fun sculpture sewing short cut soft stuff fun sculpture sewing short cut soft stuff Americans are famous for looking at a cast-off and saying, “I could do something with this.” Our folk art museums are full of toys made from coffee cans, sculptures assembled from leftover pipe and musical instruments, rugs woven from rags and quilts made from fabric scraps. Crafts enthusiasts and DIY-ers are equally inventive when it comes to salvage.

You can stretch your kids’ imaginations, help them brainstorm and provide small motor skills practice with “Scrounge Art” and projects that reuse, recycle, or reinvent with things no one else wants.

There’s a secret agenda to these projects, too: they’re best preceded with a day or two of housecleaning! Scrounge through cupboards, closets, dresser drawers and even under the bed for broken toys and crayons, odd game and puzzle pieces, forgotten party favors, old cards, stamps, art projects, worn-out clothes, mismatched socks and scraps of this and that. You might even give your kids a scavenger-hunt style list of what to look for, based on what you know needs to be cleaned out of the rooms!

Combine these treasures with such recyclables as corks, the plastic clamshell packages from fruits and vegetables, bubble shipping wrap, aluminum and tin cans, promotional CDs, Popsicle sticks, gift wrap and paper towel tubes and boxes of all kinds and you’re almost ready for hours of fun and creativity. Just add a roll of masking tape per child, scissors, glue or paste, chalk, water-soluble paints and for older kids, tin snips, a hammer, stapler, nails, wire, needle and thread. The adult or teenager doing the supervising may want such extras as a sewing machine, iron, hot glue gun, saw, and drill. Settle everyone down somewhere it’s almost impossible to do damage, maybe at a table built with sawhorses and a sheet of plywood.

Most little kids are thrilled with the chance to turn appliance boxes into houses or slightly smaller cartons into “cars.” They’ll develop better small motor control as they cut apple clamshells apart to make “headlights,” tape on cardboard tubes and turn cardboard rectangles into “license plates.” Older children can detach the patch pockets from worn-out jeans and sew them together for a little purse or turn socks into puppets with stray buttons and yarn scraps. Or think art: melt crayon shavings between sheets of wax paper for “stained glass” (use several layers of paper atop the wax paper to protect your iron’s surface). Pop the results into a construction paper frame and hang it in a sunny window. Everyone can try rubbings: put a large sheet of paper over a textured surface like the bubble wrap and then run over the paper with a soft crayon or chalk. Variation: assemble several small, almost flat items like scraps of window screening, washers and keys on the sidewalk and make rubbings of them. What do you get? Maybe gift wrap for a small present, or decorated paper to fold into a note card and envelope for a greeting to Grandma. Or perhaps you’ll each create something so special you can pop your pieces in simple frames and have a family “gallery” show! www.craftsebooks.com www.better-behavior.com Get Paid To Shop & Eat! Simple Soap Making Paid Surveys At Home Luda Cris Maker ... fortune greatnes... Bride Gartins Gu... NICOLE CD Hip Hop Honor BLAQUE CD DVD SUPERMAN HOLE CD apparel equipmen... Book Cook Hardco... Antoinette Journ... Beauty consultan...

fun sculpture sewing short cut soft stuff