Tiny Peasant

Tag: natural crafts

  • Felted Ball Garland

    Felted Ball Garland

    Wet felting is such a simple and warm activity – it’s a great one to set out any time of the year, but particularly in cold weather, when you’re in a pinch and need a quick to prepare craft, or a calming activity. Before stringing on the balls, you can even take some time to work on patterns as you figure out which one is right for you.

    For Valentine’s Day, we worked on felted balls and made a small garland. This same thing can be done for birthday parties, home decor, jewellery, and more.

    A few other felting projects we’ve made include felted balls for our hand-crafted sling shot, and felted stones + soap.

    Here’s what we did for the garland… even our kitty, Luz, enjoyed it. I untangled this thing so, so many times.

    valentine's day supplies

    MATERIALS

    :: wool roving in desired colours

    :: warm water

    :: biodegradable dish soap

    :: towels for cleaning up spills

    :: optional: a story or audio story to listen to while felting as it is, well, a process!

    felted balls

    INSTRUCTIONS

    1. Pour warm water into a pot or large bowl, set on top of a towel.

    2. Add dish soap to the water. Keep the soap handy as you may need to add more as you go.

    3. Take a piece of roving the size of a large egg and wrap it up into a ball.

    4. Dip it in the warm, soapy water and give it a squeeze.

    5. Roll the wet, soapy roving in the palms of your hands as though you’re making a ball type cookie.

    6. Now and then, dip the ball back into the water – as you work the roving, it should be sudsy.

    7. Once the ball is fairly small and firm, and there aren’t strands of roving still unattached, you can set it aside to dry and start a new one.

    8. Repeat until you have your desired number of felted balls! Have fun!

    tiny peasant felted garlandtiny peasant luz lovefelted ball garland luztiny peasant felted garland hanging  tiny peasant felted garland hanging3 

    TO MAKE A GARLAND

    Simply choose a string and using a fairly large needle (has to be sharp – children’s needles didn’t work for us on this one), thread the balls onto the string in any pattern you like!

    Looking for Valentine’s Day inspiration? Check out our Pink Valentine’s Tea!

    Screen Shot 2015-01-22 at 12.57.37 AM

    FREE Valentine Tags for tea, jam & honey:

    Spread-the-Love

    Don’t miss our Farm Fresh Valentine’s Cards – A set of three printable cards to print and paint or colour. Great for food & nature lovers of all ages.

    valentine's cards - 2014 sneak peek Tiny Peasant Valentine Dandy Tiny Peasant Valentine Jar

     

    This post was shared as a part of Montessori Monday,  Thank Goodness It’s Monday, and Hip Homeschool Moms, and

     

     

     

    Tags: , , 

    Leave a reply

    Fields marked with * are required

    Logged in as kris. Log out »

     

     

  • Advent Week 2 Activity :: Plant Based Decorations

    Advent Week 2 Activity :: Plant Based Decorations

    If you are following along with the Advent series, you can get to the original post here, and the Week 2 post here.

     

    While I’m not a big fan of crafts made out of food, I do love the simplicity of popcorn garlands. We love to mix popcorn and cranberries and then rather than hanging the garland on our tree indoors, we hang them outside as a gift to the animals in our neighbourhood.

    Materials:

    • popcorn
    • fresh cranberries
    • thread
    • needles
    • scissors

    Just thread the needles with quite a long thread and tie at the end. Thread the popcorn and cranberries on – a fun way for little ones to practice making patterns! These photos are from last year’s garland making adventure.

    cran pop making

    For another plant based garland idea, gather a basket of pine cones, small sticks, seed heads, seed pods, etc. and thread them with a needle or tie them onto twine. For the third week of Advent, the light of animals, I have a basket of feathers ready to go that might work their way onto a garland or two, or another decoration depending on what the kids dream up. Yesterday, a friend of ours set up a fun craft to paint pine cones with glitter paint – these are beautiful and would make a lovely garland or Christmas tree decoration.

    glitter pine cones

    Other ideas – dip the bottoms of the pine cones in non-toxic paint to coordinate with your Christmas decorations or home, or, try this gorgeous and warm idea to wrap pinecones in yarn (idea and photo from Teal & Lime). This might be happening over here this week, as it’s just too good to pass up – a trip to our local wool shop is in order as I think our stash is low! I’m seeing deep red, teal green, grey, mustard yellow…

    Does your family craft any natural decorations over the holidays? Share about them in the comments!

    yarn-wrapped-pinecone-garland-on-banister

     

    This post has been shared as a part of Simple Lives Thursday and Montessori Monday.

  • Egg Carton Nature Collections

    Egg Carton Nature Collections

    Several years ago when we started taking regular nature walks, I found this activity online. The whole family will go for a walk and try to find natural items to fill in each section of the egg carton. The photo above shows what the kids found this week on one of their walks, just in our own neighbourhood. I was surprised at how much colour is still out there this far into fall, when we’ve already had snow. If we took the carton out on one of our forest adventures, the findings would be quite different -fewer domestic flowers, but likely more wild berries, seeds, and things like prickly wild cucumbers!

    To make your own egg carton nature collection, simply paint or colour in each section of the carton in a different colour. Enjoy your walk as usual, and look for flowers, leaves, stones, seeds, sticks, and other items to fill in the sections.

    If you don’t already have a nature table, you can use your egg carton as a mini nature collection to display somewhere special.

    egg carton colours

     

     

    This post was shared as a part of Montessori Monday at Living Montessori Now.