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Good morning friends. It's snowing outside of my window as I type and it's looking like it just might be a white Christmas indeed. Yippee! Which means, after the snowball fights and snowman building, it is the perfect time to come inside, sit snugly indoors and create with my Littles.
I don't know about you but this time of year often brings about a case of the sniffles. Which means we have have number of tissue boxes lying around the house. Well the Littles and I discovered just the thing to do with them. Make a little Christmas village, using glitter and duct tape of course! So that is just what we did.
To make the structure of the roof tops, we just cut up a few other tissue boxes (or any other discarded cereal box, etc.) and created the roof shapes atop the tissue boxes. We then proceeded to cover them with the duct tape and then had lots of fun decorating them!
We were so excited to find this gold and silver glitter tape, from Martha Stewart, at Michaels, and knew right away that it needed to be used in our little village. I love how it makes the shingles sparkle and come to life (and an extra bonus - it's really easy to cut).
I also played around with our hole punch a bit and was able to create polka dots with the gold duct tape by spreading out the tape onto parchment paper prior to punching. With a little finesse, they turned out great! (In fact we have updated our duct tape cutting methods altogether. If you lay it out on the parchment, you can get a really nice clean cut with scissors and create just about any shape your heart desires! Best thing about it: the Littles can be more involved in the cutting stage now! Yippee! I'll have to do a tutorial of this new cutting method on the blog soon).
And our little vintage wooden angel is just the perfect friend to inhabit our little village. Makes me want to create a few more wooden friends for her to carol to.
And how cute would it be to cut out the window and door shapes and then add a few battery operated tea lights or even a strand of white Christmas lights on the inside? I just might have to do this variation in the next day or so. Would be so magical indeed!
My friend Meta, of One More Mushroom, recently threw her son the cutest super hero party. She had this idea for a darling super hero photo booth, and she asked me if I would help by creating cereal box/duct tape buildings to imply a cityscape of sorts for the little vigilantes to fly over. Being a big lover of re-purposing discarded goods with duct tape, we of course said yes! We created four buildings, each with a different bright popping color and then adorned them all with black tape, adding just a few pops of contrasting color here and there. And I just love how they look with little masked crusaders flying over them. Head over to One More Mushroom, and Babyccino kids, for more great photos of the party and to learn how to set up the rest of the photo both.
My friend, Susan, of Freshly Picked, also created a great leather mask craft for the super hero's to paint and decorate. Take a look at how you can make your own here on her guest post for Martha Stewart!
Photos by Ashley Thalman
Have you had a chance to peruse the November issue of Family Fun that recently hit the news stands? If so you might have seen our Tea Box Circus Train in it! A couple of months ago Family Fun asked us to share our circus train idea with their readers and we were thrilled. Have you made one yet? It's really a load of fun. Could be a fun Christmas craft for around the bottom of the tree, yes? Which could carry a few little gifts for good girls and boys. So many fun ideas!!
If you are looking for the perfect trick-or-treat candy bucket, but you don't want to spend a lot (or if you are like me and don't want to bother going out to the stores only to find that what you're looking for just doesn't exist)...we've got just the thing for you! A Do-it-Yourself bat (or pumpkin) treat bucket from a tin can, adorned with cardboard wings and duct tape!
To make these candy buckets, simply gather together a number of household materials, such as:
- a tin can (paint cans work great as they already have a handle in them)
- a wire coat hanger and pliers (if you don't already have a handle)
- an assortment of festive duct tape colors
- an X-acto knife and self healing mat (see tips for cutting duct tape here)
- cardboard (for the wings if you are making the bat)
Start by punching holes for the handle into the sides of the can with a hammer and an awl (or use a drill). You can then bend and trim the coat hanger until you are happy with the size and shape for your handle. Don't place the handle into the holes just yet, though. I would wait to do this at the end once the tin is already covered in tape.
Once the holes are punched, you can begin covering your tin with duct tape. For the bat I covered it completely with black and created the face, and other decorative elements, with colorful tape. I even did a few rows of corresponding tape within the bucket to make things pop a bit. It's important that you have a good layer of tape folded over the top of the bucket so that no sharp edges are exposed. You can also cover the holes you previous made in the tin can and then puncture the tape where the holes are. This helps to cover any sharp edges that holes might have created as well. I then added a few bat ears by taping together pieces of black tape and then cut out triangle shapes which were then taped to the inside
of the bucket.
Once you have finished decorating your tin, you are ready to put your handle on. You might want to wrap a few layers of duct tape to the top of the handle to make it that much easier for little hands to hold throughout their night of tricks and treats.
For the bat wings, simply download this bat wing template and trace it two times onto cardboard (or a cereal box, etc.).
Cut the wings out of the cardboard and then cover with duct tape. Fold the wing over (at the dotted line) and tape securely to you bucket.
But don't let the fun stop there! You can continue to create an assortment of other haunted treat containers for your home or to give away as ghoulish gifts. Have fun raiding your pantry for a variety of cylinders. We made this little pumpkin guy out of an old discarded chow mein noodle package and we've become quite fond of him (not to mention the goodies he now holds inside!).
Now that your trick-or-treat buckets are complete, your little ones are ready for a spooky night out on the town! And my favorite thing about these treat containers is that they are mighty durable and, if treated well, should hold up for at least a few years. (To store, simply remove the wings and lie them flat. Any nicks and scratches can easily be repaired with a new "coat" of duct tape). And little O's favorite thing about these buckets? Well the candy they hold of course!!
 I trust all US readers had an excellent 4th of July. Ours was hot, hot, hot! We spent most of the day in my parents pool (here in Colorado - where the fires are finally starting to calm down and be contained. Hopefully no new ones will pop up!). We had a great time though.
And if you are looking for a new, fun and super easy (not to mention practically free!) craft for your little ones to do (perhaps indoors while avoiding the hot summer heat), look no further than our fun little paint chip animal friends. Head over the Handmade Charlotte for the full DIY.
 I know your little ones will love these new little animal amigos just as much as mine did! I think we'll be sharing this fun craft with all of our cousins later today. Perhaps that will give us moms some time to sit, sew and chat together.
 Enjoy!
 OK friends, I've finally got everything together to share with you our latest cardboard + duct tape creative adventure (which is the perfect weekend project for you and your Littles). Presenting...our Interlocking Cardboard Play Castle! We are having SO much fun with this, you wouldn't even believe it. In fact I think I've found just thing to get me more engaged and on the floor playing with my Littles in their world. I'm not usually one to sit down and "play" with my kids. I typically help to facilitate their play and then let them go at it. But with this castle...well I've been down on my hands and knees playing castle right alongside them (and I forgot how fun delving into accents can be..).
 Well I have to confess, I got a little obsessed with this one. It was SO much fun to make.
Once I finally figured out how to cut and handle duct tape, well I couldn't wait to try my hand at something a little more involved.
To begin, I used sturdy cardboard (taken from an old Baby Lock sewing machine box) to cut out the basic interlocking shapes of my castle. I decided to go with a 10"x10" squares for each portion of each wall (so a 20" long sheet of board all together) and then added a mix of castle-like rooftop structures up top.
 I then cut out door frames from each wall, making sure they were large enough for the Littles play things (namely Playmobil characters) to fit in and out of.
And now comes the fun part...decorating the castle walls with brightly colored duct tape! (I should get them to sponsor these posts, don't you think? I mean I'm only singing their praises like, every other minute...:)) The only hard part in decorating the castle was deciding on what to leave out, as there are so many directions you could take this.
 In the end I decided to keep it fun and graphic and not too specific as
to what you would do in what room (but you could always go more literal by having more
obvious interior and exterior rooms, etc. for yours if you like).  I did add a few small elements to some "rooms" such as a tree to suggest the outdoors and small table with a tulip for an indoor room (hey, even strong warriors need a calm place of respite after a long journey or a fierce battle, right?). I also added flags to some of the rooftops by simply wrapping duct tape around a tooth pick and then cutting it down to the desired shape. From there I just pushed the tooth pick into the top of the cardboard (I might however decide to hot glue them in later for greater permanence).
If you want to have your Littles help with this process, adding the
details/decals is a great way to do it. Just be sure that you are doing the cutting and then you can hand the decal over to them and have them
place it on (and depending on their age you might want to help them with this. A would get really frustrated whenever an item folded over onto itself and he couldn't take it apart). You can also bring them in on the design process. They'll love letting you know just what they have in mind for their castle.
And if you are interested in creating an interlocking castle yourself, and want to follow the basic shape of mine, I have created some templates for you to use. Just print them out and use them as patterns to trace onto your thick cardboard (or foam core works really well too).
 These templates are created as an 18"x24" document so that you can print them in their entirety. I would suggest saving the files out to a thumb drive and then taking them to your local copy store and have them print them on large sheets of paper there. Click on the pictures above to download each section of the castle.
 Now that you are done decorating your castle, it's time to assemble it by lining up the center notches and pushing the top one down (be careful not to un-stick all of your duct tape "siding" in this process. I might suggest scoring the duct tape a bit where the two boards interlock so that this doesn't happen). Now it's time to gather together your little ones toys and figurines and let the play begin! Oh and you can invite the Littles to join you if you so wish.
 And what fun you will all have exploring all your many rooms! (which can actually change by the way, depending on how you assemble the boards together at different times).
 I also love just how portable and rather study this little castle is (that's the great thing about duct tape, it's sort of indestructible). Just bring it over to the kitchen table while your making dinner and your Littles will be entertained for a good long while.
 And if you make one of these, I really really would LOVE to see what you do with it. I'm just so excited about the many possibilities for this little castle and I have a feeling that your touch is just what it needs to take it to the next level of magic. So don't forget to email me and share!
Happy Weekend Friends! I'm off tomorrow to hear A perform his songs he's been practicing for Kindergarten graduation. I'm pretty sure it's bound to be just about the most adorable thing ever. And then next week we have a field day, a Teddy Bear picnic and more. Oh how I love the last few days of school and the beginning of summer!
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It's been so hot lately and we needed a kids craft that allowed us to get wet, wet wet! This river raft, made from duct tape, card board and water bottles, was just the thing. Head on over to 
And for more duct tape fun, take a look at some of my previous projects. Any of them would make a great weekend craft for you and your Littles!
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