Beach Art -- Crafty Sundays

 

Every summer we spend at least one week at Cape Cod. My parents live there and my family has a house that we rent out but we get a week at the house every year. We always try to have at least one beach day and sometimes walk on the beach in the evening. My favorite thing about walking the beach is picking up shells and rocks. I love finding the pieces of quahog shells which is what wampum is made from. We have a rock and shell collection. Some are found, some gifts and some bought. I took a combination of our collection from this year and past years and made some crafts. I started with one I was inspired by the Coastal Seashell Wreath over at Amy Latta Creations. I saw her creation last week on Facebook and fell in love with it. I headed over to Michaels and found the grapevine wreath and a wooden plaque for about $6 total. I also picked up some wooden framed shapes for my other project. They were 99 cents each. So I took our collection and created these fun pieces of beach art.

Hoops Hooray! -- a Crafty Sundays Review

Disclosure: Leisure Arts sent me a copy of this book in return for an honest review. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. The links are affiliate links where I will receive a small percentage of any purchases made through them at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting Crafty Moms Share!

Hoop art is extremely popular these days. It is so easy and fun to do too. I don't know if you ever caught any of the ones I featured in Crafty Weekends in the past. There have definitely been some creative and beautiful ideas shared! Today I am going to share a book with tutorials to make your own hoop art. It is Hoops Hooray! by Ashley Millhouse.

DIY Flower Wreath & Crafty Weekends Link Party

A few weeks ago I was in one of the craft stores and checked out the flower summer wreaths. I couldn't believe how expensive they were so I looked at supplies. I found this twig wreath and two flower stems on sale. Since our front door gets so much sun that hot glue melts, I used wire to secure the flowers. I cut the stems of the flowers and stuck the stems into the spaces in the wreath. Once I got the flowers arranged how I liked them, I wrapped the wire tightly around the stems and hid them with the flowers and leaves. I added a ribbon to hang it and now have the perfect wreath for my red door.

Bullseye Quilts -- a Crafty Weekends Review & Link Party

Disclosure: C&T Publishing sent me this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own! I will receive a small stipend for purchases made through the links in this post. Thank you for supporting Crafty Moms Share!

Tonight I am sharing a fun Bullseye Quilts from Vintage to Modern by Becky Goldsmith. Have you ever seen a bullseye quilt. They are amazing! This book makes it relatively easy to make one by using paper piecing.

Autumn Crafts with Dollar Tree Supplies -- a Crafty Weekends Craft and Link Party

Disclosure: I will receive a small percentage from any purchases made from the Dollar Tree links. All opinions are my own!

This week I am sharing some easy fall crafts with supplies from Dollar Tree. They had some cute autumn ribbons. I chose a plaid. I also got a burlap ribbon spool and one of the adorable fall owls. I also used a 10-inch Styrafoam wreath form. I wrapped it with burlap ribbon and used a pin to hold it. Then I tied a bow with the plaid ribbon and hot glued the owl and a decorative pick (I bought elsewhere) onto it. I attached a loop of twine as well to hang it. I am going to give it to my parents to hang on their door of their new condo.

Starfish and Sand Dollar Wreath for a Touch of Summer

 Disclosure: I was sent these craft items to review free of charge from Oriental Trading. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I added links to the particular products for your convenience, but not for any compensation.

So while at Cape Cod last week, Hazel and I were in one of our favorite shops and I saw a pretty wreath made with white starfish. It looked very simple. It was a chipboard wreath form painted white with white starfish glued all over it. I showed it to my mother and Hazel and said we could make that. The owner of the store even commented how he considered getting out his glue gun to make one. I think it was on sale for about $17 dollars. I remembered the wonderful starfish I had received from Oriental Trading and thought let's make one when we get home. 

Advent Week 2: Peace

Supplies

Yesterday was the second Sunday of Advent and we celebrate it as Peace. In Hazel's Advent calendar yesterday she opened to find a piece of white wool felt, white glitter clay and the word peace. I pulled out our dove cookie cutter to make these crafts. Since we had a bit of a crazy weekend, we have not finished them all, but did one this morning. We took the white felt, and I traced the cookie cutter in two pieces (the body and the wing). Then I attempted to write "Peace" on it, but it is not too clear. We glued the wing on and eventually will glue a ribbon on it.

For now we have put our Advent ornaments near the candles on the Advent wreath.

It helps remind us what each candle is for. We are planning on making a clay dove as well and I'm hoping to have Hazel try to "write" on it. We just have not had time yet to do this.

Hazel is loving the craft Advent calendar. She really is enjoying painting the wooden figures. We are a bit behind because of all the preparation I was doing at church for our Night in Bethlehem which went really well.  We still need to make our donkey ornament.

If you are looking for some other peace craft ideas or Advent craft ideas, check out Oriental Trading today and tomorrow they are running a special of free Shipping on Any Order PLUS a $10 eGift card with orders of $59 or more through 11:59 p.m. December 10, 2013 with the code FW50FS. (They have the same next Monday and Tuesday with the code FW51FW, and the 21st is the last day for ground shipping delivery by Christmas.)  Here is a search for Advent on their site. 

For Peace ornaments, they have the peace sign bag tag beaded craft (Steve does not like the peace sign, so we avoid it) and a peace sign ornament kit,  a foam peace ornament, inspirational jar craft (which includes "Christ is born" and "Joy to the world" as well as "Peace"), dove ornament kits (which include peace, love and joy) and I think my favorite is the Peace Prayer bracelet kit. If you want more ideas, you can also visit my Advent Pinterest Board.

For now, may Peace be with you and your family in this very busy season! If you are looking for more Advent ideas you can see our post on Hope last week and our Advent calendar post for this year.

Hope--First Week of Advent

So instead of a fairy tale today, I am going to share our plans for December and our first week of Advent theme which is hope. As I mentioned previously, this week is a bit crazy for me, so my schedule may be a bit off. I'm going to try to stick to it as much as possible, but my main focus is getting ready for our church's Night in Bethlehem. I will share more about that later on.

This December there is not a new author for the Virtual Book Club for Kids due to everyone's busy December schedule. Instead we thought we would promote our Jan Brett posts from last December. I shared Annie and the Wild Animals which is still a favorite in my house.

Source: By By Rei-artur pt en Rei-artur blog [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 
or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons

For Around the World in 12 Dishes this month we are "visiting" Jamaica! I am very excited about this. We will be focusing on Christmas in Jamaica since I volunteered to do Jamaica for the Multicultural Kid Blogs Christmas in Different Lands on December 23rd. I am really excited because I found someone in Jamaica to help me with recipes and things. She is from Saturday Market: Pieces of Jamaica. This will make the posts much more authentic since I have never been to Jamaica and the closest thing I have is a doll from Jamaica that my grandparents brought me back as a child.

Last night our church had its annual Advent Workshop. Above are the crafts that we made. There were others as well including the always popular wreath making. Now two of the crafts were provided by Oriental Trading since I reviewed them here. A third craft is from them as well, but Hazel made it a little backwards so the Bible scripture is on the back and the treble clef is backwards. We also made a "gingerbread" nativity from graham crackers and gingerbread people, an Advent wreath with a metal form and cut greens and a paper chain Advent calendar. On the chains are questions to ask each day.

Since yesterday's door on Hazel's Advent calendar had the supplies for the mini Advent wreath, today's had the word hope and then we made a hope ornament.

Our first discussion was what does hope mean. Hazel did not know so Steve and I explained it to her. We lit the candles in her mini wreath and our new Advent wreath last night and did the readings on it. We had made some beeswax rolled candles for our normal Advent wreath, but I decided to use the ones with the cut greens this year.

So that is our start of Advent. We also began reading Advent Storybook by Antonie Schneider last night. It contains 24 stories to read before Christmas. My goal this month is to focus on the true meaning of Christmas. I hope you will enjoy our journey.

Advent Calendar Round-Up

As I posted the other day, Advent is one of my favorite times. I have wonderful childhood memories of my Advent calendars as well as the Advent wreath on our dining room table. For my post on Advent wreaths visit here. However here is one that Hazel made this morning. It is made from a printable at First School.

A few years ago, my parents gave us this beautiful wooden Advent calendar for a Christmas gift. I absolutely love it and Hazel gets so excited to open a door. Last year I filled it with needle-felted nativity figures and this year we filled it with Nativity story stones.

Now when we were teenagers, my mother made my cousins an adorable quilted Advent calendar. I am hoping to make one at some point. I bought the fabric last year, but haven't gotten around to it. So sometime in the future I will make one. However there are many simple and creative ones that you can make that have been shared the past month or so on Sharing Saturday. Here are some of them.

First two I couldn't get pictures from:
From Life on the Gravelly Road has a wonderful homemade one with each card having a scripture reading and a fun activity.

From Mummy Mummy Mum! has a wonderful felt ornament tree Advent calendar.

Now for some that I could take pictures:

1) From Little Wonders' Day: Easy Door Advent Calendar
2) From Wesens-Art: Star Advent Calendar
3) From Making Boys Men: Magnetic Advent Calendar
4) From S.O.S. Mom: Advent Calendar
5) From Wesens-Art: Advent Calendar
6) From Living Montessori Now: 40+ Advent Activities Round-Up

A Few More...
Here is one from an Advent Workshop at our church last year:

For each of the 24 days before Christmas you glue on a holly leaf to make a wreath.

From Catholic Mom: 2012 Printable Advent Chain each day the chain has a kind activity for the child to do and the instructions suggest paper color to tie in the colors of Advent.

Do you have any more DYI Advent Calendar ideas? I would love for you to leave a link in the comments!! Or even better share at Sharing Saturday!

Advent Wreaths

Advent is one of my favorite times of the year. Advent in Western Christianity is the time to prepare oneself for the birth of Christ or for Christmas. It is a time I think we need to do less and spend more time with friends, family and God. However our society is one of making it all about the parties, the sales and the things that must be done and often one does not enjoy or prepare as well as we should.

In the church Advent starts the fourth Sunday before Christmas, December 25th. So Sunday is the first day of Advent. An Advent wreath is often used in churches as well as homes to help with the celebration of Advent. Each week a new candle is lit to represent different parts of the coming of Christ. The first candle is a purple one and is hope, the second also purple is peace, the third is pink and is for joy, and the fourth is purple and is for love. The candle in the middle is white and is for Christ. It is traditionally lit on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

Typically the Advent wreath is made with evergreens. I remember my mother always having one with greens. She actually had a pottery wreath holder that held water for the greens with holes for the greens around it and the four candle holders built in. I bought the metal one pictured above and do not add the greens since we do not have a real tree. However there are many simple ones you can make as well. For example, pictured below is an Advent wreath we made at church during the Advent Workshop a few years ago. It is a Styrofoam wreath wrapped in green crepe paper and then with fake greens and berries glued on and the candles just pushed into the wreath.

The evergreens symbolize everlasting life and the circle symbolizes God's love with no beginning and no ending. (Source) Purple of Advent represents penance in the church. (Source) The pink candle represents joy. The tradition of the pink or rose colored candle for the third Sunday comes from the Catholic Church when the Pope was known to give a rose at this mass to help break the solemn mood of Advent. (Source)

There are many crafts for children having to do with Advent and Advent wreaths. Here are a few I found.

• Advent Wreath Craft in two sizes from First School (See above)
• Coloring Pages of Advent Wreaths and Bible Stories from First School
• Advent Wreath Coloring page from Catholic Mom
• Advent Paper Chain (with different activities for each day in Advent for a child to do) from Catholic Mom (See links on the bottom of Resource List)
• An adorable paper hand print Advent Wreath from The Catholic Toolbox
• Loyola Press has a great  hand-out tutorial for a wreath as well as history, readings, etc.
• Activity Village has an activity wreath where you can color or print in color and add the candles each week.

Another favorite part of Advent is the Advent Calendar. I will share more about this tomorrow. The calendar starts on December 1st. Hazel opened hers today and got a Mary story stone. I have all the Nativity story stones in hers. I try to give her something to play with as we tell the story.

Patriotic Wreaths and Candles

As you know we have been working on decorations for our Fourth of July Barbeque. I need to extend an apology to all my readers who are not Americans--I know this may be getting boring for you. I'm hoping you can take some of these ideas and use them for your own parties with changes. This week we took some empty jars and Mod Podged some tissue paper on them. 

Hazel did one with squares of red, white and blue tissue paper (I added some sparkly ribbons to the top and bottom), and I helped her with one to look like fireworks. My idea was to have many colors on the underneath layer, but she only wanted to use pink. We did not have a navy or black piece of large tissue paper so I cut a firework design out of purple and Mod Podged it over hers. Then I added some glitter glue after it all dried.

I made a navy one with a white star. I covered the jar in white and then combined the purple and turquoise to make a navyish color and cut out stars and Mod Podged them over. I outlined the star with glitter glue. Then I covered a jar with white and added stripes of red sparkly ribbon. This was actually my second attempt. My first attempt of the red and white striped (with a bit of blue starred scrapbook paper) did not turn out as planned. Then I thought of the ribbons.

My first attempt

Then I spent Friday afternoon working on a couple of wreaths. You may remember the spring wreath I made for us and the red, white and blue one I made for friends. I'm going to make some red, white and blue pinwheels tonight to change ours over. 

In addition to that, I made one starting with a straw wreath. I hot glued red, white and blue silk flowers to it. (I bought all of the flowers on sale/clearance or at The Dollar Tree). Then I added some ribbon going across the center and hung some sparkly stars in the center. This is on our front door now.

For the next wreath, I started with a flat wreath made of cardboard or that other type of board. I can't think of the name of it right now. I wrapped some patriotic ribbon around it. I bought two rolls of the ribbon on sale at Michaels this week. Each roll had three yards and I needed the second roll. Then I wrapped some metallic star garland around it. It filled it in nicely. Since we have four doors I can decorate (three off the patio and our front door) I may make another one as well. I still have another straw wreath to work with. I'm thinking of just wrapping the "Let Freedom Ring" ribbon around it and tying a bow.

This is where I share...