Still Life Collage

Fun tearing magazine pages and gluing them to make a still life composition.

Christmas Cookie Jar

You can use cookie jar to store your cookies, or you can make a table decoration.

You will need cookie jars, and Christmas decorations and figurines.

You can use your creativity to assemble all parts inside the jar.

If you do not have or do not want to use a cookie jar,
you can use different glass vases or containers.

You can also give your creations as gifts for Holiday Season.

Have fun creating.

Earring Holder Art

Do you have a lot of earrings and no place to store them?

You can make your own earring holder.

You just need small canvas and paint, I used acrylic non-toxic paint.

Paint any picture you like.  If you do not like to paint, you can buy already painted canvas.

Punch tiny holes and put your earrings in.

Hang on the wall.

Easy to see what you would like to wear today.

And it makes a nice art as well.

Easter Eggs - Natural Dyes

You can buy variety of products to decorate your Easter Eggs.

I am  going to show you how to do it using what you can find in your kitchen.

My friend told me she is using herbs wrapped around the egg to make a pattern, and beets and their peels to colour them light red.

In my family we always used onion peels to colour the eggs brownish red.

I used both beets and onion peels, parsley leaves and grass.

I also used old stocking and some string. I wrapped the pieces of stocking tightly around the egg with the herb inside.

I placed the eggs in the pots with beets and onion peels. I poured water and made sure eggs are covered with the peels. When the water started to boil, I lowered the heat and boiled for 10 minutes.

Here is the egg from the pot with onion peels.

 The beets did not work for me very well.

The eggs got only tinge of grey, it still looks interesting.  

When I saw the eggs did not get strong colour I only left one and I put the other three to the pot with onion peels and boiled for additional 5 minutes.
After you remove the eggs from pots put the eggs under cold water and unwrap the pieces of stocking.
Dry the eggs and apply a bit of butter to make them shiny.

Since there was no chemicals used, it is safe to eat the eggs, or use them in a salad.

Woven Cup

To make a woven cup or a little basket you will need:

- plastic cup or recycled plastic container,

- yarn in different colours,

- scissors.

Cut the sides of the plastic cup or container into odd number of strips.

Make a knot at the end of the yarn and insert between two of the strips, start wrapping the yarn in and out.

To change colour tie up the second colour at the end of the yarn, and keep on weaving.

You can use the finished cup to hold pens and pencils.

To weave a little basket, follow the same steps, to make a body of the basket.

Use pipe cleaners to make a handle.

Add some extra decorations.

Have fun.

Table Centerpiece

When we visited Chako Japanese Buffet, in a waiting area there was a big vase filled with water and pebbles, and sitting on the pebbles was a big flower.

This gave me an idea for a much smaller table centerpiece, anyone can create in their own home.

You will need a glass bowl, some glass balls, or marbles and an artificial flower.

Use glue gun to glue some glass balls underneath the flower, otherwise the flower will float instead of sitting on the bottom.

Fill the glass bowl with balls, put the flower on top, and fill the bowl with water.

It makes a very nice centerpiece, and you can choose any colour and type of flower, different vase, glass balls of different colour.

Have fun creating your own table centerpiece.

See two more variations:

Leafy Compositions

Perfect time of the year to play with dry leaves.  Press them over night between pages of a book and create a "leafy" art.  Fun for kids and adults.

Autumn Thistle In Art

How To Make Tangram Puzzle

About Tangram Puzzle.

To make your own tangram puzzle you will need:  pair of scissors, cutting knife, square piece of cardboard (up to you how big you want it, though 4"x4" would be easier for you to measure), graph paper (optional), pen or pencil, and ruler.

You can use graph paper to make it easier to draw the lines to cut, or you can draw the lines directly on your cardboard.

How to draw the lines:

1. draw diagonal to get two big triangles 2. draw line connecting middle points of the sides of one of the triangles 3. draw another diagonal, but stop at the little triangle hypotenuse 4. draw line parallel to diagonal to create little square 5. draw line parallel to the side to create parallelogram.  You are done.  Now you can cut on the lines. 

You can color your tans.

Now you are ready to play.  Have fun.