Eskimo child with penguin painting

I painted this picture of an eskimo child and penguin on a piece of ply-wood I bought at the crafts store. I used acrylic paints and a matt finish. I found similar illustrations in a djeco catalogue, so the design is not mine...

PAPER-AIRPLANE MOBILE

One of my sons latest and most enduring obsessions is folding paper airplanes. He loves folding and throwing them about. So for his birthday his grandma bought him an adorable Origami Airplane kit by Djeco (www.djeco.com)

I liked the design of the planes so much, I wanted to use them for decor, so I came up with the idea of making a mobile for the kids' room.  So I took some thin ribbon, tape and two wooden sticks and got to work. It is all pretty straight forward, the only tricky bit was finding the spot to attack the ribbon to so the planes would be in balance. 

I had a lot of fun photographing the mobile :) Enjoy!

HOMEMADE WRAPPING PAPER

I've been a big fan of simple recycled wrapping paper since my teens as it is eco-friendly, cheap and serves as a canvas to really personalize gifts. Also, it is versatile as you can use the same paper to wrap presents for every occasion (Christmas, Birthdays, Mother's day etc.)
 As a mom, decorating birthday wrapping paper has the added benefit of being a fun to do with kids! Moreover children like to feel that they were involved in making the gift.

This time we made robot wrapping paper:

I first cut off a piece from the roll that was the right size for the gift. Then we used  our DJECO Robot stamp kit to decorate the paper (http://www.kaboodle.com/reviews/djeco-robots-stamps). The box includes three metallic ink pads and several robot parts stamps. At first, I was concerned that the metallic ink would not dry so we used another ink pad for the second round of robot heads. (In the end the metallic paint dried too.)

Here is the end result, I really like the retro feel of the robots. The paper got a bit crumbled after my two kids handling it,...but that just makes it more precious, right? :)

We had to wrap the gift really quick... we could added some sort of ribbon... or electrical wire... maybe next time!


NOTE: You can also use stamps made from potatoes or cut out of sponge and tempera/acrylic paint.
Also, you can buy Djeco stamp kits at the toy store in Budagyöngye.