Children’s Corner
I am sure you are bored out of your mind from hanging around at home. There’s no school (although for some that’s a positive), no work, and some online classes that really aren’t holding anyone’s attention span for too long.
Luckily, there are plenty of crafty things you can get up to with very minimal materials and all that extra time.
For the first, you’ll need an old lamp from which you can remove the lampshade and a magazine. What you’ll do is roll up loads of pages from the magazine and tape them at the edge so they stay rolled. Once you have plenty of these you can build your shade by gluing them together.
You can make them into any shape you want by stacking layers of the rolls on top of each other; a square, a dome or even a pyramid. Just make sure it is large enough so that it doesn’t touch the bulb and also has spaces in between each roll to let heat out. A good way to do this is to start off by laying two rolls parallel to each other and then stack the next two on top in the same way but perpendicular to the lower layer, sort of like a hashtag #.
If that sounds like a little too much effort or all your old lamps are broken, you could try out a new kind of painting. We know already that painting rocks, but can rocks paint?
Go outside to your back garden and see what kind of rocks you can find. Try and gather some large ones that are all different shapes and sizes and varying textures, smooth and rough.
Bring them in and give them some TLC with some soap and water in the sink so there’s no dirt left. Dig out whatever paints you have and see how many ways you can use the rocks. Will they be your smooth fast drying canvas? Or maybe your paint brush that gives you the perfect windy grass effect. The possibilities are endless.
Something else that you can do really easily with very little materials is make a pine cone bird feeder. All you need is a pine cone from the garden (or the old Christmas decorations box), some ribbon or string, some peanut butter and some bird mix. Tie the string around the top of the pine cone, smoother it in peanut butter and roll it around in some mix. Then hang it up on a tree and grab some binoculars so you can watch the birds from afar.
These are just a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing, but if you look around the house for old and unwanted things, there is always a way to make it into something new!
