The Real Life of a Wannabe Superwoman
I don’t want to say it too loudly, in case I frighten it away, but this week, for a moment, I was pretty sure spring was finally here! We’ve been making flower crafts for our Bostik Bloggers box this month and wanted to show them off in the sunshine with a spring picnic. In true British style, it was still really cold, and windy, but we had a good go at it anyway!
Read more: Spruce Up Your Spring Picnic {With Bostik Bloggers}
A few years ago, I was sorting through one of those boxes of random things that just end up in a corner at the back of the wardrobe, when I found a small box filled with letters my mother had written to me when I was a teenager. The thing is, my mom had died three months before and finding those letters were like a little gift from heaven. I decided then that I had to make sure that my girls received letters from me. Letters that I will keep in their memory boxes for them, that they can rediscover one day. When we received our #BostikBloggers box this month, with its Valentine’s Day theme, I decided this was a perfect opportunity to write each of my girls a letter.
Just before Christmas we were sent a new set of Colour Changing Gel-a-Peel, with Christmas goodies to decorate.
We’ve had a few goes with Gel-a-Peel, including the Glow In The Dark, Pearly Pastels and a Bead Maker, so this colour change Gel-a-Peel fit right in with our existing collection. The fact that all the kits are mix and match which is a bonus as you can make them all work together.
The Solar Colour Change Accessory Kit comes with three Gel-a-Peel tubes, 16 design templates, a gel tray with the tools to make gel shapes and gems and a drawing sheet. There are also 5 designer tips – 3 round, 1 rake and a star and a cleaning tool.
The kids really like these kits. They offer a range of creative options – they made some of the gels into earrings for Christmas presents, bracelets and gelling foam gingerbread men for Christmas decorations.
The squeeze tubes are easy to open, and with a nozzle on you can quickly squeeze and decorate. The gels take about 24 hours to dry, which is frustrating for smalls, but also a positive, because if there are mistakes or mis-squeezes, you can always fix it up.
The Solar Colour Change Accessory Kit, go on in pink, purple or turquoise, and when exposed to sunshine – or strong artificial light – the color changes to coral, lavender and gold.
Gel-a-Peel can be used on a variety of surfaces, and can make fun and funky jewellery items. If you’re looking for something with an actual wearable finish, you might want some adult oversight, but either way, it’s fun and creative for the kids.
I saw a picture of mitten Christmas tree ornaments and thought it would be a really sweet way of tracking growth in the early years, but also a personalised gift tag that can be kept by adding the child’s name and age so we set about making just that: personalised mitten gift tags.
Read more: Handmade Mitten Gift Tag Crafts #BostikBloggers
I can’t really believe we’re already at the ‘Christmas crafts’ stage of the year’s Bostik Bloggers, but here we are! We don’t even have a Christmas tree yet, but we have been making ornaments using the goodies from our Bostik Bloggers craft box.
I seem to have amassed a collection of polystyrene balls and stars over the last year, and thought they might make a nice Christmas tree ornament – specially since they’re shatter proof and won’t add much weight to the Christmas ornament box.
Read more: DIY Childproof Christmas Ornaments #Bostikbloggers
Whether you’re having a fully-fledged Narnia party or just reading the book and want to add some 4-D to your reading experience, Lucy’s Fire Flower cordial is pretty to look at but is still safe to be used as ‘drops’ like Lucy does.
Fire-Flowers grew in the mountains and valleys of the Sun. The juice from their berries was used to make the healing cordial given to Lucy by Father Christmas. A single drop would cure almost any illness or wound, even bringing people back from the brink of death. The bottle of the cordial was in what was said to be made of pure diamond.
Read more: Make Lucy’s Fire Flower Cordial For A Narnia Party
We’ve been super busy the last few weeks with lots of activities and things keeping us on the go, so we haven’t had much time for anything educational or even all that much crafty. The last book we read together was a short little one, Peter Rabbit, which I’ve been surprised to realise contained a richness of literary concepts in a short amount of sentences and pages. One of the activities we did around Peter Rabbit, using our #BostikBlogger theme for the month: Nature, was to create a diorama scene from the Peter Rabbit story.
The kids chose a generic “Peter Rabbit frolicking through the fields” image for the diorama, so we set about using the contents of the Bostik box to make our Peter Rabbit Scene.
We made flowers using pipe cleaners and little flower confetti bits.
Sometimes your children do something completely of their own accord that makes you sit back and think ‘Wow! I’m actually raising a decent person here!” Yesterday, Ameli did just that. I was busy simultaneously preparing for lunch, washing dishes and getting ready for our camping trip, when I walked into the living room and found Ameli folding papers. I asked her what she was doing, and she said “Making encouraging messages for people”.
Her plan was to open the window and toss them out into the wind and let people pick them up. When I pointed out that people might consider them litter, she agreed, and then decided that she’d hand them out as we were walking through town.
I thought it was incredibly sweet, and generous. She went onto Google and searched for ‘encouraging phrases’, wrote them out and decorated each ‘note’. When she ran out and wanted to make more, I thought the Bostik Bloggers ‘Flowers’ theme would work really well, so gave her the craft box, and here’s what she came up with: 
Read more: Flowery Encouragement Notes {BostikBloggers}
I’ve often seen fairy gardens made out of old tyres, but on trying to find out how to paint a tyre, I’ve found so much conflicting advice!
One site had a thread where people were discussing the best paint for your tyre with person A commenting that he had 30 years’ experience as a paint expert and that you should use an exterior oil based paint.
The next comment was from someone who had tried it and an oil based paint didn’t work. For every person suggesting a particular type of paint, another was refuting it and recommending something else. It was rather overwhelming, for something that was supposed to be a fun task.
Another site recommended washing then sanding then washing the tyre again, then using a primer before using one or another paint – that seems like hard work for a children’s fairy garden project!
Read more: Used Tyre Fairy Gardens
Following our first experience with Glow in the Dark Gel-a-Peel a few months ago, we were keen to try the Gel-a-Peel Pearly Pastels in time for Mothering Sunday. Of course this sees me overseeing the decoration of my own gifts, but hey ho, these are the sacrifices we must make. I absolutely loved the ‘frames’ that came with the kit, so decided to make them, but rather than cutting the pictures to size to fit inside, just used them as overlays. I love it!
Read more: Mother’s Day Crafts With Gel-A-Peel Pearly Pastels
