Crafty Book Review: Scratch and Draw Enchanted Animals

So, this book was totally worth it!



You know how they tell you that the only thing that has enough energy to keep up with a puppy is another puppy?

Well, the only thing that has enough patience to keep a kid entertained in the car is another kid. Will is a breed unto herself, and will only converse with you in the car when she needs to discuss what she's reading, something along the lines of, "It's annoying how Anne is so mean to Gilbert even though she clearly likes him," or "How are Buddhists different from the other religions?"

Syd, however.

Actually, I hadn't really understood this about Syd in the car. Before I took a six-hour road trip WITH her, but WITHOUT her sister, I would have told you that Syd spent her time in the car listening to audiobooks with her headphones, playing with small toys, writing and drawing and coloring, and chatting with the rest of us. Pretty typical.

But Syd in the car without her sister? With us? For six hours? With no escape?

Let's see... first, of course, we chatted, she listened to audiobooks with her headphones, she played with small toys, she wrote and drew and colored. That took up maybe half an hour.

She spent the next half an hour sing-songing the word "Alabama" in a Southern dialect, "like you, Mom!"

Thanks, Baby.

She spent another half-hour singing the following song, "If you were a cupcake what cupcake would you be?" It has no other verses. Just that one. Repeated infinitely.

And then I gave her that Scratch and Draw book, given to ME by a publicist, and for the next four hours she did this:

A post shared by Julie Finn (@craft_knife) on Jun 8, 2018 at 6:09pm PDT

You'd think she'd never seen scratch art before!

But to be fair, this scratch art is, like... fancy scratch art. With cool colorways. And facing-page sketches to inspire you, or that you can color. Syd sat back there, happy as a clam, and let Matt and I drive to Alabama with our sanity intact. Unpacking later, I found this book and peeped in, curious to see what she'd created. She had left maybe three pages in the whole book blank. Here's a sample of the rest of her work:

There are a lot of unicorns, you can be sure, but I also notice works in which Syd has noted and is trying to mimic the design aesthetic in the book, with a sleeping fawn and a fox with little embellishments on it. I also really like her first attempt at word art, trying to copy some lyrics from her favorite song, Train's "Mermaid."



When she gets that technique nailed down, I will frame all of her quotes--I LOVE fan art!

So, happy kid. Cool art. Reasonably quiet car trip.

Totally worth it! And there's still, like, three pages left to keep the first half-hour of the next car trip quiet...

How to Make a Wood Burned Leather Bookmark

Some time ago, I bought a package of leather scraps from RSVPhandcrafted on etsy, so that I could introduce crafting with leather to Syd. Leather isn't a material that I, personally, have a ton of interest in, but Syd is a gifted artist and an avid crafter, and it's one of my homeschool goals to introduce her to as many facets of arts and crafts as possible.

Unsurprisingly, she took to leather crafting like a natural!

To make a wood burned leather bookmark, first use sturdy scissors to cut a bookmark out of leather. I used another bookmark (we make them often!) as the template.

Next, use a pencil to make your pattern. It's helpful to decide what tip on the wood burner you're going to want to use, so that your pencil marks are suitable. You can get quite narrow and detailed lines with the right tip, but Syd wanted to use something a little wider, so made sure to make her lines suitably wide.

Then get out the wood burner and trace over your pattern!

You'll notice that Syd does the busy mom trick of listening to her audiobook with only one headphone on--the other is off her ear so that she can participate in conversations. It means she only pays half-attention to whatever is going on, but like her sister (and, frankly, like me...) she's gotta feed that brain with stories or she'll squirm out of her skin!

Here's the part that I think is the coolest: after you've finished wood burning the leather, you can get a set of permanent markers (Sharpies would work, but here Syd is using Prismacolors) and embellish the bookmark.

Notice that Syd has another piece of scrap leather by her side to test colors, because the tan leather gives unexpected results, sometimes:

Finally, you can use an eyelet setter, an awl, or the wood burner to put a hole near the top of the bookmark, then thread through embroidery floss and knot it. And then admire your bookmark, because doesn't it look pretty!

We have so many books constantly going in our family, that making bookmarks is somewhat of a collective obsession of ours. Here are some other bookmark projects that we like a lot:

• Upcycle a coloring book page into a bookmark. I love these for preserving the sweet coloring pages that the children complete, without adding another thing to my stack of keepsakes.
• cardboard record album bookmark. The duct tape is optional for this project; I generally only use it if the back of the album cover looks gross.
• upcycled cross stitch bookmark. I buy a ton of old picture frames at Goodwill, and this one had an elaborate, but not to my taste, cross stitch creation framed in it. So I gave it new life!
• upcycled Girl Scout cookie boxes. Seasonally, we have endless supplies of these, and so we have endless supplies of bookmarks made from them!
• favorite quote bookmark. This is a fun way to fancy up plain cardboard for a bookmark.
• comic book bookmarks. These are my favorite!
• downloadable coloring page bookmarks. It's actually easy to find bookmark templates online for printing in cardstock and coloring in. We found lots of ones for TV shows and comics that we love.
• secret bookmarks. This isn't a bookmark tutorial, but when Syd was a Brownie, the Take Action Project for her World of Girls Journey was these "secret bookmarks" that she hid in library books in the children's department of our local public library. It was such a clever project, and so perfectly suited to a Girl Scout her age!

I don't have concrete plans for the rest of the leather scraps in the package that I bought, although Syd has made other bookmarks and a few other projects. If you think of something else awesome that we should do with leather scraps, let me know!

P.S. I post more WIP pics and crafting and homeschool resources every day over on my Craft Knife Facebook page. Come find me!

How to Make a Decoupaged Wooden Plaque Jewelry Holder

I freelance over at Crafting a Green World, an eco-friendly crafting blog. Every now and then, on a non-regular basis, I'll share one of my favorite tutorials with you..

...such as this one! I originally published this decoupaged wooden plaque jewelry holder over here on Crafting a Green World.


 

Want a lovely way to display a few special pieces of jewelry without having to make even more room on your crowded dresser? Why not hang them from this handmade, decoupaged jewelry holder made from a wooden plaque? Here's what you'll need to make this super cute--and super useful!--project:

• Wooden plaque. You can buy these new from craft stores, although you'll want to be aware of the provenance of store-bought wood. An even better option is a thrifted wood plaque--I dare you to find someone's old commemorative award plaque and make it over!
• Acrylic paint. Both craft and artist's acrylics work for this project. Use whatever you like!
• Paper to decoupage. For this particular set of wooden plaque jewelry holders, I'm using comic book pages (in case you haven't figured it out yet, I loooove to craft with comic books!). Scrapbook paper is another great choice, especially as it tends to be acid-free, but I wouldn't let a worry about archival-quality paper confine you from the really cool paper of your choice.
• Mod Podge and paintbrush. This is all the glue you'll need for all parts of the project. Mod Podge rocks!
• Cup hooks. These little hooks are cheap to buy and easy to screw into your plaque.

1. Paint the sides of the wooden plaque. If you're upcycling a wooden plaque that has previously been sealed or varnished, you'll likely have to prime the plaque, or at least sand it before you can paint it the color of your choice. You only need to paint the sides, as the front will be covered by your paper, but there's no harm in painting onto the top edge, as I did.

  

2. Fussy-cut the image for the front of the plaque. To get the correct template for the front of the plaque, I lay a piece of paper--usually, the paper that I'll be using--over the front of the plaque, and then press my fingernail along the edge of the plaque, creasing the paper in its exact outline. When that is done, all I have to do is cut along the creases, and I'll have a perfect template of the plaque's front! Make sure that the placement of any design on your paper is exactly where you'd like it to sit on the plaque before you cut.

3. Glue the paper to the front of the plaque. Paint a thin layer of Mod Podge onto the plaque, and then place the paper. Wipe away any excess glue from the edges of the plaque.

  

4. Screw in the cup hook. Store-bought wood plaque blanks are made of wood so soft that you can easily screw a cup hook in by hand. If you're upcycling a plaque made from harder wood, pre-drill the hole, then screw the hook in by hand.

  

5. Seal the paper with several layers of Mod Podge. Mod Podge will seal the surface of the paper, make it wipeable, and, if you choose the glossy kind, make it shiny!

  

 I LOVE the way that these decoupaged plaques look as jewelry holders; group them and hold all of your necklaces and bracelets, or just mount one or two among the rest of your wall art and turn your very favorite pieces into your new favorite display!

I Took the Kids to Dayton for Fighter Jets, Possums, and Doughnuts

Dayton, Ohio, is only three hours from our hometown, but this is just the second time that the kids and I have visited. We've gone several times to the similarly distant cities of St. Louis, Chicago, and Louisville, but it's only been the last year or so that I've been discovering all that there is to do in Ohio.

And it's not even entirely all about the airplanes!

Well, I guess technically it was all about the airplanes last time we visited Dayton, and it was all about the airplanes for part of this visit, too. I made our first stop the National Museum of the US Air Force, because I'd heard great things about it when I was researching.

It's completely free, people said. It's better than the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, they claimed.

It IS completely free! And it IS better than the Smithsonian!

Check this out! It's part of the malfunctioning propeller that caused the crash of the Wright Flyer, killing Lt. Selfridge. We learned a lot about this last year at the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, but I had no idea that there were still artifacts from it!

 

The kids studied aeronautical charts as part of earning their Girl Scout Cadette Aviation badges, so I made sure that they saw this early example of an aeronautical chart. Can you tell that the route is basically just following railroad tracks? Brilliant, because it's a direct route and allows for visual navigation.

Here's another awesome exhibit. We've studied World War 2 three times in our homeschool (with a fourth run-through scheduled for next year), and once we even spent an evening LARPing the London Blitz. So it was super cool and interesting to see one of the bombs from that Blitz! See the tubes around the sides? Air moving through those as the bomb fell would make a screaming sound, just to make the bomb even scarier.

The kids are supposed to be looking terrified about entering Communist Russia, but I think Syd might be a collaborator...

We didn't have the whole day to spend here, so each kid got to choose one gallery to explore. Syd chose Early Aviation, and Will chose this gallery of the Cold War.

And then I made them pose with a thermonuclear bomb!

Check out the spy stuff! All of these artifacts have listening devices embedded in them. There were plugs, and a watch, and an umbrella, all with hidden microphones!

And these are things that have secret compartments to hold spy stuff! My favorite was the coin with a secret compartment, specially weighted so that it still felt like a real coin.

I found my favorite plane! It's the SR-71 Blackbird. I wish I still had my die-cast metal model of it from when I was a kid.

This is another awesome jet, the F-117 Nighthawk. Stealth planes are my favorite.

Syd was getting progressively louder about afternoon snacks and hands-on museums by the time we'd explored both kids' galleries of choice, so we headed to the car for sandwiches, and then to the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery for the rest of the afternoon:

Look what we found--informative posters created by Girl Scout troops! I bet anything that these posters were created by Brownies as the TAP for the Wonders of Water Journey.

There was a really interesting exhibit on the intersection of geology and myths.

And there was an entire small zoo on the second floor!

I love to see how captivated the children are by animals. 

Look how busy the sloth is! It was coming over to eat that carrot stick, and after it had munched it down, it fell back asleep. A woman standing next to me said, to no one in particular, "The sloth is my spirit animal."

Syd has a thing about doughnut shops, so I try to find one for her wherever we travel. This time, we left Boonshoft, found Jim's Donut Shop less than a mile from our motel, and bought ourselves each something delicious. Then it was to the motel for doughnuts and dinner (mostly consisting of doughnuts...) and swimming.

And it turns out that if you're swimming in a motel's outdoor pool a mile from the airport where the Blue Angels are performing tomorrow, then the Blue Angels just might be out for some practice flights while you're swimming. And if they are, they just might buzz your swimming pool!