Arts & Crafts Archives | Your Cash Exchange

Creative Stamp Making with Food

Stamps are great for crafts or decorating stationary before you send a letter. Here is a way that children can make their own stamps to decorate clothing, make a picture, or to make homemade wrapping paper to wrap a present in.

The best food to use when making your own stamps are apples and potatoes. Apples make a great design on their own cut in half vertically (for a traditional apple shape) or horizontally (for a circle with a star-shape in the middle).

With a potato, cut it in half and then make your design. Depending on the age of the children you may or may not want to let them execute this part. An easy way to make a design on the potato to use as a stamp is with small cookie cutters. Press the cookie cutter into the potato and the remove the excess flesh. You can make a positive or negative impression by removing the inside of the area or the outside of the area where the cookie cutter made its mark.

With tempura or another toxic-free paint, dip the apple or potato into the paint and have an extra piece of paper handy to dab off the extra paint. Make many different designs with the potatoes to great a variety of designs.

If you want to use the stamps as print making on clothing, buy some fabric paint at the craft store. If the paint is too thick add a few drops of water at a time until it is at a consistency that is easier to work with.

Be creative with your choices, you may also want to try carrots or another hard vegetable to see what kind of mark they leave. An alternative and less messy way to get the paint on the vegetable is to paint it on with a brush instead of dipping it into the paint.

Make a Wind Chime

The sound of a wind time in the summer breeze is very relaxing and making one can occupy the children for an afternoon. The materials you will need are items that will make a pretty sound when they rub against each other (shells, beads, or even old utensils), something sharp to poke a hole through each item, a hammer, string, a round item (a lid or piece of wood) for the top, and a hook to hang the wind chime.

Once all the items are collected the adult should use the hammer and sharp object (such as a screwdriver) to make a hole in each object. If the item is too hard to make a hole in (like a rock) tie string around it several times until it is secured. After the holes are made tie a piece of string to each item.

Take your tools again and punch holes in the round lid that you are going to use, one for each item that will be hanging from the wind chime. Thread the string through the hole and tie a knot so that it will not fall back through. Poke two more holes in the lid and tie one piece of string through both holes and attach the hook.

All that is left is to find the perfect spot for your wind chime. Place it close enough so that it can be heard through an open window on a breezy day. If the items do not knock against each other when the wind blows you may have to adjust the lengths of the string a few times until you get it just right. Keep an eye on the wind chime to make sure it doesn’t lose any of the pieces. If it does be sure to pick them up as they can pose a choking hazard to young children.

Summer Memory Jars

Instead of keeping a journal or starting a scrap book a child may be interested in making their own memory jar from the summer. If all the memories will not fit into one jar, they may want to make several for special days or outings that happened during the summer break.

What you will need is a large clear glass jar with a lid. This can be used from an empty pickle jar or other food container that is empty and has been cleaned out. If you are having trouble getting the entire label off, you can use nail polish remover to dissolve the glue and paper that is still stuck.

Have the child collect small mementos or other meaningful objects that will fit inside a jar. They can be photographs, a special rock found, something they made, a friendship bracelet, the options are really only limited to their imagination. A good example for a day trip memory jar is one from the beach. Fill the bottom part of the jar with sand or pebbles that were collected from the beach, add in some shells and other interesting finds.

Take a picture of your child at the beach and they can use it as a backdrop for the items.

As time goes on the children may want to open their jars and rearrange them and as long as they are careful with the glass that is fine. Put up a shelf in their room and they can have a collection of memory jars. Put a label on the top of the jar with the date or date range and the location of where the items were collected. These can be kept for years as a lasting reminder of the fun they had growing up and going to special places with mom and dad.