If you have kitties, then this is a super-awesome and simple sewing project. Better yet, you can use scrap fabric or felt, and use your own catnip or buy it for a $1 buck at the dollar store. It is simple enough that as long as your child can handle scissors and a needle and thread, they can make this sewing project all by themselves – or with a little help from an adult, even a 3-4 year old can sew it!

Related Pages: Cat Coloring Pages, Easy Fabric Flower Brooch, Printable Cat Masks

Easy Catnip Mouse Sewing Pattern

Catnip Mouse Materials

5″ inch square piece of felt or scrap fabric

(2) 1/2″ inch pom poms for ears, (1)  1/4″ inch  pom pom for nose, (2) 1/8″ inch pom poms for eyes

6″ inches or so length of yarn for tail

Pillow stuffing or cotton balls

Catnip

Small yarn needle

How to Make a Catnip Mouse

Print the free pattern for the stuffed mouse, and cut out one piece of fabric in the heart shape.

Free Printable Catnip Mouse Pattern

Fold the heart in half and use a whipstitch or blanket stitch to sew the mouse closed, leaving a 1 1/2″ inch opening at the bottom of the heart as shown:

Catnip Mouse Tutorial

Here’s a quick video to demonstrate the whipstitch:

Turn the mouse inside out and stuff it tightly with your catnip and stuffing or cotton balls. Be sure to get a lot of catnip in there (even more than you see in this picture)!

Stuffing the Mouse Toy

After you’re done stuffing the mouse toy, stitch the opening closed squishing the end into the shape a ‘Y’ to make a spot for the pom pom nose.

Finishing the Mouse Toy

Before you tie off the thread, sew the nose into place.

Sewing on the Mouse Toy Nose

With a small yarn needle, pull through one stitch with the yarn tail. Adults might need to help little children with this step because the yarn is a little thick to pull through the hole.

Attaching the yarn mouse tail

Tie off the yarn tail and clip the excess

Use fabric glue to attach the ears and eyes – and your catnip mouse toy is all done!

Finished Catnip Mouse Toy

Remember, this is Day 5 of Twleve Days of Gifts Kids Can Make! 5 down, 7 more to go!

Guess what?! You were right!

I fell in love with some Marimekko designs (ok, who hasn’t?!), and thought the same thing. So I put it to the test. I printed out some simple modern art designs off of the web, gave the kids very general instructions, and let them at it. Behold, my little artists in waiting:

DIY Marimekko Plates So Easy a Kid Could Do It.

Related Pages: Christmas Family Keepsake Plate, Advent Calendar Crafts

So yeah, they are gorgeous – but that’s only half of the awesomeness of this project:

• I made them with $1 Dollar Store plates
• I had paint markers on hand – so the project cost a whopping $3
• These would make The. Most. Awesome. Holiday. Gifts. No more lame presents that you display for the sake of your kids artist’s ego! These turned out SO well you will actually want to display them – I am!!

And for the record, here’s some of our original design inspiration:

Marimekko Line Art Inspiration

Marimekko Plates Display

Marimekko Flower Fabric

What You Need to Make Kids Modern Art Plates

Kids Modern Art Plates Closeup and Materials

Plates

Paint markers or porcelain paint

Pebeo Porcelain Paints (Dick Blick affiliate link) WERE the only paints I’ve found that are permanent on glass/ceramic and food safe. But their product description changed and now says they aren’t food safe (yet they say they are non-toxic – so WTH?!) If you just want them for display, use Folk Art Enamel Paints (Joann.com affiliate link), though I wonder if you could also just use permanent markers? I’ll have to try it and see! I’ve used both kinds of paints, and I do recommend treating the plates/glass with kid gloves once complete. They say they are ‘permanent’, but do scratch somewhat easily with wear (especially with silverware use!).

Modern Art With a 10 Year Old Flourish

Finding inspiration is easy – I poked around on Google Images looking for Marimekko stuff, but I also recommend looking for vintage mid-century modern dishes by Arabia, Figgjo or the Fajance line by Royal Copenhagen (my vintage collecting habit is showing!). Ebay is another great place to find these products with artwork that kids can easily reproduce. And for really young children, you could draw the outline yourself and let them color in the shapes. With this kind of art, they don’t really need to stay within the lines. ;)

Vintage Paper Crafts for the 4th of July

These paper crafts are super-easy to make. If you are glitter-adverse like I was when my kids were younger (it’s still in my couch cushions!!!) then omit the glitter and simply paint the paper with red and blue water colors.

What You Need for these Vintage Paper Crafts

You might even already have everything you need at home. If not, head out to your local dollar store to get the rest!

4th of July Paper Rosettes Materials

Round coffee filters

8 inch doilies

Glitter

Glue

Ribbon

Water based paints (watercolors or acrylics)

Optional – spray adhesive

Free Vintage Printables (below)

Vintage July 4th Printable

Vintage America Printable

How to Make These Vintage Paper Rosettes

Print and cut out one or more of the vintage art printables above.

To make sure they are the correct size, be sure to tell your printer to print at 100%. Most printers will ‘shrink to fit’ the images – that will still work, but they will be smaller.

Put a small line of glue around the edge and dust glitter on it.

Paint one coffee filter in red or blue. The center is covered so you can leave that part dry if you want.

Let it dry. (Or use a blow dryer if you are impatient like me!)

Painting Coffee Filters

Put a small line of glue around the edge and dust a different color of glitter on it.

Glitter on Coffee Filter Edges

Cut a 12-14 inch piece of ribbon and fold it in a V. Glue it on the bottom of the coffee filter.

Rosette Ribbon Attachment

Either use spray adhesive or paint glue onto the doily. Dust glitter around the edges – you can again avoid the middle to save glitter and time.

Glitter on Doily Layer

Once everything is dry, you can star sandwiching the layers together with glue:

Gluing Vintage Paper Crafts

Put the coffee filter with ribbon on the bottom, next the doily, and finally the vintage artwork on top. And you’re done!

Variations

You can print out the vintage artwork at a smaller size and use cupcake liners instead of coffee filters. Just make sure to also buy smaller doilies!

More 4th of July Kids Crafts

Make Patriotic Tablecloth Weights

4th of July Finger Puppets

Easy 4th of July Wreaths

July 4th Word Search

Yesterday I got a big cork bulletin board and hung it up. I needed cute thumbtacks and clips for it, though, because I’m not the kind of gal to put up boring stuff on my walls! Since I took the “Stash Busting” pledge with Heather of Dollar Store Crafts to buy no new supplies for the month of April, I decided to make some out of things I already had on hand.

A few years ago I made some marble magnets based on the brilliance of Megan over at NotMartha - so it wasn’t too much of a stretch of the imagination to make thumbtacks instead. But I also have some photos that I didn’t want to poke a hole into, so I also made some coordinating clothespin clip tacks:

Although this project is a perfect tweens and teens craft, I must admit that I’m keeping these all to myself! My kids can make their own! They are super easy and fast to whip together.

Materials List for Cute Thumbtacks and Tack Clips

Scrapbook paper with a small-ish pattern

E6000 glass glue

Mod Podge

Flattened clear glass marbles

Flat head thumbtacks

Mini or regular size hinged wooden clothespins

How to Make the Clothespin Clips

I found mini 2 inch clothespins at JoAnn a few months ago – I pulled these out and measured the width carefully. Then I cut several strips of scrapbook paper at that exact width.

Scrapbook Paper Stips for Decoupage

I had to cut a lot of them, because the clothespins are really small, and I was picky about what pattern to decoupage onto the clothespins. If you have a smaller or repeating pattern, you won’t need nearly as many strips of paper as I did.

*NOTE – you may want to paint your clothespins in coordinating colors – if you want to do this, paint them and let them dry before going onto the next step.

Decoupage Clothespin Thumbtack Clips

Decide what parts of the paper you want on your clips, cut them to size, and then decoupage the paper onto the clip. I used glitter Mod Podge that I won from Amy over at a Mod Podge Rocks contest, so I also covered the sides of my clips with the Mod Podge. If you do this, make sure you don’t glue your clothespin shut!

Decoupage Clothespin Clips

While I let these dry, I started on my marble magnet thumbtacks. It’s too bad my office isn’t lit very well, because they are very sparkly and you can’t see that at all.

Marble Glass Bead Thumbtacks

I’ll let you go over to NotMartha to learn how to make the thumbtacks, but I will say this – getting the paper cut out just right for these is kind of a pain in the butt. I used a 3/4 inch circle hole punch, but the circles are just too big enough to look bad. So I have to trim the outside off, which makes my pretty perfect circles not pretty or perfect anymore.

Paper Cutouts for Marble Thumbtacks

The good news is that while in use, you can’t see that the paper doesn’t have perfect edges. The glass marbles have a magnifying effect on whatever image you choose, so the edges aren’t seen. You can only tell when you look at the back – so only you will know they are messed up!

Once your Mod Podge is dry on the clothespins and the glass glue is dry on the marbles, you can grab your hot glue gun to attach flat thumbtacks to the backs:

Glue Thumbtacks to the Backs

And then you are done!

For more teen crafts, check out these T-shirt surgery ideas, this teen crafts roundup, or this cute and easy bandana quilt!

Easter Pipe Cleaner Finger Puppets

When I had to idea to create some finger puppets out of pipe cleaners, little did I realize what creativity I would unleash in my children. 3 packages of pipe cleaners later, I have enough different finger puppet ideas for probably 10 more posts! I had no idea these would be such easy crafts for kids.

Pipe cleaners are extremely forgiving and deceptively easy to work with. Anything you ‘mess up’ while bending them is fixable. And by using a hot glue gun, you are pretty much unlimited in how you can attach eyes, limbs, and embellishments.

Check out our Halloween Finger Puppets Craft, too!

What you Need to Make Easter Finger Puppets

Pipe cleaners of various colors

Mini pom poms of various colors and sizes (you can substitute cotton balls sometimes)

Googly eyes

Hot glue gun

Wire cutters

(Our local Dollar Store had great cheap coordinating sets of pipe cleaners with matching pom poms)

How to Make Easter Finger Puppets

Once you see the components of each of these pipe cleaner finger puppets, assembly is pretty self-explanatory. But here’s the key “puppet base” that they are all made from:

Finger Puppet Base

Step 1 is to take the pipe cleaner and wrap it around your finger. I like to do it rather tightly, because once it is off of your finger, it is easier to stretch it out than it is to tighten it up.

Important: Notice that the top of the pipe cleaner coils down to a smaller circle. Do this so that it is easier to glue the pom pom head on top, and to lessen the possibility that you will get the hot glue on your fingers (which, if it hasn’t happened to you yet, pray that it doesn’t. OMG.)

Here are the pieces of each of the pipe cleaner finger puppets shown above. I was skeptical whether the hot glue would work on some of these pieces, but it worked perfectly. Just put a tiny dab of glue onto the wire end of the pipe cleaner and stick it straight down into the pom pom – it will stick after just a second or two of holding it in place.

Easter Bunny Pipe Cleaner Finger Puppet

Easter Bunny Finger Puppet

After gluing the white head onto the pipe cleaner body, stick a dab of glue onto both wire ends on one of the bent pipe cleaner ears. Stick them firmly into the pom pom while squeezing the ends together.

Glue two tiny white pom poms on the face as a base to stick the googly eyes. This is really optional, and you can see on the kitten finger puppet below that you can also just glue the googly eyes directly onto the pom pom head.

Then glue on the pink nose and the medium sized pink pom pom for the tail.

Easter Chick Pipe Cleaner Finger Puppet

Easter Chick Finger Puppet

After gluing the white head onto the pipe cleaner body, clip a tiny piece of orange pipe cleaner and bend it into a V shape, and glue it onto the middle of the face. Glue the two yellow mini pom poms right above the beak to make a base for the googly eyes, then glue them on top of them. Take about a 4 inch piece of extra yellow pipe cleaner and bend it into the wing shape as shown. You don’t even need to glue these in, just slip them onto the body in between the coils and they will stay put.

Spring Kitten Pipe Cleaner Finger Puppet

Spring Kitten Finger Puppet

After gluing the white head onto the pipe cleaner body, clip two small pieces of white pipe cleaner (about 3/4″ long) and bend them into a V. Glue them onto the top of the head. I skipped the extra tiny pom pom eye base on this one, wanting to go for a more “Hello Kitty” look. You only need one tiny pink pom pom for the nose, but here’s a little tip: if you don’t have a tiny pom pom to use, you can clip a tiny piece of pink pipe cleaner (less than 1/4″ long) and glue it onto the face instead. The tail is attached by bending it onto the bottom coil on the back of the kitten’s pipe cleaner body.

Bluebird Pipe Cleaner Finger Puppet

Spring Bluebird Finger Puppet

To make this variance on the Easter chick, I omitted the mini pom pom base for the eyes, and added a little tuft of feathers on the top of the head the same way I did the kitten’s ears (but only added one and put it on lengthwise instead of sideways). The wings are also a slightly simpler version of the yellow wings, and might be easier for smaller children to bend on their own.

Last weekend we finished up our keepsake Thanksgiving plates. I’ll be using these every year until I’m old and gray, I tell you!

Thanksgiving Keepsake Plate Craft

These turkey handprints are surprisingly easy to make, you just need a few special materials found at any craft store:

What You Need to Make Thanksgiving Handprint Keepsake Plates

Thanksgiving Keepsake Handprints - Craft Materials

Plain white plates – I got mine at my local dollar store – cheap, cheap, cheap!

Folk Art Enamel paints – these are baked onto the plate surface after the painting is done, so be sure to get the Enamels. They don’t come in a huge number of colors, so you will be mixing colors from red, green, yellow and brown paints. I also used black paint for the eyes, but you can use one of your existing colors for that tiny dot, too.

Paint brushes

Keepsake Thanksgiving Plate

Wash and dry the plates, and get a paper plate ready to use for mixing your paint colors. There’s no exact science to it, I just created different shades of red and orange out of the brown, red and yellow paints. When trying to mix lighter colors, use only a very little bit of the darker color and mix more if necessary. These pigments are pretty saturated and light colors are easily overpowered.

For the above design, I used:

Straight brown for the palm and thumb

Straight red for one finger

Light orange (yellow plus a little red) for another finger

Dark red (red and brown) for another finger

Darker red (red brown and a drop or two of green) for the last finger

You can mix it up and also use straight green like my son did for one of his fingers.

Plate Painting Instructions

If they mess up, don’t worry, just wash the paint off while it is still wet and start over!

Working fairly quickly (because the paint can dry out fast), paint the colors onto your child’s hand. Be generous with the paint, but you don’t want globs of it coming off onto the surface. Help your child hold their fingers apart and center it over the plate, then guide it down in position and have them press their handprint for a few seconds. After they lift their hands, they may need to press again to ensure the full handprint makes it onto the plate. Because the finger impressions didn’t end up touching the palm impression, I went back in with some brown paint and filled in the parts of their hands that didn’t come in contact with the plate.

If you end up with thick globs of paint, take off the excess with a paint brush, because baking globs of the enamel paint doesn’t turn out well at all.

After your kids have washed their hands, have them come back with a small paint brush and add the eye, beak and red turkey waddle underneath the chin.

For the outside rim decorations, I gave each of them only a little guidance. I was really pleased to see all of them come up with interesting designs that complimented each other yet were very much a reflection of their personalities.

After they were all done, I took a tiny bit of black paint and added “2009″ to the bottom corner of their handprints. Then I painted their initials onto each plate .

Bake according to the directions on the Enamel paints.

While these plates can’t be used for eating, they can dress up your walls, decorate your Thanksgiving table, be excellent hostess gifts for Grandma, or be used as charger plates for smaller see through plates!

Here are more Thanksgiving handprint crafts, printable Thanksgiving placecards, and an adorable set of Thanksgiving finger puppets to make!

Support these Great Kids Craft Blogs by Independent Crafty-type People

Crafty Crow	The Crafty Crow is a ‘Children’s Craft Collective’ in which they gather up great craft projects from around the web and post them all in one place. They find some of the coolest stuff on the web!
One Pretty Thing	One Pretty Thing is also a collection of crafts from around the web, but it is mostly crafts kids can make – some of them are things adults can make for kids. Total eye candy here, plan on getting stuck at the site for a very. long. time.
Fem Manuals	Fem Manuals is written in Portuguese, but I’m just blown away by the creativity of their projects and use of everyday materials to make absolutely beautiful things! They also post a lot of photos to Flickr so that you can mostly figure out how to make their projects without needing to read Spanish.
Little Birdie Secrets	Little Birdie Secrets has adorable kids crafts sprinkled in with some really yummy looking recipes, including pies and cupcakes in jars!
Zakka Life	Zakka Life shares gorgeous crafts made with the most surprisingly simple materials. Who knew paper bags and toilet paper rolls could be so chic!
Dollar Store Crafts	Dollar Store Crafts – a woman after my own heart! I hate going to my local crafts store and dropping $100, especially when I know I can make great stuff from the dollar store for less than $10!
Croq Zine	CROQ Zine is written by the same people behind Dollar Store Crafts, and is the companion blog to the CROQ Zine print magazine. Just the illustrations on the covers are worth a visit!
Kiddio	Kiddio is a combo craft project and craft collective bog, and another one that finds ways to make everyday objects into lovely bits of awesomeness.
Kids Craft Weekly	Kids Craft Weekly is more of a newsletter than a blog, but you can get a taste of the coolness they have to offer both on their site and in their Flickr photo pool.
Plaid Kids Crafts	Plaid Kids Crafts is the kids craft blog by the people from Plaid craft supplies. They may not be an indie blog, but their creativity makes up for it!
Make and Takes	Make and Takes is a well established blog written by a crafty mom who seems to have a never-ending stream of creativity. She also has some super-cool recipes tucked in here, including one for Root Beer Cookies. Don’t tell my son – he won’t leave me alone until I make them!
One Crafty Place	One Crafty Place is one of my new favorites on this list. This is a craft collective blog, and also includes some irresistible adult crafts too. As if I need more things to do right now!
Wee Life	Wee Life is full of crafty creative stuff along with some local things to do with kids for several major cities. Plus they have a scrumptious section of printables. Yay!
Skip to My Lou	Skip to My Lou is so beautifully designed that it makes me feel happier just to see it. She also does frequent giveaways of crafty cool stuff, what’s not to love??
Craft Jr.	Craft Jr. is of course our blog right here! We’re pretty proud of it and the success it has seen in the few short weeks it’s been around. We hope you love it as much as we love writing it!

If you’re still in need of creative inspiration, check out these killer art and craft magazines, too.

As you can tell, this week I’ve been on a recycled crafts kick for Earth Day. But what’s really happening is that I’m relapsing into my terrible pack rat ways as suddenly I am having a hard time throwing anything out at all! I suppose the earth shall thank me someday for this, but my husband isn’t thanking me. *grin*

And is anyone else appreciating the irony of making a nightlight out of a Crystal Light container? I know, I should have quit while I was ahead.

Recycled Nightlight Craft

What You Need to Make a Recycled Night Light Craft

Recycled Night Light craft Materials

• An empty Crystal Light container
• A night light from your local Dollar Store (the real cheap kind shown below)
• A plastic covered large paper clip
• Mod Podge or other glue for decoupage
• Paper or fabric to decoupage the plastic Crystal Light container
• A paint brush for the glue
• Ribbon trim (about 30″ inches)
• Wire cutters
• Razor blade to cut the container
• A small ruler or other straight edge
• A medium sized nail and a hammer to poke two holes in the plastic
• Glue gun

How to Make This Night Light Recycled Craft

Cut the Crystal Light Container with a Razor Blade

First you need to cut up your Crystal Light (or Wyler’s Light, to be PC about it all) container. In this photo, I was using the tall Wyler’s Light container, or this would also be the same size as the extra large Crystal Light packages (with 6 tubs, not 4).

First I held the ruler straight edge to the side of the container and carefully scored the plastic to slice the container open from top to bottom. I then was able to cut through the container easily (but carefully, because it’s easy to slip on a curved surface). I repeated this step so that I cut out about a one-inch piece from the side of the container. Then I was able to lay the plastic flat on a carboard surface and cut the container into two even pieces, as shown above. If I messed up at all, it was easy to clean up my edges with sturdy kitchen scissors.

Poke Holes in the Plastic with a Nail

Next I poked two small holes into the bottom corners of the plastic with a hammer and nail. I recommend using a larger nail than the one shown above, because I ended up needing to find a screw to twist into the holes to make them a little larger. You need them to be large enough to stick the end of the paper clip through them.

Decoupage with Recycled Tissue Paper

After you have poked the holes into the corners, now is the time to decoupage the plastic however you like. I used tissue paper circles to coordinate with the ribbon in my example at the top. My daughter took the leftover tissue packing paper we get at the dollar store when we buy fragile items, and we used a circle hole puncher to cut out and decoupage her night light.

You probably don’t want to use paper from a book or magazine, unless you are happy with the reverse side showing through. Because when the night light is turned on, it really glows through the paper.

Quick decorating tip - you can also use fabric that coordinates with your child’s room decor!

Now you want to unbend a paperclip and wrap it around the base of the night light. Be sure you’re doing this with plastic wrapped wire and around the groove of the night light at the base (made for sliding the plastic cover onto the light). Higher end night lights aren’t nearly as easy to use, as they don’t have this handy groove to hold your wire.

Twist the paper clip around the base with your fingers or with the wire cutters, and then use the wire cutters to make two “L” shaped bends in the paper clip as shown in the second photo. Slip the ends of the paper clip through your holes.

Lastly, you will need to lay a line of glue from your hot glue gun underneath the wires and glue the ends of the paper clip to the back side of the decoupaged container. If you don’t do this, the cover will flop all over the place.

Now you want to cover the edges of your plastic cover with ribbon to hide the wire and make the edges look polished. Start at the back and cover the back two ends with ribbon first, and add enough glue from the hot glue gun around the paper clip to cover it up too.

To put ribbon across the top and bottm, fold over the edge just a bit and glue it in place to give the corners a clean look (like in the inset in the second image above). Then simply glue the ribbon onto the top and bottom edges with the glue gun.

And viola! You  are done! Start to finish the craft takes about 30-45 minutes, not including drying time for the decoupage.

Be sure to check out the rest of our recycled crafts and all of our Earth Day activities and printables!