RECYCLED SCRAPE ART TURKEYS

Have you ever tried scrape art? Well don't. I mean you can, but if you do you better have plenty of paper and paint on hand because you are never gonna wanna stop. Don't say I didn't warn you!

Kinley and I had a whole stockpile of scrape art goodness from one of our extreme can't-stop-won't stop scrape art sessions, but we never got around to doing anything with the infinite rainbow-y scraped papers we made until this week when they all became turkey tail feathers, and aren't they the most flutterly glorious turkey tail feathers ever?!

JINGLE FELT WREATH ORNAMENT

Don't you just love felt? We've got gobs of that stuff in the trusty old fabric bin! The other day, I grabbed all of the colors I could find and piled it on the table hoping the perfect felt art idea would just come to Kinley and I if we just stared at those rainbow scraps long enough. At one point, Kinley grabbed her scissors and started chopping a pink piece into tiny squares and it hit me -- string those babies together and make a wreath! Even better, a wreath ornament!! (Christmas mania is in full swing over here. The halls are decked, the trees are up and decorated and Christmas movies are on a loop every second of everyday 😍)

COLLAGE TURKEYS

When Maggy from Red Ted Art asked me to dream up a cute little Thanksgiving craft to share with her followers, I thought our fave collage turkeys from last year would be the perfect project, but instead of tiny cork collage turkeys (sooo 2017 😉) we supersized them and made big ol cardboard ones.

COFFEE FILTER PUMPKINS

*This post contains affiliate links.

Got coffee filters and washable markers? Well, go pull them out, friend, because you've gotta try this process art pumpkin craft!

A couple of days ago, my buddy Diane from @adventures.in.mommyland shared some cute little Frankensteins she'd made with our kiddo using our free Halloween paper doll printable and this technique and we couldn't resist giving it a try ourselves, but jack-o'-lantern style.

SPIN ART SPIDERS

Grab your googly eyes and popsicle sticks and dust off the ol salad spinner, friend, 'cause we've got one of our favorite Halloween crafting traditions for ya today: cute little spidies + psychedelic spin art webs!

This one is kind of the best of both worlds -- a little bit of super fun process art and a little bit of sweet sweet crafty magic! Kinley and I make these babies every single year. It's so fun to watch her spiders evolve and look more and more spider-like as she gets older.

HALLOWEEN PAPER DOLLS

 

When I was little, my mom and I would cut out a bazillion little paper ghosts and then we would decorate each one to look like a person in our family. A plaid shirt with a pencil in the pocket for Papa, a hot pink fancy dance recital costume for Aunt Becky, a firefighter coat for Uncle Gary...you get the idea 😀

Looking back it seems kind of creepy 😜 but it was one of our favorite Halloween traditions and all of those cute smiley ghosts hanging everywhere reminding us of our faraway family members made us so happy!

I was thinking about this one the other day and trying to figure out a way to make it work for Kinley and I. She's still too little to find tracing, cutting out and decorating tons and tons of ghosts enjoyable, ya know? And then it came to me -- paper dolls!

PHOTO PAPER + LIQUID WATERCOLOR ART

Are you here for the watercolor + photo paper art ideas? Well, good news! They just moved over to our brand-new and even rainbowier website, hellomoonpie.com.

Head straight to the photo paper art instructions by clicking right here.

See you over there!
xo Cara

TISSUE PAPER DOUGH

That tissue paper dough is straight gorgeous, right?! Are you trying right this second to reach your hand through your screen and give it a squish? I don't blame you, but it might be easier to just quick whip up a batch of your own 😉

My instabuddy shared this dough-mazing recipe over on her Instagram stories awhile back and since she's not a blogger I asked if I could share it with you guys for her. Everyone needs to know about this one and everyone also needs to know about it's inventor, Katy from @prekwolfpack! 

TROLL HAIR ART

Awhile ago, some of my favorite bloggers (@artcampla, @barleyandbirch, @ohcreativeday and @momcollaborative) and I teamed up to bring back the 80's for one week only...I'm pretty sure we could have easily made it a month-long thang because there is seriously just too much gnarly to squeeze into five days!

The music, the clothes, the colors, the books, the shows, the movies...EVERYTHING IS RADICAL!!

Kinley was pretty stoked when I told her we were doing Troll art...and then I showed her the eighties Troll printable I made for the project and she was all "Ugh! GRODY Momma! What is that thing? Gag me with a spoon!" (Well, okay she didn't use those EXACT words, I took the liberty of translating them for my fellow 80's kids. You're welcome. )

PULLED STRING ART

One of my buddies sent me a Facebook post a few weeks ago that blew my mind! It was all about the magic of string pulling art and Kinley and I couldn't wait to give it a try ourselves...and then we couldn't stop.

BEST. POTIONS. EVER.

We are crazy for anything resembling art or science that involves baking soda/vinegar around here. So much actually that we broke down and bought the ginormous sack of baking soda and twin pack of huge jugs of vinegar at Sam's Club a couple of months ago and we are already getting down to the last couple of crumbs and drops 😜 We've tried so many variations of this classic science experiment from apple volcanoes to Babble Dabble Do's Wizard's Brew (if you haven't tried that one, you need to!!), but this one knocked our smocks off -- so, sooo good!!

My good instabuddy and total momma rock star, Nicole @ThePaintedToddler, inspired some seriously spooktacular backyard fun at our house with her Witches Brew rainbow fizzy STEAM idea and I couldn't wait to share it with you!

BIG MESSY OUTDOOR ART

I don't think Kinley or I will ever forget this day spent gooping around in rainbow paint in the backyard. She could've smushed that homemade gel paint between her digits for hours!

MAKE-A-MANE

Do you know a small human that is crazy for unicorns?
Maybe a better question would be, "Do you know a small human that isn't crazy for unicorns?!"

Yeah, me neither. Unicorns are pretty much everything. 😀

BLOW-PAINT MONSTERS

We used to run an art challenge on Instagram called @smocks.on with a couple of my instabuddies and we had hosts every week who got to pick a theme and challenge all of our little art community to incorporate their theme into an art project. When my crazy hilarious, super rad, oh-so-creative blog buddy, Shannon from OhCreativeDay, had her chance to host she chose action art.

I instantly thought big and crazy messy when I read her theme choice, but it was cold, rainy and incredibly dreary outside in our neck of the woods. Big and messy are not good indoor art words, right? Luckily, action art doesn't have to be crazy. Small and semi-neat can work too!

EGG CARTON FLOWERS

On one of my recent trips to the basement, I noticed that my recyclables-with-art-potential bin was overflowing thanks in large part to my ridiculous hoard of egg cartons and it reminded me that I never shared this adorable and super fun project with you! You only need a few things to make a pretty bouquet of your own and you've probably got all of them on hand, even if you are not a fellow garbage collector 😉

RAINBOW OATS

Did you come here looking for the ultimate rainbow oats dyeing instructions? Well, you are in luck because they just moved to our brand-new website and are now even rainbowier (yes, that is a word 🤓🤓)

Just click right here to be taken straight over to them!

THE MUSICAL CANVAS EXPERIMENT

Not a day goes by at our house without at least one spontaneous dance party and at least one super messy art project, so why it never occurred to me to combine the two before the day we gave our musical canvas experiment a try is beyond me!

I bought a couple of ginormous canvases at Michael's a couple of weeks ago for 70% off just because they were a great deal and when Kinley was bored last weekend, I decided it was the perfect time to bust one out and get that gal occupied. I grabbed some paint, my iPad and the trusty paint-splattered Bluetooth speaker for our usual art-making background noise and we headed out to our favorite creating spot in the backyard.

While Kinley squirted the red paint in her jar, I turned on some 80s jams and she just got right down to it, singing and flinging paint to the beat...and then it hit me. Wouldn't it be cool to change up the music style with each color of paint and see if her painting style changed to match?!

RUBBER CEMENT RESIST MAGIC

Sometimes I go to sleep thinking creative thoughts and wake up with a brilliant art idea or twenty that I can't wait to try with Kinley, and then sometimes I go to bed exhausted and wake up with not a single solitary teeny tiny inkling of an idea what we should eat for lunch let alone a creative thought in my brain and on those days I hit Pinterest. 😉😜

This rubber cement art idea is one that I've seen on several of my trips to that enchanted place where the amazing ideas are abundant (almost too abundant sometimes, right?) and it actually turned out just as pretty as they promised -- one of those Pinterest unicorns, ya know? 😂

FROZEN RAINBOW GOOP

If you've ever played with oobleck, you know the texture is strangely irresistible but you haven't lived until you've slopped around in a giant tray of frozen rainbowy kind! When I spotted this amazing idea from the fabulous brain of babbledabbledo.com's Ana, I knew we absolutely had to give it a try.

ICE CREAM DOUGH

Don't worry! Our magical dreamy ice cream dough recipe isn't gone, it just moved over to our brand-new website -- here's the link: 

https://www.hellomoonpie.com/blog/ice-cream-dough

See you over there!

xo Cara

MOON SAND

Three years ago, Kinley requested a space unit so I ran out and bought the Safari, Ltd. astronaut Toob and made her a ginormous batch of moon sand (aka cloud dough) to dig around in. From the very first squish, she was hooked! No matter how many rainbow-y, squishy, pretty, dazzling options I give her for sensory play, this is the stuff she always requests.

RAINBOW BEANS

We've tried lots of fun sensory bin fillers, but there is one that is far and away our ultimate favorite: RAINBOW BEANS!

We made one ginormous batch almost a year ago, they've been played with monthly since and they are still in perfect shape so I can officially give my tried-and-true stamp of approval. No loose skins, no moldy beans. They're just plain perfect and totally addictive!

Ready for that recipe?

IT'S A SMALL (MLP BEACH PARTY) WORLD!

Welcome to beautiful Crystal Rainbow Beach at the edge of the stunning Sky Sea -- PONY PARADISE!!

When I asked Kinley yesterday what kind of small world she would like next, she said something with her beloved My Little Pony buddy collection...and then THIS happened. We team-dreamed this bin full of beachy fabulousness up and she legit hasn't stopped digging in it and pretending with it and cooking up imaginary pony drama since the last bean was dumped in.

FRIENDS ART LAB - INSPIRED BATIK FABRIC ART

If you aren't already following my instabuddy, Kristian @friendsartlab, stop reading this and run over to hit that follow button! You will absolutely love her, guaranteed! She's like the world's most amazing preschool teacher/art teacher/college professor/human being on the planet and she's never shared an idea we didn't love, including this one: BATIK!