Playing with: Magazines

Nothing makes me happier on a cold winters day then to curl up on the couch or in bed with a hot cup of tea and a magazine. I have several magazines lying around the house and after they have been read from cover to cover they make an awesome craft material.

Not everybody is willing to pay massive amounts on pretty craft paper and you don’t have to. The pictures, but also the letters can give you a great pattern for your craft.

Ideas with magazine paper as craft material:

vase & flowers ~ 2 craft and 2 create

funny faces ~ activity book for adults

birds nest ~ 2 craft and 2 create

beads ~ red ted art

collage ~ 2 craft and 2 create

Don’t forget the sketchbook challenge. Today the  hint is, pick a picture from a magazine or a stamp and try to draw it. Want to know more about the challenge click here.

Playing with: Milk Jugs

Does our family drink a lot of milk? Mine does and each time I throw away one of those milk jugs I feel a bit guilty. There are some great crafts out there for these woppers.

Top tip: make sure you clean them properly from the inside as milk can go really smelly when it goes bad.

Things to make with milk jugs;

baskets ~ 2 craft and 2 create

ball catcher ~ lake shore learning

milk jug elmer ~ the imagination tree

piggy bank ~ thrifty fun

fairy houses ~ the green dragon fly

Don’t for get the sketchbook challenge that is running this winter holidays. Todays page needs to be filled with; draw a fantasy machine. Want to know more click here.

 

Playing with; Corks

Perhaps I am a bit too early with this craft material, but I know there are plenty of mums out there that do not mind a glass of wine or two, after a whole day with the kids. Make sure that you buy corked bottles and you keep the cork as it is a wonderful craft material.

Oh, and if you don’t drink or forgot to keep your cork, you can get lots of cork at Reverse Garbage here in Australia. I am sure there are other places on-line but I like their philosophy, no affiliation.

Here are the links for cork crafts;

cork stamps ~ 2 craft and 2 create

pirate cork boards ~ red ted art

superhero cork people ~ molly moo crafts

cork snake ~ domestic candy (oops in German, sorry)

Don’t forget our sketchbook challenge. Todays assignment; draw a garden with just one colour pen. To read more about the challenge click here

Playing with: Toilet Rolls

As the holidays have started, I am surrounded by my children the whole time. Their favourite pass time; crafting with mama. No adult bullshit, yes to pretty things for pretty girls. The more the better.

As I think there is no better time then craft time, i.e. sitting down together and creating something (beautiful or not), I will attempt to give you some inspiration as to what to make with packaging etc., that you will probably have lying around the house. They are links to either my old blogs from 2 craft and 2 create or crafts I saw on the net that were inspiring to me.

Today toilet roll or kitchen roll fun;

dress up hat ~ 2 craft and 2 create

dinosaur ~ fantasykids.fr (in French yes, but the pictures are so clear and the idea fantastic.)

cockatoos ~ 2 craft and 2 create

airplane ~ sunshine whispers

crown ~ 2 craft and 2 create

Don’t forget to participate in our sketchbook challenge. Todays assignment; Outline your hand and fill it in with puppets, animals, etc. Click here for the blog post

15 Minutes of Drawing: City

Researching drawings of cities I realised they are all dominated by high rises, so finding variation in what I drew was a bit hard. Did enjoy it though.

The other city scapes can be found on Instagram @renateandtheanthouse

Next week I will be drawing with my daughters in the sketchbook challenge. Todays challenge is cut shapes and hatch around them. I will post our results on facebook and Instagram. If you would like to know more click here.

 

52 Weeks of Card Making: Cake

Hope you are all having a sweet weekend with lots of pleasant surprises. #52weeksofcardmaking howto video on facebook.com/renateandtheanthouse

Don’t forget the sketchbook challenge starts today. We have busied ourselves with patterns. Will you join us! Read about the challenge here.

Quick Quote Friday

Sketchbook Challenge

The winter school holidays are coming up here in Queensland and I want to help you keep your creativity up even when the kids are at home.

Before I started this blog I had another blog called 2craftand2create. I started that blog to keep myself sane with a baby and a 2 year old at that time. I offered her all kinds of craft ideas and wrote about the good and the bad. But babies get bigger and at a certain point she wanted to participate too. What to do with all these different levels of competency…..

I bought 3 sketchbooks or Jumbo scrapbooks and I came up with a different challenge for the 3 of us every week. Not only did they get to spend time with mama and get to experience all kinds of different materials, I now have a book full of artwork that displays their development and mood. Yes, mood, because sometimes we crafted for a long time and sometimes we were done in 5 minutes (try to write a story about that…).

This holiday I am going to try and do a similar thing, but daily and I would love it if you joined me. Mind you the first week we will be traveling a lot, so I will have to see how we go. The results will be on Instagram @renateandtheanthouse or Facebook.com/renateanttheanthouse

Materials:

• Each of the participants their own sketchbook
• pens, pencils, crayons (the colouring materials you have will do, limited pallets sometimes help)
• glue stick
• old magazines
• eraser
• scissors

Prompts to all draw together 5 minutes – 1 hour depending on how much fun you are having

• 25/06/16 – Devide your page in spaces and fill these spaces with pattern (dots, dashes, zigzags etc.)
• 26/06/16 – Cut shapes, put them on the page and colour over the edges.
• 27/06/16 – Outline your hand and make a drawing with or out of it.
• 28/06/16 – Draw a garden with just one colour pen.
• 29/06/16 – Draw an imaginary machine.
• 30/06/16 – Pick a face picture from an old magazine or stamp and try to draw it.
• 01/07/16 – Draw a butterfly with your none dominant hand.
• 02/07/16 – Draw 3 the same shapes, fill each shape with the same picture in a different medium.
• 03/07/16 – Draw a lot of the same things like clown, fairies, faces, etc. each a little different.
• 04/07/16 – Tear pieces of paper and make a city scape.
• 05/07/16 – Find a picture of a landscape, draw characters on white paper, cut these out and place them in the landscape.
• 06/07/16 – Draw happy monsters.
• 07/07/16 – Tear a small image out of a magazine and finish the surroundings.
• 08/07/16 – Draw a scene out of your favourite movie.
• 09/07/16 – Draw the first letter of your name and make it into a creature.
• 10/07/16 – Draw a still life.

Please note: Don’t over think. Just do. They do not need to be masterpieces. Have fun.

Share your results with me if you want, my email: renatejacobi@hotmail.com and let me know if I can use them on my social media.

Craft Books are my Addiction

Yes this, I must admit, is a true statement. When I started organising my workspace, I realised that the one thing I have a hard time with is deciding if any of my craft books can go. As all the bookshelf space has started to fill up and another Bookfest is coming up, I have to take a hard look at myself and my shelf.

So you say, don’t go to this Bookfest thingy…… Well, that is not an option. In our (my husband and me) enthusiasm we have created little book monsters of daughters. After 3 months without a Bookfest, my eldest keeps on asking when we can go again. And I want her to keep this great attitude towards books. Children books are a wonderful thing and I like it when she can keep them and they do not always have to go back to the library.

So this time I will have to be strong and very selective, perhaps even make a list? But then what makes it such a great place to go is the browsing and the treasures you find….

So, if you are in Brisbane, Queensland and you have never been, please come along to the Bookfest. It starts this Saturday

Exploring Drawing Materials

We have been drawing for a while now and hopefully enjoy it. I also hope that you have been using things/materials that you already have lying around the house.

As you can imagine I have quite a few of these materials lying around, but I still manage to occasionally  look in the pen buckets of my daughters to find what I am looking for.

Today I would like you to walk around the house and find yourself 8 different kind of drawing implements; pen, pencil, fine liner, marker, chalk, crayon, etc…. Then take a white piece of paper and fold it into 8 equal pieces. Now fill the parts with lines, each part with a different drawing utensil. Look at the different effects caused by different utensils. Doesn’t it look beautiful. You of course don’t have to use lines, you can make zigzags or circles or squares…. Have fun exploring!