Monday, January 21, 2013

Winter Crafts


With Christmas behind us, we've shifted gears towards non-holiday-specific winter crafts.  My parents came to visit us right after Christmas and my mother helped Beatrice and me make these snow globes.

Snow globes lining the mantle

They are so easy to make: first we hot-glued a dozen little plastic animals (from the "North American Woodlands" Toob collection, featuring wolves, bears, elk, and otters, among other things) inside the lids of twelve glass canning jars.  Then we filled the jars with water, a drop of glycerin, and about a tablespoon of white glitter. 

(The glycerin makes the glitter fall more slowly, more like snow drifting.  One website I read recommended boiling the water first to make it clearer and we did that at first, but then I got impatient and switched to regular tap water, which seemed to work just as well.)


 
Then we just screwed on the lids and that's it! I was worried the glue seal wouldn't hold up to the water or the vigorous shaking, but so far, so goodIf you wanted to store them more easily, you could also dump out the water and refill them again next year.


We also gathered some pine cones when we went sledding and decorated them with gold glitter to make a centerpiece.




 
Beatrice and Arthur also enjoyed making snowmen with cotton balls, even if Arthur spent most of the time accidentally gluing the cotton balls to his fingers. Beatrice worked for more than an hour meticulously covering every inch of the card stock form with cotton.

 


Beatrice's finished snowman 

Now we're switching gears again and doing Valentine's crafts, starting with making cards for Beatrice's class this year.

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