Home Craft Designs | home art and craft

Most craft ideas are geared to individuals, whether kids or adults. Sometimes you'd like to have a craft idea that works for a group of kids working together. Making a mural together is an idea that works for a group. By working together, you are creating something to decorate a shared area. Individual crafts can be displayed, but one unique item is often more effective than a group of items that are almost identical. In addition, sometimes kids' crafts, like it or not, just become clutter when they are taken home, and it isn't long before Mom throws it out. This craft idea of making a group mural can be displayed for several weeks and will not become clutter in anyone's home.

The basic materials for a kids' group mural is freezer paper. Freezer paper is about 18 inches wide, and it is very tough. One side is plastic coated. That is the side that is designed to be placed against the food. You will have better luck drawing on and gluing things onto the other side. Class or group murals can feature a number of different design elements. You can mix up some finger paint and let the children make hand prints (or even foot prints!) on the paper. You can let them scour old cast-off magazines and color catalogs for pictures they like and let them cut the pictures out and glue them on. They can add scribbles, designs, signatures, slogans, or pictures using markers, crayons, or gel pens. They can attach stickers to the mural as well. This craft idea is very flexible!


For making the mural, choose a topic that relates to the group in some way. If the group are girl scouts, for instance, and have been learning to camp, the mural can feature pictures of items related to camping. If you've been learning about dinosaurs, you can use them as a theme. If you want a really messy project that makes a cute mural for fall, mix up finger paint in fall colors. The children can each make a tree by first laying their forearm in brown paint. Then they lay their arm on the paper to make the trunk of the tree. They should spread out their fingers so their arm print has five short branches at the top. To make the leaves, the children make fingerprints all around the top of the tree using paints in other fall colors. If you add a few drops of dish washing detergent to finger paint when mixing it up, it will be easier to clean off the childrens arms. Do make sure they have old clothes or smocks for this craft idea.


Little preschoolers will like making a mural with an animal theme. You should probably find and cut out animal magazine pictures to start with, and then let the children choose the ones they like for gluing down. Glue sticks are neat to use with small children. They will paste some of the pictures upside down. Expect it and do not scold them. It is the process that is important in this craft idea. The children can also use animal cookie cutters dipped in finger paint to stamp animals on the mural, too. You may need to tape the paper to the table so it doesn't slide around while the children work.

An elaborate form of this craft idea that adults often make is a quilt around a theme. Each person in the group creates a quilt square to represent some aspect of what the group stands for. These quilt squares can be colored with fabric pens or crafted of patchwork or applique. Again, the craft idea is to build group solidarity and not to highlight one artist's skills over another. When the quilt top is completed, it can be a group project to tie it or quilt it. It can be hung in a special central location or given to an appreciated leader or member.

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Encouraging your child’s creativity at home by creating craft items is very beneficial for their mental development. Children can explore different textures, shapes and patterns, and discover how to put ideas into action by handling different materials, and sticking and gluing them together. But lets not forget, it’s great fun and a good way to spend some quality time focusing your attention on your children.

Buying materials from a craft store can be expensive, so why not start a junk/scraps box. All you need is a box or a large storage bag that you keep in a cupboard ready to store your household junk. It’s easy to start collecting and is surprising how quickly your junk box or bag will fill up. Just remember that every time you are in the kitchen preparing meals, keep all the empty boxes, tubs or tubes you normally throw away, and add these to your craft box. Also, whenever you come across any interesting items, you can put them in your box ready for when you want to make one of our crafts. Collect lots of items, from different shaped boxes, cardboard tubes, shiny paper, drinking straws, plastic bottle tops, and clean ice-lolly sticks.


Craft shops stock an extensive range of craft materials. Why not visit your local store and buy a selection of items to store in your box. Look out for cheaper end of lines, bargain buckets, and reduced price crafts that have damaged packaging. If you look out for bargains, or just buy one or two inexpensive items per week, you will quickly build up a good stock of craft materials in your home craft box. Look out for feathers, pom poms, wiggly eyes, wool, material, tissue paper, colored paper and glitter. Even at Christmas you could collect lots of shiny things to use, including small bits of tinsel, wrapping paper, ribbons, gift tags, parcel twine, and shiny foil sweet wrappers.

While out shopping, check out material and fabric shops for fabric cut-offs and scraps, odd buttons, and for cheap balls of wool or yarn. Kitchen shops often sell cheap wooden spoons. You can make a whole family of spoon puppets just by sticking fabric and wool onto wooden spoons and drawing on faces with felt-tipped pens.


Don’t forget to always have lots of paint, colored crayons, glue and sticky tape at home!

Here is a recipe for home-made Colorful Rice. This is so simple to make you will wonder why you didn’t think of it yourself! Once made, colorful rice will keep well when stored in an airtight container, such as an empty plastic ice-cream tub.

Colorful Rice
You will need:
A large packet of long grain rice,
Food coloring,
A mixing bowl, or container with lid.

To Make - Pour the rice into the bowl or container. Add a few drops of food coloring to the rice, put the lid on the bowl making sure it’s tight, and shake until all the rice is covered.
Don’t add too much food coloring at once or the rice will clump together. Add a little at a time, shaking well until all the rice is colored and not patchy. Tip out onto kitchen paper and leave the rice to dry thoroughly.

Tip - Make a small bowl of each color then mix all the colored rice together in a large bowl, or use separate colors to decorate different parts of a picture or collage.

This craft and a lot more are available, along with photographs, in full color, in our free Messy Tots mini-craft book by instant download. See the author details below to get your free copy today.


M New bold is a prolific writer on many subjects. For a free full color mini-craft book, visit:
http://www.cotswoldfamilylife.co.uk
www.cotswoldfamilylife.co.uk

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