Painted Oatmeal Containers

We eat a lot of oatmeal in my house. We have it hot in the winter, I make my own muesli for the warmer months, and we love oatmeal raisin cookies. The wonderful cardboard containers with plastic lids that the oatmeal comes in are begging to be turned into small storage units to be used in the kitchen or for whatever odds 'n ends that accumulate at your house.

The paper label easily strips off the oatmeal box. I layered on acrylic paint in comlimentary colors with small stiff brushes overlaying the colors. When dry, I added a shiny coat of water-based acrylic to strengthen the carboard and give it a polished look. Very easy and fun for the kids. I haven't quite decided on how I will use them, but I always enjoying being able to recycle material rather than throw it in the trash.

Wind Socks and Rain Sticks

We upcycled large Quaker Oats containers and the heavy tube that is inside of tin foil to make these projects with preschoolers. The oatmeal containers are actually windsocks. The skinnier tubes are rain sticks, or they will be once I add some dried beans and decorative tape to seal the ends. I love reusing materials instead of tossing them out. The containers are painted with tempera, and embellished with bits and bobs of ribbon, buttons and craft foam. Little children love to embellish!

Masks with Kids

Constructing with unusual materials is a way of thinking creatively about making a face. I assembled a collection of odds and ends to pick from including tassels, glass stones, buttons, pipe cleaners, clothes pins, and spools. The fun comes in when you move the objects around to create different facial expressions, a tilt of the eyebrow changes everything. The face is cut from cardboard and wooden dowels are attached at the end to make the mask hand-held. White glue is used to attach the objects.

Recycled "Flower" Water Bottles

 

I've seen some gorgeous photos of garlands made from transformed water bottles online and decided to try it with a group of children. It's best to use the lightest weight bottles that you can find so that they are easier to cut. I used scissors to cut off the bottom couple of inches. I cut the sides into strips to mimic flower petals. We tried painting some of the flowers with acrylic paint, but it prevented the light from shining through. Most of the bottles pictured are decorated with permanent markers. I had read that bottles could be joined together with a glue gun, but I was not successful in making them stick together. At first I couldn't figure out how to string them with straws between the flowers so that they stayed separated. I came up with the idea of stringing circles of heavy paper in between the straws and the bottle caps. You can see this in the photos.

 

 

If you can find a place to hang them with a good light source they cast beautiful reflections.

 

Make a Drum

I retrieved empty tomato cans from our favorite local Italian restaurant (Hampton Junction. They make a great Margarita pizza) to make my drum. The sides of the can are painted with acrylic paints that have been applied with a sponge roller. I made my own printing stamps by cutting out shapes from some leftover packaging foam and then gluing the foam to blocks of wood. The stamps were used to decorate the sids of the drum and the top that I cut from very heavy paper. Poster board would surely work. I attached the top with bongo ties that my husband had on hand. They're similar to rubber bands, but they have that little embellishment that is pictured. I was pleasantly surprised that the acrylic paint adheres so well to the tin.

Draw a Face, Make a Pillow

When my son went off to college we bought him a quilted mattress topper in an attempt to offset the discomfort of the dorm bed. Well, he's only a junior, but the stuffing in the mattress topper shifted and it no longer was able to serve its intended purpose. Nothing seems to wear today. I didn't want to just dump it in the trash, so the idea of making pillows with my five year old art class was born. I cut the mattress topper into sections, removed the stuffing and laundered the cover in hot water. I then sewed together three of the sides. I made the example pictured to show the children using permanent markers. We talked about how any face is made up of two shapes for the eyes, a shape for the nose and one for the mouth. Designing our pillow was not dissimilar from cutting a jack-o-lantern. We tried not to fixate on making the face look like anything in particular, so that there would be no worries about the outcome for the children who are not comfortable with their drawing skills. What they came up with was charming. We had a cat, a pig, a princess and some other wonderful characters that would be difficult to even classify. I brought them home to stuff and will miss seeing them lined up on my couch when I take them back to school.

Making your own Printing Stamps

To make these little stamps I took some of the textures that I used in my post about rubbings and glued them to scraps of wood. They're a nice comfortable size for a child's hand.

 

1. Rippled paper from a gift box

 

2. The material that onion bags are made from

 

3. Rolls of liners for drawers

 

4. cloth doily

 

5. plastic doily

 

6. strip of plastic from packaging

 

7. I honestly don't know what this is. I picked it up in the sewing section of a craft store. Maybe someone can tell me. Anyway, it's plastic.

 

Printing ink was rolled onto the surfaces with a brayer. This would probably be another good way to make wrapping paper.

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