Stained Glass Butterfly Crowns

Head on over to the CBC parents site to see how to make your own 

stained glass butterfly crown!

What a great craft to do to celebrate summers end.

(time to fit in all that last minute summer crafting)

Enjoy every last morsel of sun, summer and fun!

Spring Blossom Popsicles

 Nothing is better than an icy-cold, sweet popsicle on a hot day... especially when it happens to have lovely little flowers frozen in it! 

So many of the glorious spring blossoms are edible. What a treat! We thought we would put them to good use and make some spring blossom popsicles, or as we like to call them... flowersicles!

To make:
we gathered up some edible blossoms.

Sunny dandelions and wee strawberry flowers.

Fragrant and delicate apple blossoms.

Loved this part, especially the sweet scents of these beauties. 

We thought some pink lemonade might be just the right base for these flowersicles.

We placed our blossoms into the bottom of our popsicle molds and filled them halfway with lemonade. The flowers tend to float to the top, so we froze them half full and then added more blossoms and topped them off with lemonade.

Aren't the results lovely?!

Thinking these might just be a new favorite around here.

Yummy and beautiful. A winning combination.

 Looking forward to trying some new flower and flavor combinations as summer rolls in. 

In a bit of blossom heaven, 

Pressed Flower Mobile

With flowers beginning to bloom all around... here is a sweet simple craft you can do to preserve them and enjoy them for years to come!

To create you will need:

1 cup baking soda

1/2 cup corn starch

3/4 cup of warm water

rolling pin

round cookie cutter or cup for cutting your clay circles

pressed flowers

mod podge (we used outdoor so we could hang it outdoors)

paint brush

fishing line

embroidery hoop

To begin

Follow this tutorial to make the white clay. 

Cut out your clay with a cup or a round cookie cutter and poke a hole where your string can slip through to hang.

Bake at 100 degrees C for an hour. 

Once it is cooled you are ready for the fun part!

Gather up your pressed flowers, leaves, ferns...

Apply a layer of mod podge to the clay and then place your pressed flower on top.

Gently apply another layer of mod podge. 

They will remain a little milky looking, but leave them to dry overnight and you will be happy to see it dries beautifully.

Once they dry completely, you can flip them over and repeat the process on the other side.

 Lovely little flower gems!

To make the mobile:

Take two pieces of string (or we used raffia), fold them in half together and knot a loop.

Measure equally across the embroidery hoop and mark at the four compass points (NESW).

Tie the string on at the four points. 

Ready to add your flower gems!

Tie on your clay flowers with the fishing line at varying lengths.

Hang and enjoy!

Loved how pretty they were spinning in the sunlight. 

If you happen to have a wind chime around... tie it on!

Somehow it just seems to give the mobile that extra magic.

This can make a great gift for any flower lover in your life. I was inspired to create this for my Mum for Mother's Day. It now it twirls its flower faces for her daily and hopefully when the chime tinkles in her backyard, she is continually reminded of her how much I love her.

Have fun playing with flowers!

Butterfly Peg People

Okay…here's my confession…I enjoy my craft time as much with my kiddies as without…

today while they were gone I pulled out the peg dolls and decided to play!  

Inspired by Spring and the promise of butterflies, 

(and a prayer that there are more in our yard this year than last), 

here's a little something I whipped up…

To make your own you will need:

wooden peg blanks

paint & paintbrushes

(whatever colours you wish)

wool felt in matching colours to your paint

glue gun and glue sticks

white wire

small beads

healthy dose of imagination and wonder

Line up your pegs…talk to them…see the butterfly emerging from within!

(I buy all my pegs from STOCKADE…they're a Canadian company and have great prices)

To begin paint your peg bodies and hair…this is how I did mine…

Next paint on your eyes, (toothpicks are great for making little dots)…

then a bit of beeswax crayon for the cheeks…

you can decorate with paint however you wish here…

I strongly encourage imagination!

Cut out your wings…I recommend using wool felt…

(cheap felt is fine too, but wool felt lasts longer, is more durable and SO lovely to work with)

If you don't feel up to the task of making up your own template, google "butterfly wing templates"

there are loads already all done for you!

Using a glue gun, glue on your wings...

Then I made them some headbands and glued on some antennae…

the antennae is composed of white wire with beads glued to the end…

the headbands are skinny rectangles of wool felt…glue the antenna to the back

of your headband, then glue the headband onto the head.

The inspiration for the little headbands came from the marvellous 

Mrs Bloom at We Bloom Here.

She has a book all about making peg dolls

which can be purchased HERE

(her creations and imagination just inspire me to no end)

End of Summer Angel

Summer is quickly coming to an end.  To celebrate the end of a glorious summer we decided to make a little summer angel. 

If you'd like to make one of your own you will need:

raffia

glue gun and glue sticks

seed pod, (for head)

flowers (for hat)

leaves (for wings)

dried flowers (for her bouquet)

To start take about 8 strands of raffia, (about 12 inches long), and tie them in the middle.  Take this and bend it in half and tie it again about 1 inch from the top.  This is your body.

Then take 8 more strand of raffia, (this time about 6 inches long), and tie in the middle, and about 1 inch from both ends.  These will be your arms and hands.

Taking your glue gun, attach the arms to the back of the body.

Then glue on the seed pod head, and a flower hat (if you desire).  Add the wings, (leaves), and your bouquet of dried flowers which you can glue between the hands.

And there you go!  A sweet little angel who will help celebrate these last precious days of summer!

Enjoy these final summer days!

xo maureen

Nature Inspired Fairy Party!

Creating a Fairy Party That Embraces  Simplicity and Beauty ( and doesn't bite a hole in your wallet!)

Birthday parties are wonderful fun yet they can easily spill over into too much ~ too much work, too much junk, too much pressure. So my goal in creating this party was to use what we had on hand and embrace a simple way to celebrate in style! 

For my Luna's eighth birthday she decided she wanted a flower fairy party.  I knew between working full time and wanting to really enjoy the day of the party, I needed to find easy, nature inspired ways to bring this party to life!

So we made a plan...

First she made her party list of a few friends and her cousins...

She  created some simple birch bark invitations to offer out ~ giving them all the needed information ...like please wear wings if you have them (if not we have extra) and potluck fairy food snacks (shared food is the way to go in keeping things simple!)

This was all mainly her project and she was happy to have it that way ~ she loved collecting, cutting and creating these invites...

She crafted away ~ creating  a little pine cone fairy and a maple key dragonfly to give to each of her friends  and placed them in these satin flower bags...

We then decided every fairy needs to be crowned!

So we collected our supplies ~ raffia and paper flowers...

We braided the raffia (a great way for girls to practice their braiding) and then took the paper flowers (that had wire attached) and wrapped the wire  flowers into each braided band. I also collected a big bouquet of  flowers on the day of with the intention that each girl could fill her wreath with some fresh flowers too!

Where would a fairy be without a wand to sparkle her magic all around?! 

We created our fairy wands with these lovely"wands" I found made of dyed seedpods.

Feeling they needed a personal touch we added sage and curly grass from our back yard and tied it all on with ribbons of raffia.

When the celebration day came ~  we crowned each these beautiful fairies and offered them their magical fairy wands...

Our plan was to spend to whole day at Luna's favorite spot, crooked slide park. A hidden gem in our valley that has beautiful falls, rocks to climb and hop, paths to adventure on and a natural water slide! Needless to say not long after this photo ~ after the girls had jumped into their swim suits and were frolicking and I was getting ready to pull out all the food ~ IT DOWN POURED!!!

Lucky for me, my sister who was there with her girls, lives only a bit away and welcomed us to crash her home. So we packed up in a wet flash and relocated the party.

One more lesson in going with the flow and letting go!

Luna's flower fairy cake ~ cupcakes with whipped cream topped with an edible flower.

We resumed the festivities... not letting a silly thing like the rain drown our joy!

It was a lovely celebration ~  offering lessons on this journey of motherhood  ... learning to embrace simplicity  and learning to let go and allow the unexpected with a peaceful heart.

***
Peace

~ Shanti ~