Posts tagged ‘recycled crafts’
Chipper Recycle Craft + Snack: Garden Lady Bug
Spring is in full throttle and summer is right around the corner! Now is the perfect time to get outdoors and explore your gardens! Finding little creepy crawlies with your little ones is not only a fun exercise, it instill an inherent curiosity in your child. That curiosity will push them to explore and learn about not only the great outdoors, but all aspects of the world. Education should inspire them to find out more, not stifle their natural wonder.
Take your little one(s) on a nature walk, strolling slowly in your back yard or community garden. Take 5 minutes in each area, observing things carefully, to see what you can find! Keep a look out for lovely little ladybugs. Here are 10 fun facts about ladybugs to teach your kiddos:
- Ladybugs are also called Lady beetles or Ladybirds.
- The male ladybug is usually smaller than the female.
- A ladybug beats its wings 85 times a second when it flies.
- The spots on a ladybug fade, as the ladybug gets older.
- In many countries, ladybugs are considered to be good luck.
- Aphids are a ladybug’s favorite food, making them good for your garden.
- There are over 5000 different kinds of ladybugs worldwide.
- A female ladybug will lay more than 1000 eggs in her lifetime.
- Ladybugs chew from side to side and not up and down like people do.
- Ladybugs are all around us! Ladybugs can be found in trees, shrubs, fields, beaches, and even houses!
LADYBUG CRAFT
What you Need:
- Egg carton or round cardboard piece
- black and red markers, paint or crayons
- scissors or whole puncher
- Pipe cleaners
- Optional: googly eyes
Instructions:
- Separate one cup from an egg carton or use any round cardboard pieces you have on hand.
- Using markers or paint to color the egg carton cup red. Then, using black paint/markers, color in the head, and make spots on the body.
- Using the point of a scissors or a hole puncher, an adult should make 6 small holes (3 on each side) at the base of the cup (these will be for the legs. Make 2 small holes (for antennae) where the top of the head will be.
- Insert a black pipe cleaner into each a side hole and out the other side for the legs. Use half a pipe cleaner for the antennae.
- Glue on googly eyes or paint on white eyes.
- Take your ladybug into the garden and try to spot some real ones!
LADYBUG SNACK
This Simple Recipe is Tasty and Cute!
Ingredients:
1-small red apple
2tsp.- strawberry cream cheese (low-fat)
1/8 cup- raisins or dried cranberries
1 or 2-red or black seedless grapes
Optional: lettuce leaves for garnish if desired.
Alternatives: peanut or almond butter instead of cream cheese. Round cereal instead of raisins, a small pinch of cinnamon. Use your imagination and what you have on hand in the kitchen.
Directions:
Wash the apples and lettuce. Arrange a few lettuce leaves on each plate. Cut apples in half from stem to bottom. Remove seeds. Lay each half of apple cut side down on
cutting board and cut in half from stem to bottom. With skin side up place both halves of apple on top of lettuce. Put a small amount of cream cheese in-between the apple
halves to adhere the apple back together (enough to have a small amount squish out the top). Stick raisins to cream cheese down the middle of apple, then use a small dab of cream cheese to adhere the raisins (see picture below) on each wing. Cut a grape in half and use cream cheese to stick it to one end of your ladybug apple for the head.
This is a perfect recipe for adults and kids to make together. It’s fun, easy, cute, and so tasty. And did Chipper mention it’s healthy too? “Healthy before sweet, can’t be beat!”
Chipper Recycle Crafts: Home-made Valentines Day Cards and Decorations
February is the month of love! Show your appreciation to your friends, family and loved ones by making them a Valentines Day card or decoration. Nothing’s as special as a home-made craft. Connect on an intimate level not only by making something but by giving extra kisses and hugs this month. It’s the little things that really matter so spread your love in small ways.
Appreciate and care for the planet by making recycled crafts, it’s amazing what you can make from “trash.” Save some trees by reusing old Valentines Day cards: just cut off the cover from an old card then attach it to a fold piece of recycled scrap paper. Color it, add decorations, or cut it out in the shape of a heart. They sky’s the limit when crafting with recycled materials. Just use what you have around the house. Pink buttons would be adorable on a crafted card!
Make a “Love Bug!”
First, cut out a heart (it’s easiest to fold a paper in half, draw a half heart from the fold, then cut a long the line) from a recycled cereal or food box or any paper product that’s a bit thick.
Then add some love! Our Chipper friend Callie used red, white and black construction paper to make hearts and a red napkin to cover her big heart. She folded strips of black paper and glued on fuzzy pom pom’s for her love bug’s eyes! She used glue but tape can be used here as well. Add some googly eyes or some legs to your bug. Put it on a popsicle stick and play or hang it on the fridge.
Have fun making a love bug with a toilet paper roll and come paper scraps! Decorate with ribbons, beads, buttons and bag ties. Here they used pipe cleaners for antennae and made wings from construction paper. You can easily use recycled paper and color it red, pink and purple with crayons and markers.
Let’s Go Chipper and get crafty this Valentines Day!!!
Chipper Crafts: Natural October Owls!
Owls make a great subject for teachers or parents to teach their child about wisdom and camouflage! Did you know that an Owls feathers are colored and designed to help them blend in with their surroundings? These amazing, ancient animals also have special flight feathers adapted for silent flight.They have developed special feather adaptations that enable them to minimize the sound made when flapping their wings. For instance, the leading edges of their primary feathers have a stiff fringes that reduces noise while the trailing edge of their primaries have soft fringes that helps to reduce turbulence. Downy feathers cover the surfaces of the wing to further reduce sound. Learn more awesome owl facts here.
GREAT HORNED OWL MADE WITH REAL FEATHERS
What you will need: brown feathers, yellow construction paper, black magic marker, inside of a sunflower seed,
glue, and brown construction paper or a paper plate.
How to make:
1. Draw an egg shape for the owl on to brown construction paper or paper plate and cut it out. The wider end of the egg shape is the owl’s head.
2. Glue two feathers on for the wings. Then glue on long feathers for the body.
3. Glue the shaft end of the feathers to the neck area so that the tips of the feathers form the owl’s tail feathers (Feathery part).
4. Cut the tips off of some of your feathers and glue them in a circular pattern onto the face area to make the facial disk.
5. Cut yellow circles from the construction paper and use a magic marker to color in the pupils. Glue on a sunflower seed for the beak
PINE CONE OWL
What you will need: Pinecones (If possible use pinecones that are twisted at the bottom so that the bottom of the pinecone is showing from one side.), Small brown feathers, yellow construction paper, inside of a sunflower seed, Chenille stems (optional), wiggly eyes, and glue.
How to make a Pine Cone Owl:
This is a very simple, quick and inexpensive craft for young children. Plus it can be a ton of fun to explore outside and search for Pine Cones! Older children may want to add legs to their owl using Chenille stems or pipe cleaners.
1. Glue two small feathers to the bottom of the pine cone to look like the tuffs of the great horned owl.
2. Glue more small feathers to the face area in a circular pattern starting with the shaft of the feather in the center of the face to make the facial disk.
3. Cut yellow eyes from the construction paper and glue to the facial disk. Use a magic marker to color in the pupils. Glue them to the face. Glue on a sunflower seed, point down, for the beak.
4. Bend Chenille stems to make the owl’s legs, and glue them between the scales of the pinecone.
These little owls look great in pinecone wreaths and Christmas trees.
PAPER BAG OWL
Recycling has never been so cute! This craft makes a great party favor for a birthday or Halloween party!
What you will need:Brown paper lunch bag, brown construction paper, black marker, yellow card stock or construction paper, glue, and newspaper ripped in quarters.
How to make a paper lunch bag owl:
1. Stuff a paper lunch bag with wrinkled up pieces of newspaper about half full. Pull the sides of the paper bag out from the top so that you can make a flat surface at the top of the bag.
2. Fold down the sides from the middle top of the bag and glue them down. Fold the down the point to the front of the bag making the top of the owls head. Pull up on the sides to make the horns and open them slightly.
3. Draw wings on brown paper and eyes and a beak onto yellow paper using a black Sharpie, and cut them out. Glue them to the bag.
Want to make more Outrageous Owl Crafts? Find some here.
Check out Chipper’s other Owl crafts and Owl recipe from this week!
Chipper Crafts for Children: Recycled Fall Leaf Garland from Coffee Filters
Paper plates, brown paper bags, and torn up paper are things that are great to use to create awesome arts and crafts projects. Invest in some paint; and look around the house for string, old buttons, newspaper, and beans. Whatever you can find! You can even looks outside! Leafs, pine cones, and sticks are perfect craft materials.
Celebrate the Fall season with this fun art project for kids: Coffee Filter Fall Leaf Garland! As the weather changes and families start to spend more time indoors consider arts and crafts for your child, as a fun way to pass the time and keep the boredom away. Turn off the TV and have a Family Arts and Craft Day! …or Night!
Create a colorful and easy Fall leaf garland with your tot or in the classroom that will have everyone loving the new Autumn season! This craft is wonderfully simple, making it a perfect project for little ones. Using coffee filters instead of plain paper creates really vibrant leaves that will spruce up any area, whether it’s your child’s bedroom or home room! Stringing the leaves to create the garland encourages your tot’s budding fine motor development, and offering your child marker-drawn leaves introduces staying within the lines while painting. The result is a really beautiful Fall leaf garland the whole family/class will love!
What You’ll Need:
- Coffee filters (cone or round)
- Red, yellow, orange, and brown markers
- Red, yellow, and orange watercolor paint
- Paintbrush
- Scissors
- Hole punch
- String
Directions:
- Offer your child a length of string and use for lacing the leaves. To secure them in place, tie a knot after each leaf and continue stringing until you have used up all your leaves.
- Now, find the perfect spot for displaying your finished coffee filter Fall leaf garland and have a Chipper Fall everyone!
Chipper Recycle Crafts: 3 Things You Can Do With Buttons
It’s amazing what you can do with various objects accessible around the house. For example, who doesn’t have a ton of buttons lying around? Every time you buy a new jacket, the extra buttons go into the sewing kit! Here are a few great ideas you can try out at home with the kids or just for fun!
They are quite simple and a great way to recycle old buttons! Crafts aren’t only enjoyable and rewarding, they can be educational and mentally beneficial. Crafts are especially unique and sentimental when made from stuff around the house. Next time you or your little one’s are bored and stuck inside, explore your house or apartment and have a craft material treasure hunt! You’ll be amazed by the craft ideas you come up with and make!
1. Mark a page!
Bookworms of all stripes will love these bright place markers!They make sweet stocking stuffers — and they’re fun and easy for kids to create. Simply cut lengths of ribbon (12 to 14 inches long, to fit a standard-size hardcover book), then attach buttons to the ends using tacky glue or a glue gun.
Shown here are just a few of the decorating options: sandwiching the ribbon’s ends between two buttons; stacking smaller atop larger buttons; and grouping several small buttons in a pattern. Get creative!
Make a customized book mark for as a great gift to friends or family that love to read. These would also be a great seller at the local craft fair. Remember, with crafts, the sky’s the limit!
2. Flip i!
This Button Skee-Ball game is fun for all ages and a great party game
! To make the target, use 2-inch-wide poster board rings (OR just use strips of plain old card board and construction paper or markers to color) 28″, 21″, 17″, and 8 inches long, secured at the seams with double-sided tape. Attach printed point values 
(or simply write them on) and assemble the rings as shown, securing them with more double-sided tape. Cut out a felt launchpad or just use some thick old cloth. Players take turns using a large button (white in picture) to flip 10 small buttons toward the target. The player with the highest total score wins!
3. Jazz up a window!
A button mosaic becomes a cheery sun catcher when it’s sandwiched between layers of clear Con-Tact paper. To make one, cut out a square of Con-Tact paper, remove its backing, and lay it sticky-side up. (If you like, slide a drawing beneath the square as a guide.) Place buttons on the square to create a shape, leaving at least a 1-inch border on all sides. When you’re done, cover the mosaic with a second Con-Tact paper square. Smooth the edges with a cotton swab and cut out the mosaic, leaving an -inch border on all sides. Stick your creation to a window with glue dots or tape!
What can YOU do with your old buttons? Please tell Chipper so he can share! Happy Craft-Making 
Chipper Crafts: Recycled Nature Castle
Keep your little ones busy and their end of the summer boredom away with some fun, easy-to-do recycle crafts! Collect pieces of scraps from around the house and create a fun filled castle paired with as many characters as your children can create. Finding materials from outside is a great activity too! Pine cones are a great addition to any craft : )
These Chipper kids used the plush characters from Chipper’s stories (COMING SOON!) and a home-crafted lady bug and a elephant to play in their Nature Castle! All they used were cut out cardboard pieces from recycled apple-packaging (just ask your local grocery store for their extras!), some craft or hot glue, pipe cleaners, scissors, markers, and a plastic container lid!
Anything from toilet paper rolls to bottle caps will allow your children to expand their imaginations and use these recycled crafts supplies to create a castle or any other kind a structure they can imagine. Once the castle is finished, send them outside to play with their castle and all the other things they made. Its like you bought them a new toy without a trip to the toy store and used recycled goods that otherwise would be headed to a landfill!
You can even ask them to create a play with the castles and its dwellers or just let them play and explore with their new toys. Save money and the planet with recycle crafts! Get Chipper and Crafty outdoors today!
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Chipper Recycle Crafts: From Old CD to Rainbow Fish!
With the 21st century mp3 player revolution, most of us have plenty of old CD’s lying around the house, either outdated or scratched and eroded. Keep these toxic disc’s out of our landfills by recycling them. They are perfect for making crafts! One idea is to stick your old J-Lo CD in the microwave for about 5 seconds. There will be some crackling but it’s quite safe. DO NOT put it in longer than a few second though! When you take it out, the silver film will have spider webbed out. Get some string and hang them up in a window for a gorgeous stain glass-like ornament! You can even use paint of markers to color them. Or, make this cute and easy fish craft from a used CD! If your kids like the Rainbow Fish book, they’ll love this simple craft!
Materials needed:
1 CD
Construction Paper
Craft glue or hot glue
Sequins
Instructions:
Cut the fin shapes out of construction paper. Glue the fins to the back of the CD (except for the front fin) so you wouldn’t see the cut edge. Cut the eyes out of construction paper, or you could use a purchased googly eye instead. Place dots of craft glue around the CD and place sequins onto the glue. Now you have your very own Rainbow Fish! Read them this classic story or check out this video of it before or after making this craft to teach them all about sharing and caring for one another. Chipper’s Helping Hands book is another great resource for teaching your little one’s about helping out where they can and sharing with their family and peers. Get Chipper and creative with some crafts today!
Chipper Recycle Crafts: Custom Mini Magnets
Recycled crafts not only make great gift for friends and family. Making and buying recycle crafts benefit our environment and reduce waste! Recycle crafts also help promote traditional crafts that are fading as people opt for cheap mass produced items. By buying or making handcrafted gifts, you can help keep those skills alive! All crafts, not just those that are made from recycled material, also encourages originality and creativity. Whether you are starting with the materials and find a suitable product to create from them, or you start with the product and have to figure out what recycled items can be used to create it, it requires ingenuity. This can only benefit art and crafts in general!
Instead of tossing out bottle caps, which are not recycled and go strait to a land fill or the ocean, create cute magnets with your kids! All you need are some caps, some magazines and a pair or scissors, magnet tape (very easy to find and inexpensive), and glue!
Cut out cute images or letters to spell your little one’s name or initials to fit inside the bottle caps then glue in. Then attach a small piece of magnetic tape to the back and stick to the fridge or other metal surfaces. These custom mini magnets are great for hanging your young artists’ drawings and paintings. They can be used for spelling out messages (or spelling practice!) and also make a great gift! There’s no better gift than one made with your own to hands for someone you love. Get Chipper today and get crafty!
Chipper Recycle Crafts: What can you do with a Cereal Box?
If your kids love cereal (who doesn’t?), you must recycle cereal boxes left and right! Next time
you finish the next box of Cheerios, save the box instead. There are tons of fun crafts and games you can do with just some cardboard boxes! One person’s trash is another person’s pleasure : )
Here are a few great craft ideas you can do with you cereal boxes from Chipper! Please share some of your ideas with us! Here’s one great craft/gift idea designed by real artists: Make your own Cereal Box Picture Frame!
Making Cereal Box Masks
Masks are a lot of fun to make, but they are especially fun to make for Halloween, masquerades, parties, or just playing dress up. Cut a piece of wrapping paper to fit around the box and glue it securely in place. Make the features by coloring them on with wax crayons, or pasting on bits of colored paper. Here are some suggestions for decorating your masks. Try different colors on masks to obtain unusual effects.
1. Cut and fold colored paper to make hats, ears, beaks and horns.
2. Wind strips of colored paper firmly around a pencil until they curl, to make hair, eyelashes, whiskers and beards.
3. Glue on other trimmings such as, wood shavings, ping-pong balls, fringed paper, cotton, broom straws, feathers, carrot greens, beads, earrings, fancy braids and any other trimming available.
4. Draw on eyeglasses, monocles, and any other decoration with colored wax crayons.
Make a Cereal Box Napkin Holder House
This napkin holder turns out really cute and you can make it from a recycled cereal bo. The first thing you do is get a greeting card envelope and open it up so that it looks like a house shape, as illustrated in (picture #1). Then get a cereal box and hold the envelope at the left corner and trace around the envelope to use as your guide when cutting (picture #2). Then turn around your box and hold the envelope at the bottom right side of the box (picture #3) and trace the open envelope again. Now get scissors and cut around the lines that you drew….keeping the bottom of the box intact. Now paint the remaining house-shaped box to look like a house. It helps to put a little bit of glue in the paint to make it stick to the waxed cereal box surface. Now let the paint dry and then give as a gift or start using to brighten up your breakfast table!
A Few Fun Ideas for Play with Cereal Boxes
Empty cereal cartons can be used for many play ideas. Here are a few.
(1) Build towers and castles. Place cartons on top of each other. Make them so that you have passages and tunnels. Place toy men and animals on them.
(2) You can play store with your cartons. Place them on the table or on a box. Pretend that a customer comes in to buy the boxes.
(3) Open the tops of three cartons. Set them sideways on the floor. See how many marbles you can roll into them.
(4) With a parent’s help you can trace animals, masks, and flat boats from the boxes. When they are cut out, you can color them.
Get Chipper and start recycling some Cereal boxes! What can YOU do with a cereal box?
Chipper Recycle Craft: Carton Wallet
There’s nothing Chipper likes more than making trash useful! Recycle a milk or orange juice carton into a clever carrying case for change, trading cards, and more with this easy craft idea. The carton’s cap keeps the wallet closed and you can get creative to customize and decorate this funky wallet!
The Carton Wallet takes about an hour to make and you will need:
-
- Half gallon milk or juice carton with plastic cap, rinsed
- Scissors
- Paper towels
- Tape
- Wallet Template
- Ballpoint pen
- Ruler
- Butter knife
- Craft knife or razor blade (optional)
- Decorations: beads, sequins, fake flowers, etc. (optional)
- Instructions:
FIRST, Cut open the carton so it lies flat, as shown; put aside the cap for now. Dry the inside with the paper towels. Tape the templateon top of the carton so that the top circle lines up with the spout. Mark the outline of the template with a ballpoint pen. Using firm pressure, trace the lower circle and the dotted lines of the template so that they transfer to the carton. (This will score the lines for easier folding.) A ruler will help you mark the straight lines. Cut out the shape from the carton.
- SECOND, Use scissors to cut out the lower circle as marked. (Tip: To make cutting out the circle easier, first make an X with a craft knife or razor blade.) Use a ruler and a butter knife to further score the fold lines.
THIRD, Following the fold lines you marked, create an accordion fold on each side of the wallet. - FOURTH, Tightly squeeze the accordion folds. Fold the top flap down, pushing the spout through the hole. Screw on the cap to keep the flap in place.
LASTLY, Decorate with anything you have around the house, using a glue gun to attach items, fill with whatever you desire, coins or cards or pictures, and ENJOY! Recycling has never been this fun or cool looking!
