February's Crafts

Sorry I've been quiet, since the New Year we've been pretty busy.
The sickness kicked in (I had thought we were going to get lucky because we hadn't had anything in the month of December). The sport kicked in, so there was just less time to craft and even less to post.

In the month of February, there was obviously Valentine's Day. Here is the one craft we did:

This was originally a Disney's Family Fun Magazine craft, but I we'd done it before and I used a few short cuts that really left me with just using their idea more than anything else. I cheated (saving myself hours of cutting) by using heart shaped stickers for the ears. I also thought it would be cute to add a small one for a nose which wasn't part of the original idea. I skipped out on the feet, also to save me from hours of cutting and just glued it straight to the cheese. These went with one of the twins.

KL looked through a magazine for ideas and decided on Valentine's themed whistles for her class.

The other twin brought these I had bought a pack of 30 (or so) twistable Crayola crayons on sale a while ago and they've just been sitting unopened because school provides an ample amount of already opened packages of crayons. So I figured that was a good way to get them used.

After Valentine's Day, we had a wax museum for the school, and KK was required to participate.
So she chose Cleopatra for her famous person, and I said sure, not thinking about the fact that I was going to have to make/buy a costume for her. But I think we pulled it off (especially since I didn't even buy the fabric until a week and a half before and took a break to print/make/supervise 4 year old signatures on Valentine's).
Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the full costume. I took a video of her speech from the night, but there's a few too many identifying markers so I'm a little uncomfortable posting it. So here's the pictures that I do have:

This was her necklace. This is a recent photo and it's been played with, so it's missing a few gems.
This was craft foam, spray painted gold, and then adorned with sticker gems, beaded strands, and metallic Sharpie in a few spots. Then we just hot glued a ribbon to each side to tie it on her neck.
(Kudos to the Orca for helping with the picture.)

The event is a fund raiser for her class so she needed a "bank" to collect the money paid to hear her speech. So we paper mached a pyramid and then we painted it gold.
And then there's her crown, we used craft foam and an embossing tool to press the snake shape, along with a few small red jewels for the eyes, and a few extra jewel stickers for the added riches emphasis.

Her outfit was a black dress (she liked the black costume ideas better than white- we look into buying a costume, but they looked cheap but cost a fortune). I actually made her dress (very simply)- I bought 8 feet of fabric, folded it in half long-wise and then width-wise, and then cut out the neck hole and the width needed for her body. Sewed the seams for the sides and so the extra fabric on the arms just draped, since most costumes come with a ribbon that almost looks like a train but attaches to the hands. I don't even know what it's called, but I think we made it work, it still made it look flowy and regal.
On top of that we spray painted a belt gold, so she could cinch the waist and break up the black and allowed it the extra to fall down.
And finished it off with a pair of sandals that laced up the leg (that I found on sale for $10).

We accessorized with a wrapping paper tube and card stock paper cut to the shape of an ankh, also spray painted gold. Tada, instant staff.

I think the cheapest costume I found (which didn't include as much as I had here) cost $40, and we ended up spending a total of $35.

We also made a paper mache snake because she needed a "prop". I used spray paint to make it green, she designed and painted it's markings. Then we added a quick felt tongue.

That's all for now,
Jo!