Creative Art Books

Creative art books are not only inspiring to get us back to our favourite hobbies, but they are also a good way to detox and pay attention to our mental health and well-being. Here are three books that we are inspired by: Paint Every Little Thing, Drawing Lessons for Beginners Cute Animals, and Creative Gouache.

Fun Games and Entertainment

We are always excited to try new games and do different hands on activities in our family. We love game nights, and recently have been playing Azul and Ticket to Ride London. We also spent time building with Flexo. A new calendar year comes with new resolutions to become more creative, so we have been practicing watercolour painting with Watercolour the Easy Way book and took the time to clean up, get organized, and even spiced up our phones by replacing our Pop Sockets with creative ones! We have also been reading the Four Seasons of Entertaining book that is filled with colourful photography, recipes, and ideas separated by each season. 

Getting creative and ready for school with Hilroy and Derwent products

We love putting pen to paper in our home! We draw, doodle, colour, paint, and practice creative writing every chance we get. It is well known that writing and drawing has lots of cognitive, physical, and emotional benefits for children and adults, apart from being fun.

Win Your Own LEGO Play book

My children enjoy learning from the colourful, and inspiring ideas on the LEGO Play book. There are over 200 creative ideas on how we can use LEGO to build different things such as castles, beach boats and more. It is a wonderful tool to help children and adults build and play.

A Compendium of Collective Nouns

I checked out this book A Compendium of Collective Nouns out of curiosity, as I find it is intriguing how collective nouns have come to be and are associated with things for example when we refer to accountants it is said, "a balance of accountants." It is fascinating to learn and use these during everyday conversations like saying, "an embarrassment of pandas" or saying "a parade of elephants". I enjoyed learning from and reading this book, which also gives graphic interpretations.

Digital Books That Spark Creative Writing

I like Story Panda books that make children think and learn to write books. The stories and drawings open up dialogue, and spark creative writing when children write their own stories on the create mode option. Since the images are drawn in a simple way and the pictures are repetitious it motivates children to draw their own pictures and make up stories. There is also an option to share the stories children write with family and friends.  

My Pirate Found Treasure Island By Sailing On His Pirate ship

For my son's birthday, I made a Pirate ship and an Island. For the base of the pirate ship, I used the recipe from here and decorated the cake with buttercream icing and whipped frosting.

We Got Creative With Kulapix and You Can Too With This Giveaway

Gifts with photos are wonderful to give our family and friends or use it ourself, as they are memorable. I enjoyed using the Kulapix site to create a variety of cool products with the pictures my family and I have taken. Although, photography is one our favourite hobbies I don't think we do justice to it, as we don't end up printing the pictures. Printing the images that we most cherish helps us think of the special memories. Kulapix gives us many options to showcase our pictures through printing on mugs, cards, canvas and more.

Having Fun With The DoodleArt Poster

We enjoy colouring the Original DoodleArt Flowers poster as an activity to do in the evenings. This 24"x34" poster provides over 70 hours of creative colouring for the whole family. This poster kit includes 12 high quality, dual precision-tipped, washable, non-toxic colour markers. Since we did this activity as a family project we involved our 4 year old to participate in the colouring, although this kit is recommended for everyone over 8 years.

Win 1 of 2 Photo and Graphic Designer Software and Get Creative

Since 1981 Xara, one of UK's oldest software developers have made computer programs that allow us to become creative. They have wonderful programs for us to do  such as drawings, illustration, web design and more. They have developed award winning programs such as the world's first check-as-you type spell checker, drawing software that provide real-time anti-aliasing and transparency control and much more. Xara software now operates under MAGIX, and provide high-quality innovative software, online services and digital contests for multimedia communications. 

A Gift For Dad: Handmade bookmark and Parker Urban Pen

For 125 years, Parker has created pens that redefine writing. Now as handwriting makes a comeback, it would be a perfect gift to give our dads or the men in our lives :)

This Parker Urban is a cool pen that redefines modern writing, as it combines ergonomics with art to give an unconventional shape. It has the perfect weight and balance to make beautiful curved writing. I really like the shine and the beautiful black colour body of the pen. This modern premium quality pen has an asymmetric cisele pattern, and provides durability and flamboyance. 

My Children's Fondness for Geronimo Stilton

My children are very fond of Geronimo Stilton. I introduced the fun stories of Geronimo Stilton to my children through the comic collection by papercutz. Both my children enjoy listening to and looking through the colourful images of these graphic novels, which allow them to imagine the story more easily. 

Fun melted crayon egg decoration

These eggs are fun and easy to decorate using crayon shavings, to do this activity you will need...

different coloured crayons

crayon sharpener

hard boiled hot eggs

newspaper to protect the surface

Striped check stitch knitted scarf

To make this striped check stitch knitted scarf you will need... 
4 ply worsted weight yarn 
4 1/2mm needle 

Easter Egg Decorations that will help Wishes come true

This year we can be part of contributing to a good cause by decorating and sharing virtual eggs with our family and friends.  Heinz and PAAS will be donating $1 up to $25,000 from now until March 31^st for every virtual egg we decorate and share using the Free Easter Egg DecoratorApp.  

This app can be easily downloaded for free via the App Store onto our iOS devices or if you don’t own an iPad, iPod or iPhone download it to your computer or laptop.

Here are some app images of the eggs we decorated.  My children and I found it easy to use the app to decorate the eggs.  It is lots of fun to do this is for a good cause, so download your free app and start decorating and sharing with your friends and family.  

We also decorated some real eggs for fun using the PAAS kits.  

There are seven different PAAS egg decorating kits for us to choose from.  

This kit Deggorating Doodles allowed us to use the stencils and pens provided to doodle and decorate.

The Volcano Eggsplosion uses melted crayon shavings to provide instant colour.  

The Touch of Velvet kit uses double stick adhesives and flocking powder to create fun, fuzzy shapes.

Here are some tips to decorating eggs:

To ensure that the eggs don’t crack when they are boiling put 2 tbsp of Heinz Distilled White Vinegar to 4 cups of water before placing the eggs in the pot to boil.  Adding the vinegar will also allow the shells to easily peel off when they are cooked.

We used PAAS egg colour tablets to colour the eggs.  To make the colour on the eggs vivid and bright, add 3 tbsp of Heinz Distilled White Vinegar to 1 tablet and allow it to dissolve.  Once it dissolves add ½ cup of water and stir. 

For the traditional colours use lemon juice instead of vinegar to the first line in the PAAS colour cups, then add water to the second line.
For the pink PAAS tablet to get a brilliant colour the box suggested we use only water.

Disclosure: I received samples from Heinz and PAAS to review.  All rights reserved on photographs and written content Createwithmom © 2011 - 2013. Please Ask First

Our Birdterfly Soap Dispenser and Contest to promote hand washing

As parents, we always have debates with our children about washing their hands properly. This contest by Lysol No-Touch Hand Soap is a cool way to encourage and engage our children to make a healthy habit of washing hands before eating. I believe when children become a part of something and get involved they value things a little more. So I really enjoyed designing our unique Lysol No-Touch Hand Soap Dispenser and happily displayed it by our kitchen sink.  

To decorate our bird-butterfly dispenser, also known as Birdterfly we needed...

Lysol No-Touch Hand Soap Dispenser

craft foam sheet

scissor

2 beads for the eye

2 craft metal wires for the antenna/ear

red duct tape for the beak

1 craft bird feather

a piece of silly band for the worm 

a piece of thick wool

markers and acrylic paint to decorate

a piece of women's stockings

glue gun

First cut a piece of the women's stockings to fit over the Lysol No-Touch Hand Soap Dispenser.  This way we can operate the on/off button behind the container and change the refill without damaging our crafty piece.  

I also put a hole so the liquid can come out. Since the stocking is very light the sensors work we didn't have to put holes in those areas. We used a glue gun to attach the metal wires over the stocking then placed the beads.  

Then we secured the top portion by tying a thick wool and covering the written area that was visible.  

My husband suggested we put a mohawk feather like a Cardinal on top to camouflage the stockings.  

We cut a piece of red duct tape and attached it over the dispenser piece that was sticking out to make it resemble a beak. My daughter suggested that we put a piece of silly band to make it look like the bird is having a meal. We placed the tape over the stocking and secured it with the glue gun.

For the bottom part of the dispenser we cut a craft foam piece and made sure to make two holes so the sensors work, then decorated it using markers and paint.  

Everyone took a turn to colour and paint before we put glue to the middle section of foam and attached it to the dispenser.     

Here are some tips...

First plan so everyone is in the same page :) We started off wanting to make a squirrel, then thought a bird would be better but also wanted to include our butterfly idea. So we combined all our ideas to make this Birdterfly.

Get all your materials ready and see if they work.

Remember to not cover the sensor after all we want the No-Touch Hand Soap Dispenser to work.

Lysol Hand Soap Contest

You can be part of this initiative and get your crafty children involved by joining the Lysol contest starting March 11th.  

Decorate and share the pictures of your crafty creatures and enter for a chance to win a mini-tablet daily. Here are the contest rules and regulations, don't forget to read them before you start your project :)

Disclosure: I am participating in the Kid Who Touches Everything blog tour by MC Canada on behalf of Lysol.  As a thank you I received compensation for sharing my opinion.  All rights reserved on photographs and written content Createwithmom © 2011 - 2013. Please Ask First

Time for Play with these DK books and making gooey slime

For children play is a form of serious learning, so let this March Break be a Time for Play.  This list of specially priced DK Books will inspire and help solve the problem of "What should I do?" questions especially during the upcoming March Break.  These books will allow fun and creativity to flow. 

This Alien Robots Science Book will be enjoyed by all the children and parents, although it is recommended for children age 7 to 12 years.  I like this super cool book as it has lots of fun robots that we can assemble with our children.  

I got my children's help to find the correct pieces to assemble and make six awesome robots.  

We learned about friction, motors, levers, gears, axles and propellers.  It explains physics, mechanics, forces and motion theories.  

This video will show how the robot spun, while the robot spun against the wood it made noise so lower the volume on your computer if needed :)

This Book Made Me Do It is a fun book that we can keep looking and learning from.  We can learn many interesting things from this book and I really recommend it for everyone.  We can brush up our know how about so many things such as arts, crafts, horoscope, interesting facts, origami, sports, food and more.  

We made this gooey slime, which is a messy but a fun experiment that children and adults will enjoy.  

To make this you will need...

1 cup cornstarch plus more
1/2 cup water
few drops food colouring

Put the cornstarch in a bowl then slowly add about 1/2 cup of water, stirring all the time.  It will become a gooey mixture.  Add the colouring then stir.  We can also add glitter at this point but we didn't do this part.  

Add more cornstarch to make the mixture roll into a dough between the hands and you will notice the gooey slime melt but when it drops it will become a solid and stick to the table.    

All rights reserved on photographs and written content Createwithmom © 2011 - 2013. Please Ask First

The Peaceable Forest: A Tale of Kindness to Animals

The Peaceable Forest is an ancient Indian Vedic tale about Kindness to Animals, written by Kosa Ely.  In this ancient parable from India was passed on to children through an oral tradition.  This story reminds children to be compassionate to all living creatures and respecting life.

In this story a forest-dwelling hunter learns that cruelty has consequences and that compassion has rewards.  When the hunter meets the wise man, Narada, "Do unto others as they would do unto you" takes on a very concrete meaning. The sage leads the hunter on an imagined journey in which the hunter becomes the hunted. When the hunter realizes his actions affect other living things, he has a change of heart and begins to live in peace with the animals he once pursued for fun and without reason.  My daughter said that her favourite part was in the end when the hunter becomes a good person and lived in a peaceful way.

Anna Johansson's richly detailed illustrations show the animal kingdom and enchanted forests with fine lines and luminous colors.  The Peaceable Forest is an inspiring picture book that illustrates flora and fauna native to India.  My children found this book to be colourful and fun to read.  The interesting pictures will attract young readers as they see the world in the perspective of the animals.  My son liked observing the pictures and asking questions regards to the characters' clothing and liked the picture of the hunter's stance when he was shooting the arrow.  

The beautiful and accessible message within The Peaceable Forest opens up conversations about kindness and nonviolence to all living things, which teaches children to respect life in all its forms.  After reading and looking through the book we can have meaningful conversations with our children about this philosophy.  

All rights reserved on photographs and opinion of the written content Createwithmom © 2011 - 2013. Please Ask First