Crafts can be challenging, particularly when there are children involved. While power tools may come into play, they don’t have to most of the time. The following are a few crafts that won’t break the bank or cause any visits to the emergency room.
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Glow in the Dark Silly Putty
Image via Flickr by VCmonk
To make your own glow in the dark putty, all you need is glow in the dark paint, glue, and corn starch. Once you have the three mixed together into a consistency you like, you can try a little online shopping for fun stuff you can put on your glowing putty and to light it up with an eerie fluorescence.
Colored Sand Collage
Image via Flickr by romanlily
To make a colored sand collage, all you need is some white and clear Con-Tact paper, some colored sand you can get at any craft store, and some salt shakers or other containers with small holes. If you want, you can even use a small, empty, washed out juice bottle with a few holes poked into it. You can slow the amount of sand that comes out of your salt shakers with tape if you like.
Just put the white Con-Tact paper on some construction or other paper (which can become a frame) and let your child have at it. When she’s done, you can preserve the design by putting some clear Con-Tact paper over its top.
Homemade Rock Candy
Image via Flickr by dionhinchcliffe
You can easily “grow” your own rock candy. All you need is some wooden sticks, lots of sugar, food coloring, and your flavoring of choice. Just mix the sugar, flavoring, and water in a pot until you have a very thick mixture, bring it to a simmer, and then add the mix you prepared and the food coloring to jars. You can then use clothes pins at each jar’s rim to suspend your sticks so that they are held in the jars but don’t touch the sides or bottoms.
Place your jars in a sunny spot for about a week and you’ll see your rock candy grow into a tasty treat. You can get your candy to attach better to its stick by wetting the stick and rolling it in sugar then letting it dry beforehand.
Soap Bubble Prints
Image via Flickr by film is not dead
Make some bubble solution with three cups of water, one cup of dish soap, and 1/4 cup of corn syrup. Then add in tempera paint and place it all in a shallow, disposable pan. Hand your child a straw and have them blow big bubbles. From there your child can touch a piece of paper to the bubbles and come back with a unique print. Your child can layer different colors on top of each other to make some very complex designs.
You might also experiment with using different paper. Watercolor paper has a great texture and copier paper is nice and smooth, but any kind of paper can provide an interesting visual effect.
Craft projects don’t have to be expensive or dangerous. In fact, a lot of the time they’re serious fun.
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