I like to knit and sew. I like the satisfaction of making something with my own two hands. I enjoy the tactile nature of the yarn or the fabric, playing with colour, choosing embellishments like buttons. I especially enjoy Hannah’s excitement when I make something just for her.
In spite of my crafty turn I have been a colossal failure when it comes to kids’ crafts. I was a Brownie leader for 5 years, and in my unit the weekly craft nearly always involved drawing a picture about the topic at hand. Draw a picture about snowshoeing! Camp! Healthy food choices! I just wasn’t that good at coming up with relevant activities involving glitter glue and pipe cleaners. And now that I have my own kids things haven’t changed much – Hannah does a lot of colouring, and that’s about it.
I have tried. A couple of years ago I had my good friend and her daughter over near Christmas to make handprint ornaments. I made red and green playdough and it seemed fine. We rolled it out and wrestled two toddlers into making a ten or so handprints each. (This is not as easy as it sounds, by the way). We punched holes to string ribbon through, and etched words while the dough was still pliable. Then we baked it, and it became apparent that I used the wrong recipe.
You see, cream of tartar, which is featured in many playdough recipes, is actually a leavening agent. So our lovely ornaments ballooned and bubbled and turned colour and were a total disaster. My home-made playdough would have been great to play with, but was not suited to creating permanent objects. For that I would have needed a different recipe.
But hope springs eternal. I’ve been reading my latest issue of Mothering magazine, and there was a great article about creative moms. It was very inspirational, and I decided I needed to get back on this horse. I needed to craft with Hannah, not just for Hannah. I decided to try felted Easter eggs.
To start, we dyed some wool using Kool-Aid and food colouring. That part actually went pretty well.
Then I read some instructions on-line that suggested using a plastic egg in the core. I didn’t have any on hand, so I thought instead I could follow these instructions and just felt a little at a time in layers. And I started. But the felting was very slow-going. Hannah helped a bit, but it really needed hot water and a lot of patience so I mostly did it.
After half an hour I had made little progress. Jacob was cranky being on my back as I stood still for so long, and Hannah was asking me constantly where the eggs were at. I decided to change tactics. At this point I could have gone and gotten some plastic eggs and followed these instructions, but I didn’t. Instead, I remembered something about felting in the washing machine. I threw big wads of wool into some of my old socks, but I neglected the crucial step of tying off the ends. The result was the wool escaped and made lovely felted strands, but no eggs. In the end I got two lint-covered ball-like objects.
The rest were total discards.
Luckily Hannah likes her ‘eggs’, although she was hoping for something that would crack open to reveal a chick inside. (I love that she thinks I’m up to that sort of task). As for me, I think I’m going to try again next year. But I will follow the instructions to the letter, and skip straight to the washing machine. Because I clearly need to take baby steps to successfully craft with my babies. 
What about you? Do you have any crafting fiascoes you can share? It would make me feel much better.
I’ve limited myself to foam stickers and the occasional baking experiment with Q-ster, so I don’t have any daring crafts to show. I have, however, failed at making both Jello and Rice Krispy treats on occasion, so you can have a laugh on me.
Well, that certainly looks like a fun craft, but I don’t think we could do well with that around here. My oldest two are boys (5 and 3) and they are just not into most of the crafts I try with them. They love colouring and home-made playdough, so I do both of those often. The fancy crafts have to be left to mommy
!
You could have phoned me. I have lived these failures. My unspoken fiber arts teaching motto is “Learn From My Mistakes.”
I’ll come by this week with a bag of colourful wool bits, and my needle felting tool. Not a problem to fix those things up and make them look the way you intended.
I do have a few plastic eggs kicking around here; I’m curious to try felting around a slippery core. Sounds like it would be delicate work at first…but doable. Hmm. *ponders wrapping the egg in a light cocoon of woolen yarn first*
There are many disasters but really my worst still feels like my first crochet project. I knew nothing, NOTHING about wool. I was to buy 5 skeins of 3 ply in each of 4 colours to make an afghan. This was back a LONG time ago, when it was wierd to buy ‘natural’ but that’s what I did… I sent away to PEI, from BC, to buy naturally spun and dyed wool and ordered 3 skeins of 5 ply for each colour. Not only did I end up with 2 colour lots for each colour, the afghan weighed a ton when it was finished!
Hey, those are great attempts! I love to crochet, but have never tried (nor wanted to try) felting. It just sounds odd….like beltching!
When Sierra and me made our felted balls, we had a similar result at first. Being as stubbourn as I am I was determined to make them work.
Needle felting over them as Kirsten mentioned will work, but you can also just add more layers of wool over your egg and start the process again. The beginning is the hardest part. Once the wool begins to felt it is much simpler. This will take about 5 or more minutes of squishing and squeezing around the egg. Then rolling it on a sushi mat works wonders!
Don’t give up and have some faith in yourself! I think of myself as quite crafty but I wouldn’t have attempted dying the wool myself and you did a great job at that!
well it just happens that I have several playdough recipes in my blog
maybe they will help you this easter!
mikelis’s last post … CREATIVE PLAYDOUGH IDEAS FOR KIDS
I once did tie-dye with a friend. Neither of us had ever done it before except at one gathering supervised by someone who knew how. We figured we’d remember well enough from that. And we figured we could use the dye sold at the supermarket, since it was labeled “fabric dye.” Lessons learned:
1. Salt is needed for that type of dye. Lots of salt. Go and buy it before you start the project, not in the middle.
2. Tie the fabric BEFORE you mix up the dye with hot water, as it does not work as well after cooling.
3. Rinse and dry the fabric BEFORE untying it.
4. Do not rinse in the bathtub.
5. That dye from the supermarket is not so great.
6. Wear gloves.
We wound up with black hands, streaky sloppy-looking tie-dyed fabric, and multicolored bathroom grout. The fabric was passable for our project (covering trash cans to designate them as recycling bins), but after two rounds of that and being laundered after each, it was just sort of mush-colored.
You might also enjoy reading about my dessert failure.
I commend you for TRYING to make felted wool Easter eggs, anyway! Happy Easter!
‘Becca’s last post … 7 Things You Oughta Be Able to Do at Your Age