Cupcakes Galore

Hello crafty friends! I hope you all are having a great week. :) My storytimes have been going really well lately. There have only been a few kids at each session (our evening storytimes unfortunately are nowhere near as popular as are morning storytimes) it's been the perfect amount for a beginning storytime coordinator. :) I'm going to share with you the past two weeks of storytime crafts that the kids and I have done. 


The first craft I'm going to share with you is based on the story Little Mouse and the Big Cupcake. This story is so adorable, you should definitely read it if you have the chance! :) 

For the craft we each made our own cupcakes and decorated them by first coloring them with crayons and then using a glue stick to apply glitter for the sprinkles. This was the first time using glitter for many of the kids, so they had a lot of fun with this. Unfortunately I don't have pictures of their creations to share with you, but I do have a picture of the sample cupcake I made:

For a transition activity between the story and the craft, I created a matching game for the kids to play using the felt board. I made mini versions of the cupcakes they decorated and created them so that they can be matched in three different ways: by the bottom paper color, the frosting color and the sprinkles. It was too hard to tell the differences between the sprinkle colors in the pictures, so I'm just going to show you the other ways they can be matched.

In this picture all of the cupcakes are matched by the bottom paper color. The sprinkles don't look very fun in this picture, but I promise they are when you see them in person! :)

In this picture the cupcakes are matched by the color of their frosting. The kids had so much fun moving the cupcakes around so that they matched! 

Thanks so much for reading! Do any of you have fun storytime crafts you've made in the past? I'd love to hear your ideas!

Ashley

All That Glitters Is Gold

Hi everyone! I'd like to share with you the card I made for the design team's weekly challenge over at Becky's Sweet Creations (the card is also posted there). This week's challenge was to create something that you've been wanting to make or have already made. After a coworker of mine celebrated her golden birthday last week, I realized I had never made a golden birthday card for anyone before, and that's where the inspiration came from for this challenge. Here's what I came up with:

What I used to make the card:
- Cuttlebug with the D'vine Swirl embossing folder, vintage die cut and gift die cut
- Black, silver and gold cardstock paper
- 'Happy Birthday' clear stamps with gold ink
- 'golden' chipboard letters with gold glitter
- Silver glitter
- Elmer's glue pen and adhesive glue dots
- Gold adhesive embellishments


On a side note, next weekend (October 8th & 9th) Made Especially For You will be part of Becky's Sweet Creations Boy/Girl themed Blog Hop! It'll be a two-day hop that will showcase our design team's fabulous members and boy/girl themed projects. There will also be plenty of chances to win blog candy along the way! The button is posted on the sidebar of my blog, we hope to see you there! :)


Thanks so much for reading, enjoy the rest of your weekend!


Ashley

Paper Crafting in Math Class?! Say whaaaat?

Yup - you read that right! :) In the math class I am taking (problem solving methods for elementary school teachers) we had two assignments that involved paper crafting. The first one, which we had to do at home, was to create a Base 10 Model, which in real life are blocks that children use as a tactile tool to add and subtract. Some of you may remember using these yourselves (like I did) or you may have seen your kids use them. I made mine out of cardstock paper, but really they would be three-dimensional and look something like this:

Each little square counts as one unit, the rods count as ten units, and the big square is one hundred units. These don't look three dimensional in the picture, and I suppose they don't have to be, but usually they are in the form of blocks so that moving them around is easier. 

For the actual assignment, we had to cut our own Base 10 blocks. We haven't used them yet, but when we do our hands will be videotaped while using them to add or subtract to show that we understand this method. Here are my Base 10 paper blocks:

We had to create four 100 blocks, 30 rods and I believe 30 little squares. I used my paper trimmer to cut them to their proper size:

100 block - 10 cm x 10 cm

10 rod - 1 cm x 10 cm

1 square - 1 cm x 1 cm

The second assignment we had to do was to create fraction circles. This had to be done with the teacher before or after class for safety reasons because we used an Ellison Machine. Now, I had never heard of this before, but after using it I definitely know what inspired the Cricut! You lay your paper on top of your "template" which is a wood block with your shape on it, on the tray. You push the tray 1/3 of the way in, and then bring the lever down. You then push it another 1/3, bring the lever down, and another 1/3, bring the lever down. You pull the tray out and lift your template - and out comes your cut! We used cuts in the shape of fraction circles (you'll see in the pictures) but I found a really great picture online of an Ellison Machine with the templates and other shaped cuts. 

We had to cut two of each size fraction circle and each had to have their own color so that when we work with them as a class we are all working with the same pieces that can be easily identified. Here are my fraction circles:

(From top left to bottom right) 1 whole, 1/4, 1/8, 1/2, 1/5, 1/10, 1/3, 1/4, 1/12. I tried to space each of the pieces out a little so you could get a better feel for what they looked like separately. 

I hope you enjoyed reading this, I always like to change up my posts. As a future teacher, I found this really interesting and loved the fact that I got to paper craft as a homework assignment. I thought it would be interesting to share with all of you. :)

Do any of you own an Ellison Machine or have used one before? I'd love to know more about it!

Ashley

DESIGN TEAM CALL EXTENDED!

Just thought I'd let everyone know that the design team call has been extended an extra week until Sunday October 9th. Information can still be found on the Design Team Call page. :)


Thanks!


Ashley

A Sparkly Congratulations

I hope you all had a great weekend! Mine went by WAY too fast. Tonight I thought I'd share with you the congratulations card I made for my blog candy winner, Maribel. 


For those of you that have been following me for a while, you know that I absolutely love using glitter. Even though it's messy at times, I love the added touch it gives to the cards I create. I only had a few colors to start with, but as soon as I received a 50% off one item coupon at Michael's I knew exactly what I wanted:

I'm really sorry about the quality of this picture, I took it at night when there was no natural sunlight. I tried to find a product picture online but couldn't. :(

It originally cost $29.99, so about a dollar per color, but I got it for $14.99. Yay! The glitter is super fine (which you'll see in the pictures below) but I love it! I love having all different colors to choose from (30 to be exact) it's so much fun! Each color also has a cute little name, for example the yellow is 'sunflower'.   This one is made by Recollections but I know Martha Stewart also has a product similar to this.

So enough of my glitter babble, let me show you the card:

Here's a close-up of the glittered letters. There's a small glare from the sunlight, sorry about that.

I absolutely love the colors of this card, the color combo is so fun and cheerful. I have chipboard letters in a variety of different colors, and in this case I found glitter that matched the chipboard pieces and then applied it using an Elmer's glue stick. I love how enhancing something simple can make a creation look so great. To make this card I also used:

- Green, blue, purple, white and pink cardstock paper

- Patterned paper by The Paper Studio (I can't remember the name, I'm sorry!)

- 'congrats' chipboard pieces

- Blue, green, purple, pink and black glitter

- Elmer's glue pen

- iRock with blue, green, white and purple gems

- Blue flower chipboard embellishment

- Black sparkly ribbon

- Green, purple and pink brads

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by! I really appreciate it. :)

There's also plenty of time left to apply for my first Design Team. You can do so by clicking here.

Ashley

DT Challenge - Altered Tea Light

Hello fellow bloggers! :) I recently became a part of another design over at Becky's Sweet Creations. This week's challenge was to create an altered tea light. Let me tell you, it was definitely a challenge! Majority of my creations are cards and I only do very few altering projects - this was definitely unique! The challenge was posted on Monday (I know, I know, I'm a little late posting this. But better late than never, right?) you can view all of the other design team's creations here.

Sorry about the blurry picture, I cropped it and unfortunately the quality didn't remain as good as the original. For my altered tea light, I painted it with blue acrylic paint and then hot glued decorative shells around the border, and added some blue and green glitter on top. It was really simple and fun to make!

Unfortunately it wasn't dark out when I took the picture, but I tried to get a good perspective of what it looks like when it's lit up. I cupped my hand around the tea light so you could at least tell it was turned on.

Sorry to make today's post quick, this week has been absolutely CRAZY. I'm so sorry for my lack of posting! 

Just a reminder that the design team call is open until next Sunday, October 1st. Anyone is eligible to apply, I'd love to have you on my first design team! :)

Thanks for reading!

Ashley

Successful First Storytime!

Hi everyone! Today I thought I'd share with you something different from what I usually post. Part of my job as an employee in the children's department of a library now entails doing a weekly storytime for 3-6 year olds. This was something completely new to me, so I was definitely nervous! It ended up going really well, I read the book The Parrot Tico Tango (see the picture below). I'm trying to stick with a "food" theme for each week, and this week was fruit.

This is the front cover of the book (which I took from Amazon.com) the story is about a parrot, Tico Tango, who goes around and takes a different piece of fruit from each of his friends in his rainforest. At the end, he can't carry it all and he drops it, and his friends turn it into a fruit salad. The story is so cute and is so vivid and bright!

Each of my storytimes will include a craft (my favorite part!), so I figured the perfect craft would be for each of the kids to make their own fruit salad. I printed each of the fruits used in the story onto colored cardstock and cut them out. They looked like this:

Lemon, cherry, date, papaya, grapes, fig and mango

Each of the kids had fun choosing which fruits they wanted to add to their fruit salad, which they made by using a glue stick to apply the fruit to a paper plate. I also used a flannel board to help tell the story, so I made a felt parrot and felt fruit so that the kids could better understand the story.

This is the front side of all the pieces. I attached cardstock paper to the front with a hot glue gun so that the parrot and the fruit looked more realistic, and not just like felt. I found a parrot coloring page online and printed it, and then colored it using markers so that it matched the parrot in the story.

This is the back side of the parrot and the pieces of fruit, which is what they would have looked like if I didn't include the cardstock paper.

Is this something you guys would like to see more of? I always like to change things up a bit. It's a 6 week storytime session so I would have plenty more to share. I could also try and include pictures of the kids crafts and also of the storytime itself. Let me know what you think! :)

Ashley