Egg Box Easter Wreath.

We tend to keep hold of our old egg boxes, we sell our excess eggs in them and there are so many other things you can make with them too.  There are an abundance of Spring crafts to be made with the humble egg box. To prove a point; here is a craft that is easy and fun and perfect for Easter.

For your Easter/Spring wreath, you will need;
egg boxes
square of cardboard
green felt or paper
paints
paintbrushes
glue
buttons
scissors
(glitter if you dare - I boorishly bar humbug glitter as I can never get rid of the stuff)


Instructions

1. Cut a large 'polo' shape out of your cardboard - I used an old cereal packet - and paint it green.
2. Cut leaf shapes out of your felt OR paint a sheet of paper of card various shades of green and cut out your leaf shapes.
3. Cut the rising tips in the egg cartons out and cut the egg carton cups out.  Cut the side corners out of the cups if you'd like to make the petals more defined.
4. Paint your tips and cups any colours you wish.
5. Once the paint is dry, stick the tips into the middle of some of the cups, and buttons into the middle of others.
6. If you want to, you can poke cuts of string or thread into the button holes to create filaments.
7. Stick the leaves around the cardboard circle and stick the flower heads onto the leaves.
8. Stick string to the back using good tape and hang!

Here's another idea for egg box spring flowers, taken from our April Crafty Box a few years ago, the leaves can be made equally well out of paper and the stalks were made using pipe cleaners and gardening sticks.

…and if you're stuck for something to do with the lid and are putting on an egg hunt...

…or perhaps...

…or even…

Don't hold back, let loose with your imagination, it was only going to go in the recycle bin after all!

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Kid's Christmas Craft Party

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Halloween

This year we had our first Mrs Fox's Craft Day at our new Little Hadham HQ, just east of Bishop's Stortford, in rural East Hertfordshire.  The children signed in to the craft party with a white hand print that we later used to make a spooky ghost bunting.

Paper Jack O'Lanterns

We had loads of fun creating paper Jack O'Lanterns, which we lit with little battery operated tea-lights.  They looked beautiful, all hung in the shop window as they dried.

Paper Bat Sweetie Cones

With children ranging in age from 5 - 8 years old we were soon having great fun making a mess of the old butchers shop where Mrs Fox now resides.  We had only 8 children in the session so we were able to allow children to go at their own speed.

The children seemed to enjoy the crafts as they explored their own creativity, developed simple crafting skills, learning to use templates, cutting round simple shapes, gluing and colouring.

I learnt something too; I need to get some children's left handed scissors and I think I will try and do multiple examples of some of the crafts to give the children more confidence to do their own thing and be even more expressive and creative.

There was quite a bit of creativity demonstrated in some of the costumes, I have to admit Finlay's was my favourite.

I will also admit to being exhausted by the end of our hour and a half crafting, but, I had a great time and I hope all the children did too.

At our next kid's crafting day will be making Christmas crafts.   If you are local and interested in joining us go along to the Facebook page and sign up, or if you can't make 5th December but would like to know when our next event is, sign up to the newsletter below to keep up with all our news.

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Getting Ready for Halloween

I'm looking forward to some crafting with some of the local children to celebrate Halloween.  The materials for our crafts have arrived, and Bea the dog is looking like she's interested.

The crafts are all designed, a paper Jack O'lantern, a bat sweetie cone, a black cat badge, and I think we'll make some communal halloween bunting too.

It will be the first time we've used the shop for one of our craft events, so I've started a bit of clearing and tidying in there too, much to the Little Foxes annoyance, it's their play room at the moment.

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Una's First Felted Fox

I've been working on some new foxes for the Folksy Handmade shop.   Little Una Fox asked if she could try felting too.  Here is her first attempt.  Brilliant isn't it?

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An Underwater Collage

The Summer holidays are here - YAY!  And if you are having that moment (or ten), just not knowing what to do with the kids, I have a suggestion - An underwater collage.

I will admit, that the little foxes and I did this last year, or the year before that maybe, doesn't time fly?  It was one of the crafts for our Seaside crafty box.

A collage is a way of creating a picture with a group of different materials and techniques.  Or, in our house it means; checking out what bits and pieces of junk mummy has rescued from the recycling because they look "interesting" and put into the craft box to be used at a later date.

  

First we created a watery background with 4 sheets of blue paper taped together.  Onto this we painted our jellyfish.  This is a really easy way to make jelly fish.  Mix some paint with water, paint a few gloopy circles in blue/green/purple paint onto the paper, then with a brush dab more water on and tip your paper so that the paint starts to run, making the jelly fish tentacles.  

Once you are happy with how your jelly fish look you can flick some more paint onto the paper to create bubbles.

Once we'd made our background we populated our underwater world with animals that we created in a variety of ways.  Fish were painted on the back of cereal boxes with patterns in every hue.

We made turtles with egg boxes and more card from the recycling box.

We used the edges of a paper plate to get the ridges just right on our sea horses, and little bits of felt to give him a multicoloured belly.

My favourite has to be our lobster, made from the kids' hands and foot prints.

Our animals were all cut out and glued onto the back-ground along with various strips of coloured paper and felt for seaweed, and some shell illustrations that I had scanned from and old book.  I've uploaded the scans in case you would like to use them in your own art work.  They're here:

           

I have one last Seaside themed crafty box if anyone would like it for the very special price of £12.  It includes shells and fixings to make a shell keyring, full instructions and templates for the collage above and a milk carton boat.  Great for the summer holidays. 

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The Most Beautiful Colouring Book Ever and Drawing with Sachiko Umoto

I picked up these books at Foyles on the South Bank about 12 months ago now.  They were supposed to be for Little Una Fox, but I love them and have probably spent as much time as she has at Sachiko Umoto's illustration school drawing cute animals, and plants and small creatures.

So simple and charming, the illustrations and instructions are easy to follow and the result is a very relaxing passing of the time.

As much fun, and possibly even more relaxing, as drawing is simply colouring in.  And the most beautiful colouring book ever surely has to be The Secret Garden by Johanna Basford.

Johanna Basford's beautifully intricate drawings are created first by hand before being digitised, each colouring book can take around a year to create.

 Illustrator Johanna Basford with her Amazon bestselling colouring book, Secret Garden. Photograph: Johanna Basford and Lawrence King

Una has both The Secret Garden and The Enchanted Forest, they can keep her occupied for hours and I have to admit to stealing them for a little go myself.  They are so beautiful and quite addictive.

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Crafty Ideas for Easter for the Kids from Happythought

https://happythought.co.uk/

To help with your Easter Hols preparations here's a round up some of Happythought's Easter freebies and printables.

1) Printable bingo game - FREE EASTER BINGO
2) Bunny rabbit mask template - BUNNY MASK
3) Mini top hat templates - DIAMOND HAT TEMPLATE
4) Easter bunny party kit - PARTY PRINTABLES
5) Barnyard gift boxes - GIFT BOX TEMPLATES
6) Printable bunny garland - FREE BUNNY GARLAND
7) Easter pinwheels, bow ties and carrot gift boxes - EASTER PRINTABLES

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Happy New Year!

Welcome 2015!

We had a lovely Christmas how about you?

And now the festive season is over and the children are back at school Mrs Fox needs to wake up, sort out her messy den and get back to work.

We moved house before Christmas.  To a cottage with an acre garden and much, much work to be done on it.  It has overwhelmed me, I will be honest.  Having started another blog Mrs Fox's Den to write about the renovation of our house and garden it has been so all encompassing that I've written very little, taken none of Mrs Fox's wares to market for months now and Mrs Fox's workshop is not even unpacked!

However, thats the end of that kind of behaviour.  A new year and we are back on track, crafting, partying and having fun.  Christmas Thank You-cards have been made by the little foxes using paint, glue, stamps, string and Christmas wrapping paper I had saved off of their presents.

And while the kids were stamping, sticking, cutting and crafting their thanks, I made gift tags for next year out of more of the recycled Christmas wrapping paper.  So, we are feeling suitably crafty and thrifty.

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Last Day of Half Term is Paper Craft Day!

"Craft day please mummy!" was the cry of my little foxes when I asked them what they'd like to do yesterday, the last day of half term.

I'm in the midsts of a bit of a project in the studio, so it's a mess and that's where most of the craft stuff lives.  But, at a clear out at my mum's some months ago I found an old art box of mine from when I was a kid.

My little foxes have done most of Mrs Fox's crafts 100 times already and they wanted something new. So, I decided to look online for some other paper crafts that could be downloaded and printed out.  I wanted something that we could do at the kitchen table, that required no more than scissors, glue and the paints from my old art box.

We came up with, four projects from craft blogs and online sites (follow the links if you fancy having a go yourself); we spent the whole day doing these - wonderful day!  Here they all are:

A Paper Doll 
from Sweet Paul

London Paper Doll by Lova Blåvarg

We made the London paper doll by Lova Blåvarg. Two A sheets of doll, clothes and props.  London could be a boy or girl, s/he is beautiful, and I have to admit I printed one for me to paint and make up too.  We also downloaded Brooklyn, Lova's other paper doll, for a bit of craftyness today.

Brooklyn Paper Doll by Lova Blåvarg

I remember making paper dolls as a child, and had as much fun doing this one as I ever remember as a kid.  We mounted the doll onto some card and created a stand for her.  This was my favourite of our projects.

Big Ben 
from Paper Toys

Louis' been building a lot just recently so he wanted to make a tower.  On the same site you can download a London taxi and double decker bus which we didn't get round to making.  They print out quite small so you need to scale them up before printing.  But this was Louis' favourite and I've since had to draw him a number of "castles" to paint or colour in too.

Bird Finger Puppets 
from Mr Printable

I LOVE Mr Printable's site.  I have it book marked for a rainy day.  Everything they do is beautiful and this was the easiest project we did, although his beak got a little squished.  You can make 4 birds from this download.  The flamingo is a little too big to fit on small fingers but that just means mummy gets to keep one.  The toucan also conveniently fitted into Una's half-term homework project on Brazil.

Mrs Fox's Articulated Paper Unicorn

Ok, for this one you also need paper fasteners, or you can use pieces of wool or string knotted on either side of the legs.  The children have done them before, but it's one of Una's fav so I printed them out and we made a few more to add to our collection.  I've uploaded one to our website for you to download too.  RIGHT HERE.

Print as many as you like, but please only for personal use.  Drop a comment in the box if you download them, we love to know they're loved.  And if you want to share the love and link to them, please link to this page rather than the PDF itself. Thanks xxx

So, what did you get up to this half term?

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