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Tag Archive for Crafts

Crafting Time at Camp Grandma’s

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Renee Spindle

It’s Summertime here at Camp Grandma and we’ve had a few crafty adventures over the past few weeks I thought I would share today. We’ve been painting, coloring, blowing up lots of balloons, squeezing in some swimming, and eating lots of popsicles and snow cones. It’s been hot and humid here recently, and we all know how popsicles can cool the soul!

The first thing I did to make Camp Grandma a little special this year was I made a box, and each week when the Grand-kiddies come over (they are with me on Thursday’s and Friday’s) there’s some sort of crafty surprise or something fun to-do in that box. This has been a fun way to start the day, as the kids look forward to finding out what’s in their special box.

The first week the box contained paper plates, balloons, big crafting sticks, and some duct tape. We used the contents that week to make and play Balloon Pong – which I had read about at Grandma’s Briefs. I will admit that the grand-kiddies had fun blowing up all the balloons, but they had even more fun ping-ponging the balloons around. They didn’t have a lot of success hitting the balloons to one another, so Evan made a contest of seeing how many times he could “pong” the balloon before it hit the ground.

The next week at Camp I had put balloons, colored paper, scissors, tape, and the pattern to make balloon feet. We were making balloon people. They were so cute. Madison really enjoyed telling me what she wanted me to draw on her balloon. Evan made his into a group of the Avengers, which I did not get a picture of. Boo on Grandma. This crafty project was discovered by yours truly at Grandma’s Ideas. The balloon crafts have been really fun, and just plain blowing up the balloons and using them like volleyballs around the house was a great activity too.

For two of our weeks together we have done some painting. We used tempera paints, sponges brushes, sponges, and I splurged on some thick watercolor paper for my little artists. This is really the first time I’ve had a chance to paint with Madison. She loved putting the colors on paper and painting with everyone’s favorite colors. Madison’s favorite color is pink, and she know mine is purple. She’s always telling anyone who will listen that her Grandma’s favorite color is purple. Evan had fun being a mixologist, and discovering what colors he needed to mix to make other colors. He had a lot of fun being the paint scientist.

I am blessed to be able to have some special time with my grand-kids each week right now. This time together creates memories that will last for a long, long time. As they start to get a little older and as they move on to do their own independent activities, it will be good to know that we’ve had this time with each other.

Have you spent time with your grand-kiddies recently? Did you get in any crafting time with them? I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to this summer.

3 comments Posted in Crafts

Tie-Dye Day at Camp Grandma

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Renee Spindle

One fine sunny morning at Camp Grandma I decided it was time to try my hand at tie-dyeing. I had purchased a little tie-dye kit at Joann‘s Fabrics, along with some white t-shirts that were on sale.

This kit included the three bottles with the dye powder, rubber bands, and plastic gloves, along with the instructions of course. It was supposed to be enough dye to make 6 shirts. We made two kids shirts and one adult shirt.

In order to make this a successful project with Evan I had to have ALL of the supplies we would need set-up before we got started.

We headed outside to a table I had set-up on the patio, covered with black trash bags. I wanted to keep the mess in an easy to clean up state. And I knew that Evan, being only 6, might not have the patience to wait around for the process we were about to dive into. I was not able to take pictures of our processing, so I will do my best to describe the steps of our project.

We laid two of the shirts out flat, and then pulled up the center of the shirt into a long skinny tube-like shape.
Then we put the rubber bands around the shirts in 4 or 5 spots along the length of the tube. Similar to this:
For the third shirt, it was twisted it into a ball from the middle of the shirt.
Next the rubber bands were placed around the ball like the sections of an orange.

The shirt looked like this:

Now for the fun part. Evan and I put on some plastic gloves and carefully and slowly began to apply the dye to the shirts. Each section between the rubber bands was a different color. We had red, navy blue and a teal blue. Very patriotic in the end. Once all of the dye was applied to all of the sections of the shirts they were left to soak for the rest of the day. We put them inside plastic grocery bags, tied them shut and then cleaned up our table.

After about 6 hours the shirts were rinsed first under only cold water. This was to remove the excess dye in the shirts. Then the rubber bands were removed, and the shirt was rinsed again, in only cold water. This was to remove the last remaining bits of the excess dye that had not set into the fabric. Next the shirts went into the washer, cold water only, on the shortest wash cycle possible. Mine takes about half an hour. Then I threw them in the dryer on a very low heat.

The end result looked like this:

We purposely left a section white, as we were going for the red, white and blue effect. That was Evan’s idea. But with this kit the colors set in very well. Evan was so excited with how they turned out he modeled quite graciously for me.

When we do this project again, I will make sure I have another set of hands to help with the mess. The dye is fun to work with, but takes some skill in getting the colors on the sections of the shirts without running over into the next section. This process is not as intense as using a Rit dye process, but the results were pretty good. This project will be a great memory for Evan in the years to come. I still have fond memories of tie-dying some awesome, orange sheets with my Mom, and her girlfriends, and all of the kids, many moons ago.

And to all of my family – what do you guys think about a tie-dye party for an end of summer shin dig, or maybe for the holidays? Leave me a comment.