grow a crystal heart

we have been growing borax snowflakes for years. they are fascinating to watch. you can almost see the crystals growing! they are equally dazzling when they are finished and we hang them to shine and sparkle above our nature table.

this year we gave it a little valentine's twist and i love how these crystal hearts turned out! here's a brief recap so you can make some, too. great last minute valentine's as they take only a few hours to crystallize.
you will need borax, wide mouth glass jars, pipe cleaners, and hot water. if you wish to color yours, you will need a coloring agent, too. we happen to be a house free from food coloring so we used our watercolors and it worked wonderfully.

borax is a laundry booster and is labeled *all natural* but please use caution when working with children. mine never touch the borax and we work in a ventilated room just to be safe.
to make the heart shape, first fold your pipe cleaner in half.
now twist the two ends of the pipe cleaner together and pull them down into a heart shape.
tie a string around your heart and tie it to a pencil. this will rest on the lip of the jar, suspending your heart in the borax solution. set it aside and put some water on to boil.
when you have poured hot water into your jar, begin to pour in borax powder. stir, stir, stir. continue adding borax until it will no longer dissolve. we are very unscientific in this process and just keep adding until the powder starts to gather on the bottom.at this point we added color. we usually have some primary watercolors already mixed up so we squeezed it into the jars. we added varying amounts in each jar to produce different shades of pink and red.

i had some beet juice concentrate in my freezer waiting for a dye project. we tried some of that too but it reacted with the borax and turned brown! of course you could use food coloring here, too.
aren't they lovely? we used all sorts of ribbons to hang them.i wish my camera could really capture the sparkle of these crystals!we found a budding branch on the side of the road and brought it home. i hung it over our dining table and our hearts and our valentine fairy now dance above our heads.yesterday we did some more experimenting. we did one with epsom salt (red), one with borax (purple) and one with sugar (clear with read pipe cleaner). only the borax has produced crystals for us so far. the other two are still on our table under observation.here's a peek at the borax heart after only a couple of hours.i can't wait to see what this one does! from what i've read, the sugar solution can take several days to make crystals. i think this heart will be spectacular with the red pipe cleaner inside the white crystals.

have a wonderful weekend and happy heart crafting! i have a make up birthday party to get ready for......

handmade holidays: children's edition, part II

more goodies from the children. we planted paper whites a couple of weeks ago. we used various christmas glassware that i had collected from thrift stores. lone glasses that had once belonged to a set but had since been cast away. all were priced between 25 and 50 cents a piece. we planted them in pea pebbles. i purchased a very large bag of it at the hardware store for $4.
we did not start them early enough for them to be blooming when we gift them. however, this way the recipient will get to enjoy a bit of the anticipation of the bloom as well. the children love to monitor the growth and changes of these stalks and their roots daily.
this year i will try the alcohol trick that i picked up from liv at 54 stitches. last year, ours were so tall they kept toppling over. it will be interesting to see if the alcohol really prevents that from happening. another sneak peek. another of sienna's canvases for another grandparent. this one was with watercolor pencils. jasper has been busy painting canvas, too. ;)
and the best for last. sienna made these balls for jasper. they look like they are still balls of loose yarn in the photo, but they are actually quite firmly felted together. she started with the littlest scraps of my wool yarns that i had been collecting. she balled those up firmly and then wrapped some longer lengths around it to secure it. we felted these in the washing machine.
the pastel one is a gorgeous handspun from dear jen at syrendell. sienna had been coveting that yarn for some time and was thrilled that i let her use it for this project!

i love how these turned out. jasper is somewhat ball crazy so they will be just perfect for him. we are planning to make some more for another little friend, too.

this weekend we are working on wrapping up a few of the unfinished projects still hanging about. dad brought home a tree tonight so we will hopefully decorate that soon. i have been completely occupied with preparations for tomorrow's advent spiral. now it looks like it may get snowed out!!! that would break my heart more than a little bit and it may be the only way our tree gets decorated tomorrow!

handmade holidays: children's edition

the children have been hard at work on christmas preparations here. sienna has always been my little crafty sidekick. at her age now, she is really diving into making gifts for everyone this year. it is so endearing to watch her work. we are enjoying some snow days at home and are in christmas crafting overdrive! here is some of what they have been working on.
we made festive felted acorn ornaments. we started by painting the caps with glitter. we did have some glitter paint about, but we also used craft glitter. my favorite new trick is to mix the glitter into glue (we used our new clementine natural glue) and paint it on. practically mess free glitter fun!
one of the very best tools we have at school or home is this hand drill. i highly recommend it for your children and you! children absolutely love turning the handle and i have used it several times for projects of my own. one of the ways we use it is to make holes in our acorn caps for stringing.here are some of our completed ornaments. we used red and white baker's twine to string them. the children did almost all of this project on their own. they painted the caps, drilled the holes, wet felted the balls, and sienna tied knots in the twine. i threaded the twine through the hole in the cap. i also operated the glue gun and as they fit the ball with the *right* cap, i glued them in.
this is my favorite one. i found these giant caps (still not sure what tree they are from. do you know?) and squealed with delight! they are a bit crumbly but i still love the way they look. our felted balls have some sparkly nylon fibers mixed in but the sparkles don't show well on camera.
sienna has been hard at work on several presents for her brother. this is a puzzle blank from *bare books*. she drew an enchanted family with an elf father and little brother and a fairy mother and big sister.
she used her watercolor pencils. she likes to dip them in water and then draw with them. it pilled the paper a bit but i can see why she enjoys using them that way. she then has the control of a pencil, but the color flows from the tip like paint. it was a pretty captivating color experience!
here is a sneak peek of another completed project of hers. this one she made for a grandparent who might read this blog. she painted on canvas and then used her stitches to accentuate the outline. i was fascinated by this project and wanted to give stitching on canvas a try. i loved the way it turned out but she seems to be content having done it just once. ;) i may experiment with this method myself in the future.

being that we have now had two days home for snow, they have completed a few more projects, including our christmas cards. i will do a follow post soon. what are your children making?