Spring has sprung!

It’s been a busy couple of months, very trying and exhausting and for the month of September I was pretty much away 3 weeks out of the month which didn’t lead to much crafting going on in the home.

Now I am back and things are sort of settling down.  I have been wanting to do crafts which involves the two working together to encourage greater sibling harmony.  I know siblings bicker and it is a way of working through issues but I want to remind them how much fun they can have together.

I have been trying to find ideas on the internet but mostly all I find is about introducing a new sibling to the family, not about siblings crafting together so I have been finding ideas and adapting them.

Emily has moved out of her toddler bed and is now in her extended bed which meant new sheets and a new quilt cover.  The quilt has purple butterflies and I thought Emily needed some decoration in her room to match the quilt.  I am not sure if I quite achieved this but we gave it a go.

I was flicking channels and Better Homes and Gardens was on and they had a finger painting idea for kids.  Here is the video link to the craft (or here if it doesn’t work).
I went to the local cheap store and found some canvases, printed off a tree design off the internet and talked with my two about how it is spring now and we are seeing the flowers coming out and so we were going to crate a picture together using our hands.  I also talked about how we use our hands to help each other not hurt and that every time they look at the picture they can remember how they helped each other make it.

I had a friend staying and I roped her into copying the picture from the print out onto the canvas (sticky tape it to the back of the canvas and trace over it with a sharpie)

So it looks like this.  (We ended up with two canvasses – one for each room)

Then out came the old clothes and the paint.  We only had the primary colours so we had fun mixing the colours together to create other shades.

I had Alexander and Emily use their fingers to paint first one canvas and then the other, so that they had worked together on both paintings.

Then to fit in with the themes of their bedrooms, Emily stamped her canvas with a butterfly stamp and Alexander stamped his with stars.

And then we were done!  We had to have a few fallen flowers and stars to decorate the canvas.

And we’re done.  Each unique to each room but having something of both of them, I think they can take pride in making this together.  I hope they remember making it together when they look at them.  Now to hang on the walls!