Ocean Crafts

Kate and I have managed to squeeze in a few ocean crafts over the last couple of weeks.  

I covered a cardboard fish shape with foil and gave her oil pastels and Sharpies to make her own Rainbow Fish.

She colored an envelope and together we turned it into a shark.  Kate enjoyed a silly game where the shark asked for different letters to eat, and she would feed him.

She loves to play with shaving cream, so I squirted some on a tray and let her add acrylic paint and swirl it all around with a wooden skewer.

So pretty.
We read Mister Seahorse by Eric Carle, and I cut a seahorse shape out of card stock for Kate to marble.

 She pressed both sides into the pretty shaving cream and then we left it to dry.

 Kate played in the paint and shaving cream quite happily.

 After a while, Kate and I used the squeegee to scrape the shaving cream off of the seahorse.  Once it dried, Kate added an eye and a mouth.

We have read a lot of ocean themed books too.  She is especially fond of I Spy Under the Sea by Edward Gibbs.

Homemade Marbled Christmas Cards

The last time C and R played with shaving cream, it was summer time.  I figured they were due for some messy fun so I filled two containers with shaving cream and added red and green food coloring.

They approached it carefully at first, stirring the color into the shaving cream with chopsticks.

We placed card stock on top of their swirly red and green designs to make some pretty marbled paper.

Before I knew it, they had thrown caution to the wind and they were both up to their elbows in shaving cream.

It was nice in the summer when I could turn the sprinkler on and let them run through it.  That wasn't possible in late November Massachusetts weather!!!!!

C and R each made a few sheets of marbled card stock and we placed them to dry.  Once they were dry, we wiped off any shaving cream residue.

The beautiful color and marbled look remained on the paper; they will make great Christmas cards for a few lucky people (I'm thinking teachers)!

Marbled Paper Birthday Cards

Do you remember when C and R were playing with shaving cream and food coloring?  They had a lot of fun with that.  The shaving cream was so pretty that we decided to save some of it in the form of art.

It's super easy to do, and you can use the finished product as a birthday card (well, that's what we did).  First fill a tray with foamy shaving cream. I buy trays like the one in this picture from Dollar Tree (I should be compensated for all the times I mention that place in my blog!) and we use them for all sorts of craft projects.  Most of the time, I just rinse out the tray and use it again for a different project; they are very durable, just label them with a Sharpie so that you don't accidentally use them for food later.

Add some food coloring and get your hands in there swirling it all together.

When you get a design that you like, take a piece of white card stock or poster board and press it down on the shaving cream.  Lift the paper off carefully.  You can then either leave the shaving cream as is on the card stock or you can swirl it around a bit more to make it look the way you want it to look.  When satisfied, leave the shaving cream on the paper to dry.  This is what our paper looked like as it was drying:

When it was dry, I just brushed off the dried up shaving cream and this is the final result:

It takes a long time to dry, but when it is done, you have beautiful paper that you can fold in half and use as a card!  We had two birthday parties over the weekend and the birthday girls each received one of our homemade cards.