Bonfire Night Crafts

Fireworks night is one of my favourite celebrations of the year. It always brings back fond family memories and we always make the effort to go to a display, whatever the weather.

Scarlett has been off school sick for the past couple of days but thankfully has recovered in time this year to go to the village display.

So to keep her busy this morning we made a couple of crafts to celebrate the event.

Firstly we made a lantern to help light the way on the dark damp walk to the fireworks. These are fun and practical. They also save you from having to pay out for one of those crappy flashing light toys they always flog at these events.

Firework Rocket Lantern

So to make the lantern you will need the following:

• Clear plastic tube, I used a tennis ball tube.
• Battery powered fairy lights or torch
• Stickers
• Sparkly things
• Ribbon/ create paper

So this is really simple. I let Scarlett pick as many bits out of the craft box she liked to fill her tube.

We then tied together different lengths of colour ribbon. I pierced a hole in the lid and fed the ribbon though. I then sellotaped it to the inside of the lid. 

Scarlett then covered the tube in stickers...lots of stickers. 

Lastly we put the lights into the tube, put the lid on and we were done. This was great as Scarlett did most of this herself and was very happy with the finished product. 

Our second craft was indoor sparklers. Safe, colourful and fun.

You will need:

• Scraps of foil, ribbon and coloured paper
• Straws

Firstly cut a slit into one end of the straw. Place strips of foil, plastic, ribbon and paper into the slit. Seal the slit with tap, securing the sparkles. Millie was a fan of waving these about. The foil makes a nice crackling sound a bit like sparklers too.

DIY Dolls House

This has been by far one of my favourite craft projects so far!

I have decided to make a dolls house for the girls as a joint Christmas present. Its not totally DIY as I did buy the basic shell. I bought this really large basic Dolls House from ToysRus. It's super cheap at £50 for a wooden house with accessories and figures. But it's plain and boring...hence the price.

Cute toilet before make over

So if you fancy giving it a go, this is how I did the girls one on a super tight budget.

Firstly I painted the house parts before assembling it. Its much easier to paint before screwing it together. I used a some left over matt paint for the exterior walls and added white gloss to the raised areas for definition. I painted the door in a slightly darker blue to the walls just so it stood out.

Secondly I managed to decorate the entire interior walls and floors for free...how?
I searched the internet for a few hours and ordered every free sample of wall papers I could. Most major shops do free samples with free shipping, next, john lewis, homebase ect, but lots of high end designers do them too. The living room wall paper would be over £100 per roll to buy, but I got a large A4 sample for free. You also get the free sample rolls in most DIY shops, I just visited one and took some free strips. I used wood effect wall paper to create wooden flooring in the dolls house too.

I had to wait a couple of weeks for them all to arrive but once they did I got cracking.

Lastly the finishing touches. I used a home catalogue and cut out pictures of photos in frames to sick on the walls, fire place photos, mirrors, lights, plants. Once they were all stuck on they added character to the rooms.

So here are the finished rooms.

This is the master bedroom. This is wall paper glued to the walls and floor. Note the added picture on the wall of a rose from a catalogue of home décor.
I also covered the bed with a scrap of material and made a new bedding set.



The kids bedroom .I used wall paper on the walls and floors again here. I also cut out some kids cartoon pictures from a kids magazine to show it as a kids room. I added coloured paper to the stairs to add extra colour.

This is the living room with the super expensive wall paper. I've use the wood effect paper in here to look a bit like wooden flooring also.

You can see some of the added details here with the photos hanging on the wall, the fireplace and the clock. These were all taken out of a home style magazine.

Next my favourite room. The toilet. But mostly because I managed to find this awesome wall paper. I think this was from a DIY shop, which I took from the free sample roll.







This is the kitchen, again this was an expensive wall paper which I love. I pained the kitchen appliances and put some silver wall paper onto the pretend fridge. I also added some pictures of kitchen house decor stuff like the chalk boards on the left and house rules on the right.

Lastly here's mum in the dinning room, with a drink. I tried to make this as realistic as possible after all. I used fabric on the floor here to create a carpet feel and another square of carpet for a rug


Overall this is now a fun, colourful and hopefully something they will have fun with and play with for a long time. Plus if /when anything gets inevitably damaged, it doesn't matter..we can just re decorate.

Cress Heads

This is a great penny pinching home craft for the little ones.

The kids enjoy getting messy making them, lots of stickers decorating them, then watching them grow. The best bit is they grow super quick for those impatient kiddies who tend to loose interest if they can't almost see something growing before their very eyes. These only take a week or so to mature so are perfect.

So here is how:

1. Cut up an old pair of tights around the ankles.
2. Pour a few cress seeds into the toe part of the foot.
3. Top with soil and tie up end. (for the daddy pour a few extra seeds in around the top of your soil to create a beard before you tie up)
4. Turn upside down onto the tied up end.
5. Decorate with stickers. We did a mummy, daddy and Scarlett. 
6. Place into little dishes to collect water.
7. Water thoroughly at first, then just pour water into the dishes when they start to feel dry.
8. Watch them grow.
9. When shoots appear to be trying to break through the tights, cut a small hole to let them through
10. Add to salads and sandwiches when you want to give them a hair cut.

Day 1

Day 3

You can see the shoots coming through. 

Day 7

This is Halloween, everybody SCREAM!!

 ..In this town we call home

Everyone hail to the pumpkin song la,la,la

My attempt at corpse bride make up. 

3 times today Scarlett has made us watch the Jack skeleton (or skelington as she says it) film. She's watched is every day for the past week. So now I have the song on repeat in my head, especially when I'm trying to sleep at 2am.


Anyway I thought I'd share some of our Halloween crafts and decoration tips.


Firstly to decorating. I hate spending money on decorations for Halloween. Mainly because we have 7 family birthdays in October including Scarlett's so I'm usually skint by the time Halloween comes around. We go down the home made route usually and this year I prepared a few crafts to keep the kids quiet on the first day of school holidays and create some decorations too.

Skull Faces

This ones really simple. I pre cut out some skull faces from A4 white paper (the stuff you pinch from work). I then let the kids colour them in and hand them on the windows. These cast a great shadow on the windows during the day, then I leave a led candle on at night so you can see them back lit from the street. Super cheap and very effective.

Ghost Bunting

Again A4 white paper. Layer 4-5 sheets at a time, fold in half, cut out ghost shape and you have 8/10 ghosts. Then draw on simple silly faces for your kids to colour, or if they are older let them draw their own. String together with black wool. Done.

Hanging Bats

I cut out bat shapes from black card and let the girls cover them in glitter glue. I then suck them to the walls with blue tac and hung them from lights.

Scary Masks

These are great fun to make. Using card from a cereal packet or what ever you can get your hands on draw a shape of any Halloween character you want.
Then using free home furnishing catalogues, clothing catalogues or any other crap that get's put in your post box, cut out colour pieces for your mask.
I cut out brown triangle shapes from wooden flooring section for the wolf here. It looks a bit like fur from a distance and has lots of interesting shades.
I used green grass photos from a gardening magazine for the witch and cut into squares.
Glue all the pieces into place and cover with a layer for glue for durability. Once dry use a marker pen to add details. I also made purple hair for the witch out of some left over wool I had. These are great for parties as there's always someone (usually an adult) who turns up without a costume. The kids will make them wear these.

Lego KeyTidy

We don't really lose keys (well not too often) but I'm properly fed up with finding random piles of stuff, be it keys, change or whatever hubby empties out of his pockets. And although this hasn't totally resolved the issue it has made key storage a bit easier.

I made this Lego key tidy because hubby love Lego and I like tidy. Win, win!

I went for neutral colours here so it wouldn't look garish.

This cost me £8 delivered..all from ebay:

1. Letter stickers =  £1.99
2. Technic Lego (Part 3701) with holes used as keyring to stick to back board = £1.98
3.Grey flat tile bricks 4 = 20p
4. Large grey plate = £1.99
5. Smaller cream plates = £2.00

This is just stuck onto the wall with blue tac and stays up perfectly.

Sensory Board

This is a work-in-progress project here as I'm planning on giving this to the girls for Christmas.

I wanted to create a sensory board which would grow with the kids. So currently we have lots of fiddly bits on it, but later on I'll use it as a notice board and jewellery rack in their room.

I took a trip to a DIY and pound shop. I've spend about £20 altogether, so this is a super cheap craft with a lot of impact.

I bought the following.
1. MDF board. This was a cheap off cut from the bargain bin.
2. Along the top we have a metal rule which also acts as a magnet strip for the alphabet letters and light.
3. In the middle we have a mirror, door knobs, chalk board, photo frames, alphabet stickers, felt picture board and pink pencil case.

Firstly I arranged the bits on the board, finding out the best placement for everything.

Once I liked the positioning I raided the craft cupboards, stuck down the pieces and this is what we have. the circular photo frames are not finished, but they are hanging so you can lift them up and see underneath. I'm going to fill these with different textures and pictures.

Kids Artwork, Art Gallery

Scarlett always comes home with lots of artwork from preschool and although we put the odd one up, they easily get damaged by falling down off the wall and into the hands of littlest one, or misplaced in the odd pile of paperwork. So I decided to create the kids their own little gallery so they can show off their proud doodles.

I got a cheap £9 frame from Ikea (Norrlida if anyone's interested) 

Here's the before shot.

I then covered the back with some pretty paper, for when the frame isn't full.

I then carefully placed Scareltt's recent artwork. The a4 paper is a drawing of herself. We then have a lolly pop mummy and daddy with a love heart kite. Beautiful.

The finished result looks good. With her art on display, not getting damaged and we can easily change the bits over when she next brings something home.