For St. Patrick's day we made more tissue paper / mod podge vases again, to put candles in. That involved me yelling at Cora about WHERE it was appropriate to put mod podge...haha. :)
This time, for the first day of spring, we made button trees. It's exactly my kind of craft: fool-proof, and only 4 materials required: boards, sticks, buttons, and glue (both elmers and hot glue gun). I had the kids pick out their sticks and place them where they wanted them, and then I hot glued them to the board. MAN I burned my fingers several times...clearly this is not my gifting. Next I gave them each a cup of glue, lots of buttons, and said go for it...make buds on the trees! I showed them how to stagger the buttons, top and bottom, and to choose all sorts of colors. They absolutely rejected each and every idea I had about how this craft should go...haha. It's good for me. :)
Here you have our spring button trees:
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| Finn didn't finish his tree in time for pictures. This was a very...difficult...task, for Finn. He can build lego things for hours, but gluing buttons on this board? SO.HARD. Also, he was annoyed with me for even suggesting to put other colors on his tree: "Mama, trees are GREEN!" A literalist. I can so relate. :) |
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| Being the dork that I am, I put the buttons on a tray instead of in their OWN BOWLS, like a normal person who crafts all the time would have known to do. Sigh. It was so much fun separating them again at the end of craft time. ;) |
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| Layla's tree is FULL of blooms. :) It also has a sky and grass...obviously! |
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| Cora was not allowed to touch the glue. This was one way I controlled my yelling. Sorry, Cora. Maybe next year. Anyway, I'd dip a button in glue, and then she would point to the EXACT spot she wanted it to go. Sometimes I fudged a little to try to make it a better placement. She NOTICED. And she was NOT HAPPY with me. :) |
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| He finished it later, with Faith and Gracie (my mother's helper girls) |
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| MY tree. :) |
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| Layla with my tree. |
