Snowman Crafts for Kids

After sharing yesterday's snowman craft, I was thinking about all the snowman crafts I've made over the years. There are dozens. I put some of my favorites into this roundup. 

I particularly like the snowmen that are made from humble supplies: the plastic spoon, the cork, and the burned-out light bulb. But I love the other ones as well. All of these projects bring back lots of happy memories. You can find these, and all of the other snowmen projects I've made, on my Winter Crafts and Christmas Crafts pages. 

Peeking Snowman

I love snowmen. This one is peeking in the window of a cabin. My tutorial includes the materials I used, but feel free to change it up and use markers, crayons, or any other art material you want. Affiliate links below. 

Peeking Snowman

Materials: 

• watercolor paper
• Folk Art acrylic paint - Light Blue
• pencil
• Apple Barrel Paint Pens
• centering ruler

Steps: 

Cut the paper to the size and shape of the window you want. Use a wet brush to moisten the area where the sky goes, then brush a small amount of Light Blue paint horizontally onto the paper. Let the paint dry completely. 

Use a pencil to sketch the outline of the snowman. Use paint pens to color the snowman's hat, scarf, arms, eyes, nose, mouth, and buttons. Add trees - small ones in the background and a larger one in the foreground. I added shadows with the pencil. 

With a brown paint pen, make a window sill by coloring each edge of the paper. Use the centering ruler to mark the center of each edge. Draw a vertical and a horizontal line through those center points to finish the window.  

Painted Glass Ornaments

I've been painting glass ornaments to give as a gift. This set of four sparkles and shimmers in the light. I like them individually but I love them together as a set. Aren't the colors pretty? Affiliate links below. 

 

Painted Glass Ornaments

Materials:

• styrofoam block
• wooden skewers
• sponge
• plain glass ornaments
• Folk Art Gesso
• Folk Art Color Shift paint
• Folk Art Extreme Glitter
• craft glue
• colored rhinestones

Steps: 

Set up a drying station BEFORE painting. Insert skewers into the styrofoam, leaving enough space between them that the ornaments won't touch. 

Remove the metal tops of the ornaments and set them aside. Use the sponge to cover each ornament with gesso. It's tempting to try to cover the whole thing at once or do sponge painting with the ornament on the skewer, but I found it's easier to cover half of each ornament (while holding it in your hand), let that dry on a skewer, then paint the other half. 

When the gesso is dry, paint the ornaments with your desired colors. (Same recommendation: paint half first, then the other half). For three ornaments I used the three shades of Color Shift that I own, then painted the remaining ornaments with a base coat and corresponding shade of Extreme Glitter. 

When the paint is completely dry, replace the gold hangers. Decorate the ornaments with rhinestones as desired. I found it really handy to use a jewel picker. Add an ornament hanger, decorative cord, or ribbon and they're ready to hang or give as a gift. 

Decorated Cinnamon Ornaments, Three Ways

Have you ever made the classic cinnamon ornaments? They are fun and easy to make and they smell absolutely amazing. I've made cinnamon ornaments a handful of times, but this time I wanted to experiment with decorating them in three different ways. The results were really interesting! Affiliate links below. 

Cinnamon Ornaments

Materials: 

• 1 container cinnamon (2.37 oz)
• 6 tablespoons applesauce
• plastic wrap
• Christmas cookie cutters
• straw
• needle file
• Folk Art paint, Titanium White
• Folk Art Dots, Whisper White
• Apple Barrel Paint Pens
• twine

Steps: 

Mix the cinnamon and 5 tablespoons of applesauce in a bowl. Add the remaining applesauce if needed to make a smooth ball of dough. (Note: Some people add a tablespoon or two of Elmer's Glue to the dough, allegedly to help the ornaments last longer. I don't find this necessary, but go ahead and try it if you want.)

Roll out dough between two sheets of plastic wrap, to approximately 1/4" thick. Peel off the top sheet of plastic wrap, then cut ornaments from the dough. Use a straw to poke a hole in the top of each. Transfer your ornaments to a baking sheet. Ball up the scrap dough and repeat the steps until the dough is gone. Bake the ornaments at 200°F for about 2 hours. (Alternately, you can air dry them on a wire rack. It will take a day or two.)

Use a needle file to smooth any rough edges. You can see that the tree ornament below has some extra material (especially on the bottom branches) that needs to be removed. This task only takes a minute or two and it smells amazing. 

This is what all of my ornaments looked like after filing. See how much cleaner the tree looks? (Bottom left). 

On to decorating! I used three different products by Plaid to decorate my ornaments. I used Dots for the gingerbread man, star, and dotted tree; the paint pen for the snowman and holly leaf; and the paint for the bell and the other tree. 

As I was decorating, I was comparing the merits of each method. I found the Dots most difficult to control, but you can't beat the vibrancy and coverage. With practice, I could probably do better than the uneven dots and lines I made. The paint pen was the easiest to control, perfect for little details, but I had to let the first coat dry and do a second coat in order to get full coverage. The paint had good opacity and it was relatively easy to make simple lines and designs with a liner brush. 

I let everything dry overnight and ended up with this: 

The ones done with the paint pen are slightly less vibrant, but look at those tiny details. Now that I've tried them all, I'd recommend the paint pen for children, the paint or a paint pen for teens, and the Dots for cake decorators and other people who have spent a lot of time practicing squeezing with uniform pressure. 

The final step is adding hangers to your ornaments. I like the look of twine with these, but you can use ribbon, cording, or whatever else you want. 

The ornaments will last indefinitely, but their scent will fade over time. There are two ways to keep them smelling just as good as when you made them. The first is to gently file the edges and back each year before hanging them on the tree. This will, of course, make the ornaments smaller over time and will eventually cause them to break. Alternately, you can add a tiny drop of cinnamon oil to the back of the ornaments. 

Myself as an Elf

Turn yourself into an elf with this creative Christmas craft. Go traditional, with a red or green tunic over stockings, a pointy hat, and curly-toe shoes, or design something completely different. It's totally up to you! Affiliate links below.  

Myself as an Elf

Materials: 

• a small photo of your face
• microtip scissors
• cardstock in assorted colors
• craft glue

Steps: 

Carefully cut our your face with microtip scissors. Position your face next to a piece of scratch paper and sketch our your elf outfit. Make changes and adjustments until you are satisfied.

Use the sketch as a template to cut out the outfit pieces. These are the pieces I made for my elf outfit. 

Glue the outfit together, then add a background. I did a simple snowy outdoors using white and light blue cardstock. 

Have fun making yourself as an elf!

Ohuhu Coloring Gallery Giveaway Challenge

Ohuhu, maker of my all-time favorite water-based and alcohol markers, is sponsoring a coloring contest and you should enter! Why? Well, not only are there fabulous grand prizes for six winners, but EVERYONE who enters earns reward points you can use toward Ohuhu purchases. All you have to do is visit the Ohuhu coloring page gallery, print out your favorite design, color it in, and submit it. You can enter up to three coloring pages. You have until December 15 to enter. 

For fun, I played along but turned it into a challenge. I printed out a cake design, chose 7 colors (plus black, a warm grey for shadows, and the colorless blender) from Ohuhu's Kaala Landscape set (affiliate link), and gave myself two hours to color. This is how my page looked at the end of two hours. 

I love Ohuhu markers. If you've never tried them, buy a small set and see why so many artists absolutely love them. At 55 cents a marker, they are far more affordable than the other artist-quality brands. They make a great gift for tweens and teens who are interested in moving beyond the student-grade supplies. 

Good luck in the contest!

Gingerbread-Inspired Joy Christmas Ornament

I love making Christmas ornaments. This one is inspired by two of the best scents of the Christmas season: gingerbread and pine. The ornament took very little time to make, other than the drying time for the paint. I'm really happy with how it turned out. Affiliate links below. 

Gingerbread-Inspired Joy Christmas Ornament

Materials: 

• unfinished wood letters
• Plaid paint (Nutmeg Brown)
• white paint pen
• twine
• artificial pine tree branch
• wire snips
• red flatback craft pearls
• hot glue gun

Steps: 

Paint the letters brown. When the paint has dried completely, use the paint pen to add the frosting details to the letters. Cut a piece of twine to make a hanger. Snip the pine branch to the desired length. 

Assemble the ornament by first gluing the letters to one another. Glue the connected word to the pine branch, then add the twine. Finish the project by adding pearls in clusters of three. 

Christmas Name Art

Turn on the holiday music and challenge the kids to turn the letters in their names into Christmas icons. Like all good name art projects, this works with any name and is a fun and creative activity. Affiliate links below. 

Christmas Name Art

Materials:

• Neenah Bristol Vellum
• Ohuhu Kaala Illustration markers
• Sakura fineliner

Steps: 

Use a pencil to lightly write your name in block letters on a piece of bristol vellum. Sketch in details to turn each letter into something associated with Christmas. I made my C into a candy cane, the I into a snowman, the N into gingerbread, the D into a gift, and the Y into an oddly skinny Santa. Other ideas include: an elf, snow on a chimney top, an angel, a reindeer, a sugar cookie, or tree lights. Certain letters are perfect for specific shapes, like a stocking for J or a Christmas tree for A. Feel free to mix upper- and lowercase letters to get the shapes you want. Anything goes!

Once you are happy with your design, color it in. Erase any stray pencil marks, then outline your design with a fineliner. 

Football Helmet Christmas Tree Ornaments (or Refrigerator Magnets)

Ever since making the NFL helmet refrigerator magnets, I've been paying attention to helmet designs. I had extra wooden shapes, so I decided to paint some college teams. I turned some into Christmas tree ornaments and others into magnets. Affiliate links below.  

Football Helmet Ornaments (or Magnets)

Materials: 

• wooden football helmets
• Folk Art acrylic paint
• paintbrushes - flat and liner
• hand drill 
• Mod Podge Sealer 
• decorative cord 
• self-adhesive magnets

Steps: 

Use a flat brush to paint the base coat for each helmet you are making. When the paint is dry, you can draw your design freehand. Or, if you need a little help getting the proportions of the logo just right, print out an image of the actual helmet that is the same size as the wooden helmet. Cut around the edges, then use this transfer technique to get the design onto your wooden piece. 

Use the liner brush to paint the logo onto the helmet, then paint the facemask in the appropriate color. The facemask continues onto the body of the helmet. I painted freehand, but you can sketch it out first or use the transfer technique again. 

If you are making ornaments, use a hand drill to put holes into the top of the helmet. If you are making magnets, you don't need a hole. Seal the helmet with Mod Podge. 

Add a piece of decorative cord to hang your ornament or apply a magnet to the back of the helmet. 

Here's a closer look at each of the helmets I made (before I decided which would be magnets and which would be ornaments, which is why you don't see the holes yet): 

Indiana University Hoosiers

University of Oregon Ducks

University of Nebraska Cornhuskers

University of Michigan Wolverines

University of Georgia Bulldogs

I like the versatility of this craft. You could easily have a room full of people working on the same basic craft, but each could choose their own team and whether they want it to be an ornament or a magnet. 

Twenty-One

To document our 21st anniversary celebration in Healdsburg, I did something completely different than I normally do. 

Twenty-One (affiliate link)

My usual process is to print a handful of photos, mat one or more with cardstock, arrange them on background paper, add a title using letter stickers, handwrite journaling, then add sticker or die-cut embellishments. Instead, I chose a single photo and cropped it to 6x3". I added it to a blank 6x4" canvas, which gave me 1/2" above the picture for a title and 1/2" below the picture for journaling. I added both digitally. Then I cropped out our anniversary dessert from a separate photo and put it on a second blank canvas and added a heart with the date in the middle. I printed those two photos, fussy-cut the dessert and the heart, then glued the three elements to the background paper. 

This is as close as I've come to digital scrapbooking. I enjoyed the process and can see doing something like this again occasionally, but for me the true fun of scrapbooking is playing with the papers, stickers, die cuts and other physical products.

Blueberry Pie Painted Rock

Does this look like a blueberry pie? I hope so. It definitely doesn't taste like a blueberry pie. Not that I've tasted it. If I did, it would taste like a rock. And paint.  

When I first saw this disc-shaped rock, I thought it looked like a pie. So I painted it to be a blueberry pie, which happens to be the state dessert of Maine. Affiliate links below. 

Blueberry Pie Painted Rock

Materials:

• a clean, disc-shaped rock
• Ohuhu Nahuku markers
• Folk Art paint - Yellow Ochre
• brown ink pad
• mini ink blending brush
• brown colored pencil 

Steps:

Use a light blue paint pen to make dots randomly across the entire front of the rock. Use a dark blue paint pen to draw smaller dots on top of those dots. You should mostly fill the space, but leave tiny bits of rock showing through. I colored the sides of my rock black, but in retrospect, that was completely unnecessary, so skip that. 

Paint the sides of the rock with yellow ochre (yes, completely covering the black that doesn't need to be there.) When it is dry, brush it with brown ink to give it some varigation. Then paint vertical lines to form the first part of the lattice. 

Add horizontal lines to complete the lattice. When the paint is dry, use the ink and a mini blending brush to darken every other intersection. This will help give the illusion that the lattice work is woven. 

When the ink dries, use the colored pencil to draw tiny lines around the outside edge to mimic the crimp marks made by a fork. Then you'll have a blueberry pie that looks good enough to eat! But don't. It's still a paint-covered rock. 

I will be taking the next two weeks off as I spend time with both sides of the family. I'll be back with more posts on December 1. 

The Lab

On paper, we have a 3-car garage. In reality, it is a 0-car garage. Instead, it is a workshop and electronics lab. While I miss parking in the garage when it's raining or 100°+ outside, having a lab in our garage makes it possible for Steve to work from home. And that's way more important to me than parking in the garage. 

The Lab (affiliate link)

This is the third layout I made for the final game of the 2025 BYSS World Series. I earned four points for the Banshees: one point for the specialty paper I used in the background, 1 point for journaling, 1 point for using inks (to color the gears, that started as raw chipboard), and 1 point for taking inspiration from Rebecca Stewart Arceneaux. I liked the way she used different colors of horizontal paper under her photo; I translated that into a spot for my journaling. 

It's not official yet, but it looks like Twisted Scissors will sweep the Scrappin' Banshees 3-0. Darn. We'll get 'em next time!

CHS Band

Steve and I had such a good time traveling to Spokane to watch Aiden perform at the Pacific Northwest Marching Band Championships. 

 

CHS Band (affiliate link)

This was the second layout I made for Game Three of the BYSS World Series. This time, I was inspired by the title of this page by Angie Feldman. I like the way she used the high school's initials on a tag above the rest of the title. I created a CHS banner on PicMonkey, cut it out with microtip scissors, then added it above BAND. 

In addition to the point for the inspiration, I earned points for using a specialty paper (the background is embossed and glittery), journaling, and an outdoor element (the football field sticker). That's a total of four more points for the Banshees. 

Trick-or-Treat 2025

Dressing in a chemist costume and greeting trick-or-treaters this Halloween was so much fun! 

Trick-or-Treat 2025 (affiliate link)

This was the first layout I made for Game 3 of the BYSS World Series. Unfortunately, my team (Scrappin' Banshees) lost again last week. While we won't be winning the Series, I'm hoping that we can get on the board this week and not lose in a sweep. This is the week's assignment: 

My layout earned four points for the Banshees. The NovMember prompt asked us to get inspiration from any element of any BYSS member's layout, other than the color or design of the layout. I chose to use the embellishment cluster in the bottom right corner of this page by Lisa Angie Miller. Hers is a smily face, a layered button, and the year '21; mine are two pumpkins (with smily faces) and the year '25. And some candy corn. 

  

My other three points come from including journaling, using specially textured paper (my background paper is embossed), and including an outdoor element (bat stickers). Go Banshees!

Chipboard Fiddle Craft

Have you ever wondered about the difference between a violin and a fiddle? The short answer is that they are the same instrument, played in a different way for classical and jazz music (violin) versus country and bluegrass (fiddle). The long answer is a lot more complicated. Since the fiddle has been named the state instrument of Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Dakota, I thought it would be fun to design a craft based on this instrument. If you need a violin craft, just follow the same directions! 

Before I get to the tutorial, here I am holding my fiddle to give you a sense of scale. Obviously, you can make it as large or small as you want. 

Chipboard Fiddle Craft

Materials:

• fiddle image (below)
• chipboard
• binder clips
• microtip scissors
• Folk Art paint (Pure Black, Yellow Ochre, Autumn Leaves)
• brown ink pad
• black felt pen
• black ballpoint pen
• pencil
• paper piercer
• 3 mm gold brads or gold pearls
• craft glue

Steps: 

Print the image of the fiddle in the same size you want your finished project. Using scissors, separate the neck of the fiddle from the body. You now have two pattern pieces. 

Use the binder clips to attach the pattern pieces to chipboard. Carefully cut out each one, moving the binder clips as necessary. 

Cut out three more pieces from the scraps of chipboard: the bridge, the chinrest, and the tailpiece. You should have five pieces total. 

Paint the neck of the fiddle black. Extend the paint into the center of the pegbox. Rinse the brush. Mix a dash of Autumn Leaves into Yellow Ochre, stirring until it is mostly combined but not completely. Paint the body of the fiddle from top to bottom (no sideways strokes) to mimic the grain of the wood. The slight color variation will help it look more realistic. 

Paint the pegbox next, allowing some of the black to mix with the wood color. Then paint the scroll and pegs. Finally, paint the bridge, chinrest, and tailpiece. Let the paint dry completely. 

Tape the two pattern pieces back together. Use this technique to transfer the location of the F-holes to the painted chipboard, then color them in with the black felt pen. 

Use the brown inkpad to ink around the edges of all of the pieces. 

Use the ballpoint pen to emphasize the pegs and the edges of the pegbox. Draw a line across the top of the tailpiece. Then poke four holes below the line and add the brads. (Or just glue pearls in place and skip the holes. Much faster!)

Using the pattern as a guide, glue the neck, bridge, tailpiece, and chinrest in place. Draw the four strings with a pencil. 

I am really pleased with how my fiddle turned out. It was a fun challenge to try to figure out how to make it. On to the next project!

First Car

This is the third layout I made during Game 2 of the BYSS World Series. 

First Car (affiliate link)

At first glance, it might be hard to see the way I used Gayle Selman's layout as inspiration. But if you look carefully, you'll see a 6x4 horizontal photo block in the middle, matted with cardstock, layered over two rectangles of patterned paper, and placed on a tone-on-tone background. There's a third strip of patterned extending the length of the layout. The title is in the upper left, the journaling is to the right of the photo, and the embellishments are in similar places. 

I really enjoy the challenge of taking someone else's page and using it to inspire my own creation. My page is 100% Cindy, yet the inspiration is definitely there. This page earned 3 points: one for the inspiration, one for the use of die cuts, and one for including a number (in the journaling). Go Banshees!

#1 Neighbor

Our across-the-street neighbor, Curt, was a fixture in our lives for 21 years. He was in his garage with the door open around 10 hours a day, so we saw him often. He knew everyone in the neighborhood and kept an eye out for anything out of place. He was generous with his time, his tools, and his knowledge. He has been a mentor and surrogate grandparent to Trevor, and a friend to Steve and me. When Curt told us he was going to sell the house and move closer to his sister, it didn't come as a surprise, but we were so sorry to hear he wouldn't be across the street anymore. We wish him well in his new adventure. 

#1 Neighbor (affiliate link)

This is the second layout I made for Game 2 of the BYSS World Series. I earned three points for the Banshees: one for the design inspiration, one for the use of die cuts, and one for including a number. Thanks to Linda Radford for her project that inspired mine. 

I finished one more layout during Game 2. I'll share it tomorrow.