Pet rocks

Last year, while the weather was warm we collected some smooth "face shaped" rocks from the great outdoors.

Materials:

• small, smooth rocks
• poster paint, markers, googly eyes, fabric bits, glitter, glue, yarn, feathers
  

Instructions:

• let your imagination run wild and decorate at will!

Notes:

• yarn makes great hair
• feathers can make for fun bird rocks

Salt-dough ornaments

We used this recipe for the salt-dough, with the following modifcations:

Ingredients:

• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup salt
• 1 1/2 cups water [water should be hot or warm]
  

Be sure to read all of the comments in the original recipe. There are terrific ideas about adding spices and observations about baking time. We made WAY MORE than one dozen ornaments.

Materials:

• salt-dough (recipe above)
  
• rolling pin
  
• extra flour
• cookie cutters
• spatula
  
• cookie sheets
• cooling rack
  
• poster paint, markers, googly eyes, fabric bits, glitter, glue, yarn
• shellac or polyurethane
  
• ribbon / thread
  

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C).
   
   
2. Combine the flour, salt and water; mix well and knead for 10 minutes. With a lightly floured rolling pin, roll out on a lightly floured surface.
   
   Note: The oranments above are about 1.2cm (3/8") thick, which took A LOT LONGER to bake / dry then the instructions in the original recipe state. Next time we're going to make them much thinner!
   
   
3. With lightly floured cookie cutters cut into desired shapes and make holes for hanging.
   
   Note: If you want the final product to have smoothed edges and rounded corners, do this BEFORE you bake. Dough does not reshape as when baking cookies for eating.
   
   
4. For candy cane shown above, roll out a thin dough "string" between your hands. At about the half-way point begin to twist the two "strings" around each other. Shape into a hook / candy cane.
   
   
5. Bake for 30 minutes.
   
   Note: Keep checking on the progress. Ours were in for well over an hour before they were considered done.
   
   
6. Place on rack to cool.
   
   
7. Decorate with paints or markers.
   
   
8. Allow to dry and spray with clear polyurethane or shellac on both sides to preserve. Allow to dry.
   
   Note: If the shellac or polyurethane cover is not complete, moisture will get into the dough and the ornament will fall apart. If you wish to keep the ornaments for a long time, you may need to recoat them with polyurethane or shellac every year.
   
   
9. Using glue if required, add stickers, googly eyes, fabric bits or yarn for hair.
   
   
10. Use ribbon or thread to hang.

Gift idea: pop-up colouring card for kids

(This post assumes you're familiar with my more detailed instructions of how to make Horizontal Fold Pop-up cards.)

Recently, Ask Moxie had a post titled "Q&A: Does 'no gifts' really mean no gifts?" Should you feel uncomfortable going completely empty-handed, making a personalized colouring card like this (optionally including a selection of appropriately themed stickers) is a nice compromise.

Materials:

• 2 sheets of 8.5" x 11" cardstock or construction paper
• X-Acto type knife
• glue (stick-glue or white glue or rubber-cement)
• template with measurements (PDF file*) or template without measurements (PDF file*) (use this legend to decipher the folding symbols)
• optional: a selection of stickers to include in the card for the child to use
  

Instructions:

• create the front cover of the card (text on the lower half of the letter sized cardstock)
  
  
  
• create the inside of the card (text on the upper half of the letter sized cardstock, offset to allow for the pop-up mechanism)
  
  
  
• create the decoration for the pop-up portion of the card (in this case, the recipient is turning four)
  
  
  
• print off a copy of the inner template
  
  
  
• I transferred the template onto the inside of the card using the pinpoint method
• trim the pop-up decoration to size
  
  
  
• create the pop-up portion following steps three and four from making Horizontal Fold Pop-up cards
  
  
  
• glue the decoration onto the pop-up portion of the inside of the card
  b
  
  
• if desired, add additional designs to be coloured on the front of the card
  
  
  
• glue the inside of the card into the outside of the card
• optional: include a selection of stickers for the child to use to decorate the card

Write your message to the birthday child and deliver!

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(*) When printing out PDF documents, be sure to set "Page Scaling" to "none" (you'll want the document to print at 100%). You may need to adjust the template on your paper depending on your printer's "offset" settings.