterest and you will find a plethora of ideas!  For this post, I will share what I did with my three youngest (ages 4 and 18 months) in detail, but I encourage everyone to use this idea and come up with their own version!  There are so many options!  Each time we do it, it turns out beautifully plus it is easy and fun!

:: SUPPLIES ::

• paper
• tape (painters tape is best, but masking tape works too)
• paint (I used primary colors + white)
• paintbrush
• scissors
• paper shape cutouts and glue or letter stickers (optional)

:: PROCESS ::

• Take a piece of blank paper and tape your design/stick on your stickers/lightly glue on a paper shape. 
•  This month I had my 4 year old choose what he wanted to create and he picked a K.  I cut the tape to make sure he had the right size pieces (or because I am a super control freak....) and let him put the "K" together.  For the twins, I used a tried and true favorite of mine, simple hearts.  When I use a paper shape vs a sticker or tape, I like to pre-prepare the page.  To do this I lightly glue the edges of the shape down (by lightly, I mean not much glue and I use semi permanent craft glue stick only on the edges), then I paint around the edges with white paint and let it dry thoroughly before my kids paint.  This creates a nice seal so the image comes off cleanly and doesn't move even with vigorous toddler painting!

• Choose paint colors!  
• For the purposes of this picture, I wanted my 4 year old to experiment with color mixing (this is always fun!).  We started with the three primary colors and white.  I let each child choose two colors (Dom only chose one, so I helped with the other because then we had a picture in every combination.....again with the controlling thing....  Looking back it might have been better to let him just use blue and mixed in white, but we can do that next time....)

Dom was ready to paint as soon as he saw me taping his paper down!  (I told you, we really love painting!) He is angry/frustrated the paint isn't coming out!  Don't worry, I put the camera down and helped a baby out!

• Let the painting commence!  Since we were experimenting with color mixing, I put the paint choices directly on the paper.  K was very careful to mix different proportions of colors to see what the outcome would be.  Once he found the color he liked (FIRE orange!), he painted the whole page!  The twins were just happy to paint!  Kurtis really took interest in how all the color combinations turned out, which I loved!  A had fun painting everything within reach and D was happy as long as I kept putting more paint on his page!

• Let the pictures dry and clean up! (Okay, you don't have to clean up right here, but I needed a reason to add the cute picture of the babies in the sink!)

• After the paint is completely dry, peel off the tape/stickers/paper shapes!  This is my older boys' favorite part!  Peel carefully, the paper can rip easily.  

• Enjoy your gorgeous works of art! (I have a heart picture as the "first masterpiece" for each of my children with their names and age at time of painting written on them as wonderful keepsakes)

FYI, If you don't want to do the prep work of a paper shape, it looks just as nice to glue a shape on after the painting, with half as much work.  Here is one K did the other day. (The dinosaurs are from my Silhouette Cameo, which is one of my favorite crafting tools EVER!)  Or you can use a reverse shape effect too, like the heart trees that were in the Valentine's Day craft collage from last month.

Happy March!  Happy Spring!  xoxo Emily

February Project :: Baked Cotton Ball Rainbows

Hello there!  Emily here, it's time for a February project post!  Hooray!

Jenny did such a perfect introduction for my last post, she is simply the best.  At the risk of getting overly wordy and sentimental, I'll keep it at that for now, but I have to say a public, "Thank You!"

Along with my love of celebrating, comes a natural love of holidays.  ALL holidays!  Like I have considered converting my children to different religions in order to celebrate MORE holidays!  (J/K, but I do make them learn about different cultures with the selfish intention of getting another holiday out of the deal!) With that being said, it KILLED me that I did not do a Valentine's Day craft in January!!  What was I thinking?!  Since I couldn't let it go, Jenny said I could do a quick collage of the Valentine's Day crafts we did this month.  That way you have some ideas for next year.  I am more than happy to share any of these with anyone who would like to recreate one (or all!!  Although I realize I am a little holiday crazy and don't expect anyone else to be!) .  I promise not to do this every month, but Valentine's Day is seriously one of my FAVORITES!!

1 :: tissue paper suncatchers :: 2 :: thumbprint heart sparkle trees :: 3 :: washi tape & craft stick frames with "I love you because..." pictures :: 4 :: Candy heart filled love jar :: 5 :: Our masterpiece wall with the babies' fingerpaint heart trees, K's dinosaur watercolor and snowman, D's Abe Lincoln and music hearts (both from school). :: 6 :: chalkboard heart jars, melted crayon hearts and another washi tape frame :: 7 :: Fingerpaint (and back end of a paintbrush!) heart tree

Okay, now I feel better and we can move on to the official February Craft :: Baked Cotton Ball RAINBOWS!

:: Supplies ::

• flour
• water
• 7 cups or bowls
• 7 forks or spoons
• food coloring or liquid watercolor
• foil
• cookie sheet
• cotton balls
• hammer or wooden mallet (not pictured because I forgot!)

 :: Process ::

• Pre-heat over to 300* 
• Cover one cookie sheet completely with foil for each child doing the project
• Mix equal parts flour and water (I used 1/2 C flour and 1/2 water) in each cup.
• Add food coloring or liquid watercolors to the cups to create the colors you would like (we made 6 for rainbow colors and left one white for clouds)
• Stir with forks or spoons until well mixed
• Dip, submerge or dunk cotton balls into the flour mixture one at a time. Remove using the same fork or spoon used to stir and place on foil.  The kids can use their hands, but food coloring tends to stain, so be careful if you choose to try it.  I left the placement fairly open-ended.  I told them to create a picture.

• Continue to dip cotton balls until your child has A. used all the mixture  B. is bored or C. has finished creating a rainbow or other picture of their choosing. Two of mine made rainbows (because I had said the name of the project was cotton ball RAINBOWS), one chose to make a "puke colored snake on candy balls".
• Carefully place their creations in the oven and bake for about 1 hour 15 minutes (longer if they thoroughly coated the cotton, less if they just dipped)

A was not feeling well this day, so the twins didn't participate, but she loves watching things bake!

• Remove the cotton balls from the oven and let cool.  This is where I made my kids observe the differences between what we put in the oven and what came out.  We had made predictions (they would melt, get smelly, shrink, get softer, change color, get hotter, EXPLODE!....) and now we got to see if the predictions were right (much to everyone's dismay, they did NOT explode).  My favorite observation was when V said they smelled like pizza crust, which they did!

D in his silly hat with his cotton ball rainbow!

Now for the fun part..... :)

• Let the kids smash the cotton balls!  My boys were a little disappointed that the balls didn't completely shatter (are you sensing a pattern of destruction here? hmmmm....) but even that didn't stop the fun, they had a BLAST!  There were constant exclamations of  "HULK SMASH!!" and the like.  There is something so satisfying about demolishing things, and this is a great/appropriate way to do it!

I hope everyone has had a fabulous February!  Can't wait until next month!

Since the twins didn't participate this month, I  thought I'd throw them in at the end, because EVERYONE wanted to see them, RIGHT?!

January Project :: snowy trees

Hello!! JL here!! Why in the world would I begin a post like that, you might wonder...well, because the PRETTYblog has a contributor now!

I told Emily that I'd do a little introduction. If you know me, and if you know Emily, you'd probably understand that there are approximately 1,876,937 words running through my head right now, a collage of memories & conversations flooding my brain. I cannot do her introduction justice and also expect you to read it. 

Instead, I will be at peace with simply telling you that this is another reason I've been so excited about blogging in 2015. Emily is one of the friends of my life. While she gets everything that is me, and embraces it, she makes up for my shortcomings (or lack of ambition in certain areas) by being her. I'm not the most festive, with her I'll participate (or even without her, just to make her proud). I don't celebrate winter, she builds snowmen, snow angels, sleds and might even encourage a snowball fight. I can't write in pretty bubbly letters, she can. I make tacos or pizza for dinner, she makes lots & lots of other stuff. I do few "crafts" with my kids, she does, mmm...very likely several a week. And should I do a "craft" with my kids, it would consist of having them cut out shapes from colored construction paper and then pasting the shapes onto another piece of paper. Hers? 

Well, let's get started then! Here's Emily and her kiddos...you're going to get to know them, and you will love them. It's impossible not to! And, do this craft with us!!! I'm excited to have the easy peasy instructions and, since I do, have committed to a kid craft/project once a month with my kiddos!! Tag your craft pics #PRETTYblogProjects on Instagram so we can see!!! See where else you can find Emily here, and express your love for her sharing her awesomeness and time with us in the comments!! XOXOX, JL

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When the temperature outside gets below 10*, we have to find fun activities to do inside! Please don't mind my half dressed/still in P.J.s children, on snow days we like to keep it very casual.  Plus, what's the sense in getting dressed when we are doing a semi-messy project?

Supplies:

• White paint (washable)
• Glue Stick
• Paintbrush and/or toothbrush
• scissors
• several shades of green construction paper
• blue or black construction paper
• brown construction paper
• cup or plate to put paint on
• squares of cardboard (optional)
• painters tape (optional) 
• drop cloth (optional)

Process:

• I like to give my kiddos a defined work space while we do projects.... Partly because I like defined work spaces, and partly because I have sooooo many children.  Tape down (or just give) each child a piece of blue or black paper, portrait style.
• Fold a piece of green paper in half (hotdog way) and show kids how to cut jagged edges to create a tree! (Make sure you cut on the folded side so you have a tree when you open it up) Do this with at least three pieces of green paper, try to make them varying heights.  

My older two (6 & 7) were able to do this entirely by themselves, the 4 year old needed assistance.

  I drew the tree first and he cut.

• Glue trees onto the dark paper.  If you want to add depth to the picture, glue cardboard squares to the back of the tree and then glue to the page.  One square is sufficient, but my kids like using lots :)

• Glue brown rectangles to the bottom of the trees for trunks.
• Prepare the white paint.  Due to my own neurosis (if you stick with me, you'll see how often these pop up!), I like to give each child their own portion of paint on a paper plate.  They get ONLY what is given.  I like to tell myself that this saves paint plus creates less mess and friction!
• Now for the fun part!  Splatter white paint all over the picture to create a 'snow' effect!

This process was messier than I anticipated, due mostly to the fact that my kids gave it their all!  Back swing got paint all over my wall, floor and window... I might try to do this outside if you have enthusiastic children, or put up a drop-cloth behind them.  Otherwise, just be prepared for extra mess!  My boys had fun hunting for and wiping up 'snow' when we were through.

• Let dry and bask in the beauty of the snowy landscape!

another plus to using painters tape to outline your project is when you are finished, you can simply peel off and let dry on a window where no small hands will touch/ruin/get messy!

On an additional note, since I have such a large age range to entertain, sometimes different activities are needed.  On this day, the twins (17 months) had a blast using crayons and painting with water! They felt included, and created their own beautiful works of art!  Plus, they really like using paintbrushes and water changes the color of construction paper so they get that gratifying sensation of painting without the mess!

Happy January everyone!