My Crafts

Dogwood Flower Craft {To Go With the Legend of the Dogwood!}

April 17, 2012 By Lacy

We’ve been working on some Dogwood flower crafts to go along with The Legend of the Dogwood tree during this Easter season. Check out this dogwood flower cross craft!

These simple dogwood flowers were made out of cardboard egg carton cups by my 5 year old. (Note: I don’t think this craft will work with styrofoam egg cartons) Here’s how we did it:

Cut out an individual egg carton cup.

Next, cut 4 slits down the corners of the cup:

Cut off the corners:

You can stop here, OR…

You can cut little notches in each petal:

Now it’s time to paint! Start by painting them white:

Then, touch the edges with a little pink paint, and paint the little circle inside the egg carton green. Here’s one I painted:

And here are some Lydia painted:

We glued 3 popsicle sticks into a cross, and glued 6 of Lydia’s dogwood flowers into a cross:

I cut up little pieces of green pipe cleaners and glued them in the middle of my dogwood flowers. I felt like this made them more “crown of thorn” like to go along with our Legend of the Dogwood story. I placed mine in a grapevine wreath.

Don’t forget to read about the Legend of the Dogwood!

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Filed Under: Christian, Crafts for Kids, Easter, Easter Season, Legend, My Crafts 2 Comments

Craft a Divine Mercy Novena Counter for Kids

April 5, 2012 By Lacy

Divine Mercy Sunday is the Sunday after Easter, so if you’re looking to pray a novena with your family, you start on Good Friday. Crafting this Divine Mercy Novena counter is a great way to get children involved in the novena process.

The idea to make a novena counter like this was submitted to me by Happy Catholic Home last year. You can see her version here.

To make your own Divine Mercy Novena counter, you’ll need to start with this Divine Mercy Craft I designed. The download is free! He’s made using a toiliet paper tube, and you move him one popsicle stick over each day you say your novena prayers.

To craft your novena counter, cut up an egg carton and line up 9 cups in a row. (steps including knives and hot glue are steps for mom to complete, m’kay?) Fit together and secure with glue. I used hot glue. Take a sharp, pointy knife and poke a hole in the top of each cup. Wedge a popsicle stick into each hole. Turn over and secure the popsicle sticks with more hot glue.

I also wrote numbers 1-9 on the end of the popsicle sticks. When you have them all secured, it should look something like this:

I cut a piece of foam board to mount ours on, and glued it on kinda curved. Again, hot glue.

I placed a piece of paper in front and wrote “Divine Mercy Novena”. I didn’t glue it on because I’m thinking ahead to use this same counter for different novenas, so I wanted to keep it generic. Here’s the finished product!

Here’s the view from the top:

Find directions on how to pray the Divine Mercy Novena here.

And check out this printable Divine Mercy Novena prayer ring from Diary of a Sower with the Divine Mercy chaplet also! It’s free to print! This is the perfect pairing with this novena counter!

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Filed Under: Divine Mercy, Easter, My Crafts, Novena, Prayer 12 Comments

Palm Sunday Craft for Kids

March 27, 2012 By Lacy

We made these Palm Sunday crafts with handprint palms, and footprint donkeys. So much fun!

Supplies Needed:

Paint (preferably washable tempera paint for working with kids)
Paper (we cut white poster board into quarters)

I love handprint and footprint crafts! I like to put the paint out on a paper plate to let the kids stamp their hands in.

You can also just paint right onto their hands with a paintbrush if you find that’s easier. First, stamp a gray footprint in the middle of your paper.

A wider footprint makes for a cuter donkey head, so you might want to push the paper onto your foot to stamp some of your arch on there.

Wash off your feet. My mom was washing the kid’s feet, and I told her it was a little bonus “Holy Thursday activity”.

I had the kids fingerpaint the donkey’s features on. I would give older kids brushes and let them do more detailed work.

Paint the donkey’s eyes, nose, hair, and ears. We used red paint to add the word “Hosanna” because red is the liturgical color for Palm Sunday. Then, stamp green handprints all along the bottom for the “Palms”.

Tips for Painting a Cute Donkey:

First of all, I found that the footprint donkeys are cuter as profiles than straight on. This means you can see just one eye.
Donkey’s noses are white at the end, not black.
Donkeys have big ears, more like bunnies than horses.

To paint a cute profile donkey, follow these steps:

When making your gray footprint, be sure to push the paper onto your foot arch so his face will be wide enough.
Get some white paint, and paint a big circle of his nose white.
Paint a football shape white for his eye. Only paint 1 eye.
With your black paint, add one dot for a nostril, and one line for the mouth from the bottom of his nose.
Also with the black, outline your white football shape and paint a black dot for his eye. More advanced painters can add one white dot in the middle of the black part of his eye for a little glean.
With gray paint, add long bunny-type ears.
With black paint add his hair down his head and back around the toes, and a tuft between his ears.
When you’re finished with your donkey, add handprint palms across the bottom and a red Hosanna across the top. You’re finished!

If you’re painting the donkey straight on rather than a profile, he might look more like this:

Even Julian (age 3) and Violet (age 1) had fun with this one.

We’ve been watching The Easter Story from Hanna Barbara, which tells the story of Jesus from Palm Sunday through the Resurrection, so my kids were really excited about getting to paint the donkey and palms! I totally recommend this movie- so cute and hits all the high points of Holy Week. I was even pleased with the portrayal of the Last Supper and the wording was more similar to the new mass translation than the old one. (This movie is currently on sale for less than $4 including Prime shipping on Amazon!!! Thank you to Catholic Deals for finding this great deal!)

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Filed Under: Christian, Crafts for Kids, Holy Week, Lent, Liturgical Year, My Crafts, Palm Sunday 12 Comments

How to Make an Easy Shamrock from Pipe Cleaners

March 6, 2012 By Lacy

This is a great tip for making Shamrocks from pipe cleaners!

This picture really says it all:

Just put 3 of your fingers together, and wrap the pipe cleaner around all them, 1 at a time. Pull it off the tops of your fingers, and twist the 2 ends together to hold it.

Trim the stem to your desired length. You’re finished! Even if kids need some help, use their fingers to wrap around and they totally think they made it themselves. Lydia only wanted to make them in pink and purple, which was fine with me.

You can use these however you want. You could probably tweak this technique for making shamrock rosaries, and you could also make a shamrock for your St. Patrick paper bag puppet to hold! Also, you could use these as a prop for singing the St. Patrick’s Day Trinity song!