Thinking About Thinking Day!

Hi friends! I had a very lazy day today. It is snowing and I woke up with a very sore throat so I spent most of the day chilling out on the couch, quietly drinking tea and watching old movies. The Odd Couple and The Nutty Professor was on today! I have one of those top of the throat sore throats, the kind that is aggravated by talking (It’s a pleasant change around the house I’m sure LOL!) and I think I feel the beginning of an earache coming on…maybe I am just a hypochondriac about the earache but the sore throat is real. I read that if it is painful to drink orange juice than you have strep throat but I ate a grapefruit and I was fine. I blame not wiping down the shopping cart with an antibacterial wipe last night when I did groceries or the kids at the basketball games (It’s a germ buffet I tell you!) Speaking of kids Girl Scout Thinking Day is right around the corner. This year we have Sweden. Here are a few swap ideas. I had some comments on my YouTube channel from actual Swedes and they said that they do, in fact eat spaghetti and meatballs but the traditional dish is Swedish meatballs, gravy and mashed potatoes (we can use texture paste/caulking for mashed potatoes! Feel free to snag the spaghetti and meatballs for Italy though.) and their flag was more blue than the cardstock I had on hand. These were a few ideas to get the girls started. Oh and by request I demonstrated flocking.

The girls will have to make Swedish food to serve, give a talk on Sweden, teach a Swedish craft and perform a traditional Swedish song or folk dance as well. They enjoy this event every year! If you want some other ideas here are some of the other countries we have done:

China Thinking day ideas and performance. Chinese paper drums craft tutorial.

And England, and Egypt swaps.

I hope some girl scouts find this helpful and have an enjoyable time preparing for thinking day! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

Girl Scouts Thinking Day: China

Hello Friends! Last week I was super busy helping my daughter’s girl scout troop prepare for thinking day. We were representing the country China. I thought I’d share our adventures and ideas with you in case you are getting ready for Thinking Day, Chinese New Year or if you just want to make a Chinese dragon costume.

I was hoping to figure out how to record a voice-over for this video so I could explain how we made the costume but I could not so I put a supply list and brief instructions in the video description on the You tube watch page. Here you can see the dragon in action!

The head was made of cardboard boxes covered in corrugated paper and crepe paper party streamers. The tail was made of 3 red rectangle disposable tablecloths sewed together with my sewing machine (yes, we sewed them, can you believe that worked?!?) and spray painted with scales. I attached the tail to the head with carpet tape. Again, for more details read the description under the video here. Here are a couple closer pics I took in my studio:

The girls researched the country and made the Tri-fold display. We served rice and tea.

We had Chinese money on display and the girls made swaps that were rice and toothpicks glued into bottle caps to look like bowls of rice with chopsticks, then they were glued to fun-foam place mats. there was a magnet on the back and the year (2014) on the front.

For our craft we did paper-folding. Origami is a Japanese term however the Chinese have a tradition of paper-folding as well, they generally made boats and hats.

The girls taught other girl scouts to make these paper boats.

The girls also learned how to make a Chinese throwing star but we soon realized that it was too advanced a craft for the amount of time we had.

I made this tutorial for Chinese New Year back in January, it would also be a good project for thinking day, either as a decoration, an activity (if you have a long craft time) or to use in the performance.

Supplies to make the Chinese Dragon and the above paper drum craft can be found at Papermart. A great place to check out when you need craft, party or packaging supplies in bulk! I hope you enjoyed this post and hopefully it gave you some new ideas! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

Craft like and Egyptian!

Girl Scouts Thinking Day is coming up in a couple of weeks and it is pretty cool. Each troop picks a country and then gives a presentation about it. Also they make swaps to trade with the other girls they meet. My daughters’ troop is doing Egypt so I came up with this easy (and practically FREE) craft for them to make and swap:

These cute hieroglyphic pendants are made from discontinued formica samples from the local hardware store. I got a few hundred of them last year! I love that I am upcycling something that had no use to anyone. You can snag these sample for free off the rack at any hardware store but I beg you to ask for discontinued ones so we can keep them out of the landfill!

Here is what you need to make these cool necklaces:

Formica Samples, acrylic paint in earth tones, paper to make the stencils with, natural sponges or kitchen sponges cut up into irregular shapes, stencil brushes or make-up wedges for stenciling, cording for the necklace-I used Incredible ribbon yarn (cheaper than ribbon and soft), metallic pony beads and a gold marker, stamps & ink, rhinestones. the last three items are optional but fun to add, feel free to substitute any of the item to use what you have on hand.

Here are the prep steps you need to do BEFORE the girls arrive:

1. Lay out large sheets of waxed paper to protect your work surface. Wet your sponge and ring out the water. Squeeze dabs of light earth tone paint (I used a sage green, dusty rose and cream) on a piece of waxed paper and dip the sponge in the colors and dab on the back of your formica samples, let dry.
2. Use a thick paper such as old file folders to cut simple stencils with an x-acto knife. Keep the inside piece too because you might want to use the inside as a mask, see the photo below, the tile with the person in it uses the stencil part and the other one uses a mask:

Here is where I will get the girls involved!

1. Give each girl a sheet of waxed paper and 5 tiles and a few stencils. Squirt out a wee bit of black and brown paint on the waxed paper. Load a make up wedge or stencil brush with brown and pounce it on the wax paper to remove excess paint. Place the stencil over the prepared tile and pounce the brush up and down in the center of the stencil. Pick up some black paint and pounce it around the edge of the stencil for depth. repeat for each formica tile. Let dry.
2. Use small letter stamps or postage style stamps to stamp “Egypt” on the tile.
3. Add details with gold marker. This is optional but looks really great! Also you can brush on some metallic eyeshadow, glitter and add a rhinestone if desired!
4. Cut a 30″ length of ribbon and thread it through the hole and slide on a pony bead (A Q-tip with the fluff removed can help push the ribbon through the hole in the bead) and tie the ends together. Viola! You have made a fabulous necklace!

Variations: This craft can be adapted for cross curriculum projects in the classrooms. You can imitate the Native American Art and French cave paintings or even Hawaiian art. The applications for geography, history and social studies classes are endless!

If you have any questions just leave a comment and I will answer you the best I can. Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

WOYWW {a messy start}

So this morning my daughters asked if they could help me in the studio. “Yes!” I said as it just so happened I needed some guinea pigs to try out the project I was planning to do with the brownies this week, here is what my desk looked like when we left it (halfway through the project}…

 

I had a whole sleeve or Formica samples that were discontinued from a lumbar yard and decided it was time to put them to use again. You can see what I did with another batch of Formica samples here.  We are making swaps for Girl Scouts Thinking Day and our country is Egypt so I designed stone looking pendants that we are going to stencil hieroglyphics on so they look like ancient Egyptian art. Then they will be put on earthy ribbon with a few shiny beads and we will have the coolest swaps around;) I like to gauge how a craft will go by having my kids do it first…I’m definatly going to make sure I tell the moms to have their kids wear old clothes because the paint was everywhere!

That is as far as we got because we needed to go roller skating, you know how that is right?

Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting! Oh, PS to all the other WOYWWers out there, when I comment on your desks I’ll be using my google account incase you are wondering who that “Lindsay” chick is commenting on your blog 😀