This giveaway is now closed. Thanks for stopping by. The winner is Jacob. Congrats!
Photo Credit: flaivoloka
With the weather warming up, my children and I are excited about exploring the museums, parks, and family-centered venues here in Southern California. We love to be out learning and discovering, but sometimes, we all need a bit of down time. Unique, interesting inside activities are a struggle since I have be creative with what we already have. I typically resort to crayons and crafts when we’ve read all of my son’s favorite books and played his favorite board games three times through.
I’ve never thought too much about how eco-friendly crafting is, but I’m certain their is a greener way to glue, paint, and use stickers to create original projects. Here are some tips on making your crafts more sustainable:
1. Take inventory of what you already have. Egg cartons, milk containers, empty toilet paper rolls, and the like can all be used for crafting.
2. Opt for recycled paper. Check out the tree-free paper made from 100% recycled paper at Kidbean.com.
3. Opt for eco-friendly art supplies. Check out P’kolino’s non-toxic, water-based finger and poster paints, Clementine Art’s natural glue, paint, markers, and crayons, Eco-Kids’ eco-paste, eco-dough, and eco-paint and Glob’s natural, botanical watercolor pigments and bamboo brushes.
4. Take your project outside. As a child, I remember picking up fallen leaves, placing them under a piece of paper, and coloring on the paper (over the leaf).
5. Utilize craft time to educate your child on green topics.
In the spirit of reducing, reusing, and recycling, this is week four of the Scott Naturals Test Drive! Making the switch to recycled paper products for four weeks can help save up to 2 million trees. Through their partnership with the National Wildlife Federation, Scott Naturals will donate $1 per unique click up to $25,000.
Win It! One of you will win a Scott Naturals Kit. Simply leave me a comment with your best tip for eco-crafting with your kids. Comments will close on May 15th, 2011 at 11:59 PM PST.
US Residents only. Duplicates and comments not including the above information will be disqualified. Comments are moderated. If you don’t see your comment in a reasonable amount of time, send me an email. Bloggers and non-bloggers may enter. If you don’t want to leave your email address, please be sure to check back for my announcement on the winner. Please note that winners must respond within 48 hours of being announced/contacted or another winner will be drawn.
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My best tip is to use/reuse items you already have. Collages made from old magazine images can really be pretty and gets the kids creativity flowing. You can even do a theme like a “my dream vacation” board, or “things of the same color” board.
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We like to use things like toilet paper rolls, that we’d typically be throwing away, to make things like binoculars, flowers, etc. 🙂
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following you on twitter as SnowflakeDay & tweeted: http://twitter.com/#!/SnowflakeDay/statuses/66855142959484928
paper mache with old papers instead of throwing them out
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We use cardboard boxes to make masks from and then decorate them.
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My best tip for eco crafting is to hold onto all used magazines/newspaper and use them to create Paper Mache items such as dolls, teddy bears, etc
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if you sew, save fabric scraps for kids to use in art projects!
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stumbled
we love old paper towel rolls and tp rolls for robots and bunnies etc
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Use markers to decorate used plastic or foam cups, then use them as seed starters.
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Don’t use plastic bottles for liquid drinks. I tell my daughter to fill up her re-usable bottles rather than waste the plastic bottles that will just end up in the landfill. Also, at work, we re-use the back of unimportant papers as scratch paper for printing emails, notes, etc. That way we get the most from our paper. Thanks.
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I always thought that kids were more clever at the creative stuff than I am, so my best tip would be to ask them what they want to make, and then give them a one-week challenge to gather the materials from nature, or thru reusing items they would otherwise have thrown away at home.
use what you have- let them paint old tshirts or tdye old tes and pillowcases
Kids often like do make a diorama of their favorite book using an empty shoe box and some selectively chosen pictures.
save fabric scraps and tee shirts to make a blanket with
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Janna Johnson
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Blow out your eggs when you cook, then the kids can paint them, turning them into ornaments.
Another is paper mache. Just flour and newspaper and you can make masks and pinatas!
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We use the back (unprinted) side of junk mail for artwork.
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The kids like using the toilet paper and paper towel rolls to build tunnels for their hamster.
My son loves to use the roll part of the paper towels to make all kinds of crafts. He just cut one into 4 “tires” and made a truck from it! Thanks for the chance.
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We like to make fishing lures out of soda can tabs! It’s a lot of fun and you can get real creative!
I follow you on Twitter under the name JCHARRIES and tweeted at http://twitter.com/#!/JCHARRIES/status/68823170836205568
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i use cardboard boxes and cloth to make to boxes
to make toy boxes
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Toilet Paper and Paper Towel rolls are perfect size for matchbox (or similar size) cars. They can go through them as tunnels or be used to fling them to go fast across the floor or down an incline. Cardboard from packages makes good ramps too!
I follow you on Twitter @GMERRELL and tweeted at http://twitter.com/GMERRELL/status/69141226087133184
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Save cast off, worn jeans and cut out pieces of the fabric to make potholders, patchwork placemats, small stuffed animals and all kinds of things.
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Save old christmas and holiday cards to make collages and new cards
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gkstratos at yahoo dot com
This may sound ridiculous, but my son loves to color in the phone book. Nobody uses those stupid waste of trees any more since the internet has every phone number ever, so we repurposed it to be a coloring book 🙂
We like to get craft supplies from right in our backyard! Leaves, sticks, grass, flowers, just about anything can be turned into something way cool!
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Pinatas, a balloon, newspaper strips, flour and water paste, any paints.
I like you on facebook Rebecca Rps
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making paper mac hie things with old paper and or magazines
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We recycle old plates by making mosaics on terracotta pots.
Use your empty margarine or dip tubs for mini disposable paint tubs
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We use items that are around the house. Such as cardboard, back of paper items,…etc…
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Tip: Make some cute characters out of recycle-able bottles.
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We use things we would throw away anyway like toliet paper holder, magazines, straws
Like you on FB Susan Smith
we reuse a lot of stuff. mostly egg crates
I keep a tote I put things in I know I can use to recycle for craft projects like stain clothes I cut the sleeves, buttons and patches and other things I can use for things like puppets etc. and stick them in the tote until I need them.
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Use paper egg cartons to plant seeds. Once the seeds spout the individual cups can be planted directly in the ground. It teaches recycling and well as gardening.
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Thanks for the giveaway…our kids used to cut up old magazines & create story boards from the images i.e. they would cut out a photo of someone’s face and then draw the rest of the body in a scene to create elaborate story books themselves.
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I melt and reuse crayons.
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We make paper mache animals and and people with junk mail and paint and glue.