Cowabunga Dudes

I've wanted to make slime for ages, but all the recipes I'd seen to make homemade slime seemed to involve borax.  Now I don't think I have a problem with borax, but I certainly do have a problem finding borax to buy.  Then a couple of days ago I came across this on pinterest.  The ingredients for "Bubble Dough" are cornflour and Washing Up liquid and they are things that are nearly always available in our house.  Almost immediately we had to have a go.

We actually had friends over when we started this and the kids decided to try and add some other materials to the mixture.  Other things included a little water, glue, and hand soap.  We still ended up with a silky smooth feeling slime.

We've made gloop before with cornflour and water.  That is weird stuff, you can shape it but it collapses immediately.  This stuff doesn't.  It collapses slowly and is less messy.

I think this would make an excellent slime for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Party.  Either as something they made at the party, or as little party favours of ready made stuff.

Talking of TMNT, here is a little artwork I did for my son this week.  I love a craft that only involves cutting out rectangles!

Heart Art

We have done some heart artwork over the years, some stuff I thought I would share.

I loved these layered cardboard hearts from A Little Learning For Two, and I thought we would have a go.  I traced around my heart cookie cutters, the inside and the outside to make 6 hearts.  Though I'm sure most people would just be able to create their own.  I also cut the hearts out of thick cardboard, as the kids were a couple of years younger.  However, if we re-do this project the kids will be tracing and cutting their own hearts onto thinner cardboard.

They picked their own colours.  My daughter wanted pink, so we used various shades between red and white.  It is slightly more obvious in real life than in this photo (but only just, I was a bit liberal with the red paint when we started!)

My son basically picked all the colours we had at the time!  I do love it though.

We also tried printing with toilet roll insides. My daughter wanted to create hearts, so we simply bent the toilet roll inside to look heart shaped.  I don't know how she managed to pick up enough paint to fill some of the hearts, but I like it.

This isn't our art I'll admit (how amazing would that be!), but pretty nonetheless.  It is the Red Arrows performing their heart formation.  You can just see them completing it at the bottom of the picture. 

I think this is one of my favourite crafts we have ever done.  DIY air drying clay , we have done it a couple of times, I like using the little cutters we have to create toppers for cards.  Here I just used the clay as it came, but it can be painted too.  If it is rolled thin it dries pretty quick, in about 24hrs.  Thicker stuff takes a while.  It is quite brittle, so I don't think I could make it into jewellery, but it is fine for cards.  

Here is another heart related card.  I still haven't sent this one, everytime I look at it I think of the Beatles.  I guess it is the colours.

So these were some of the heart projects we have done in the past.  I'll share some of things we've been doing recently soon.