enJOY it by Elise Blaha Cripe

our favorite toddler art supplies.

Watching Ellerie make stuff will always be near the top of my happiest parenthood moments. I've talked about this a bit before...toddler crafting time is a lesson in patience more than anything else. But the fact that she is taking interest (and starting to take interest for longer) is so fun and exciting to me. I can ALMOST see the future where she has a little art table in my office and she sits for 25 minutes and MAKES while I sit and MAKE next to her. (Don't even get me started on the sometime in the future days where I get to teach her how to sew and knit and use 700 coupons at Jo-anns.)

Our craft supply philosophy around here is pretty relaxed. Nothing in her reach is off-limits. There are no "good supplies" or "kid supplies." There is no "special paper" or "scratch paper." I pretty much assume that if I am writing on something near her, she's going to want in on it (much of our personal mail goes out the door with scribbles). I have a bad habit of leaving Sharpies laying around so I can hardly blame her for using said Sharpies.

On the whole, this has worked for us. We've had a lot of pen on the wall encounters (easily painted over), but our rugs, carpet and furniture has somehow remained mark free. As she's gotten older I have consistently enforced that we color on paper and overtime, this has sunk in (she now knows where the computer paper is stored in my office and goes and gets a few sheets when she wants to color).

There are three go-to supplies that have really worked well for us and today I wanted to share them in case they're the right fit for your toddler or older child too. We use these daily here.

Alex Toys Jumbo Paints - I finally found a source for our watercolors! The amazon review is bad and I agree, the big plastic case is way too big. But. Ellerie LOVES it. We have used other watercolor sets and this one gets the most use for sure. I think she likes the huge circles to get the paint from. I love the color saturation and use this set too. I can't speak for stains because if we've gotten them on our clothes, I haven't noticed.

Melissa and Doug Jumbo crayons - this set is great. We have small Crayolas too but at this age they break or the paper gets in the way. For some reason Ellerie seems more excited to use these. She can also easily put them away which sort of becomes an activity in itself. Nothing beats the color saturation of Crayola, but until she's a bit older I'm happy with this set.

Whiteboard and whiteboard markers - we gave Ellerie an Ikea easel (chalkboard on one side and whiteboard on the other) for Christmas last year but it didn't really start getting use until I removed the paper and bought some whiteboard markers. She loves to color on this and I love how easy it is to wipe clean and start over. Because we've always just had pens out, she's used to them and we've been lucky that she keeps most of her drawing contained to the whiteboard. The dry-erase pens are not exactly for kids (though they are non-toxic) so they work best after the "stick everything in my mouth" stage.

The other thing that comes up with kiddo art is what do you do with it?! The best idea I've seen yet is this one. But in our house, we hang some, take photos of some and recycle a lot. Yep, recycle as in discard. I've always been a big believer that most of the joy of crafting comes from the crafting itself, more than the end result. Of course I love Ellerie's art wall and there are pieces we will frame and keep forever, but there are also many, many scribbles that we'll celebrate in the moment and then let go of. It's all good.

ps: a five minute kiddo craft project.

toddler favorite things book.

Ellerie LOVES books. We're getting to the good part too - when she will actually SIT and LISTEN to a full story from beginning to end (I used to have to cliff notes the story in order to keep up with her attention span). She also likes to "read" them to us too. My favorite part of that experience is how her inflection to the nonsensical words that she's often matches mine.

Kids are rad.

Like a lot of kiddos, she also loves photos of herself. So I thought it would be fun to combine the two and used Pinhole Press to create a simple "favorite things book."

Their template makes it super easy. The only thing I had to do was upload my 12 photos (plus a cover photo) and then add on the word for the left page. The colors and font were set which was fun (and made decision making that much simpler).

Originally I thought I'd take photos of her current "favorites" on white paper but then decided it was going to more interesting if I used "real-time" photos of her with the objects. All of these photos are just from my iPhone in the past six months or so and all were processed with VSCOcam.

What I didn't anticipate about using the "real" photos is that there would be so much more to point out. Like on the water page, she also likes to point to her "tattoo!" or on the bubble page she can show me her "boots!" It's pretty cute (and so simple!). We are enjoying it and I love having this little time capsule.

Like everything I've ordered from Pinhole over the years, the quality is great. Thick, sturdy pages (I went with the matte print option) for little hands, beautiful color and clear photos.

heads up: this post is not sponsored but links are affiliate.

five minute project : toddler painted letter.

Everything I do with Ellerie these days (besides our book reading routine or trips to the park) feels about five minutes long. Her attention span is growing, but...she's two.

I wanted to share a cute and simple project we made over the weekend... a wooden E for her wall and a few tips for painting with toddlers.

We paint almost everyday that she's home (and at daycare she usually paints too). Normally we keep it simple with watercolors and then my "plan" is to just let her at it (we use a lot of scratch paper and not too much water). She's gotten familiar with holding the brush, dipping the paint, etc. It's pretty normal routine around here.

But this project was a little different because we were going to use craft paint (I actually used the little paints from this craft project but any craft paint would have worked). The wooden letter I picked up at Target in the office supply section for a few dollars.

I knew this could be a brown mess quickly and to try and keep things as simple as possible, I used a different paint brush for each color. I handled the paint dipping and just handed her colors on request. "Purple? You got it. Yellow? You got it. Blue? No, not blue? Okay, purple again? You got it."

Another trick I've learned is that it helps to give her suggestions of what to paint. Like "Ellerie, can you paint Grandpa?" Or "Ellerie, do you want to paint the sun?" or "Can you show mama how to paint a dog?" Of course it's all an "abstract Grandpa, sun or dog" but it gets her excited to connect the paint with the paper (or in this case letter) and she likes to point out later what she painted ("Grandma! Coco! Mama!")

It goes without saying (I hope!) that this was much more "organized" than a normal craft session. I would never say "structure your kiddo's art time!" on a constant basis but it worked well for getting this letter painted and she's SO excited to see it hanging on her wall ("I paint it!").

My last trick is to make sure you date the art! This is what my mom drills into me constantly and I'm working on getting an age on everything.

ps : more kiddo crafts & a few more 5 minute projects.

rainbow birthday crown.

Kid crafting is my favorite crafting.

Especially projects like this, that come together in 30 minutes with supplies I already own. I really wanted to make some sort of a birthday crown for Ellerie to wear at her rainbow party this coming weekend. Originally I thought I would go with felt (but since that involved driving to the store to buy felt) I went with fabric and poster board.

The "process" was simple. I wrapped poster board around Ellerie's head to see how long of a piece I would need to use and then cut it down so it was about 7 inches tall. This gave me a rectangle of poster board that was 19x7 inches.

And then I used my machine to stitch on stripes of fabric. (I folded them in half lengthwise to get that clean edge.) I went with simple patterns from my stash and just attached them right to the poster board (I used a regular needle, but you could use a denim needle if you're worried about the thickness).

I started at the bottom with the blue and worked my way up to the red. The "2" I added last, not sure if it would add or take away from the crown. I'm glad I went with it. It's just freehand cut and them machine stitched into place.

To make the all important "points" up top, I machine stitched "triangles" through the fabric and the poster board and then just cut along the line, leaving a small hem (seen in the photo above). It worked out great.

I used a zig-zag stitch on the edges to finish it off and then stapled it into place to hold it into a crown shape.

Seriously, if you can work you sewing machine, you can do this project and the results are too fun. When I first stuck it on Ellerie her response was "no, no, no." but it's been a week and now she asks for her "bir-day crown?" I'm cautiously optimistic that we might get her to wear it for a few minutes next Sunday.

kiddo photo memory game

Today I'm sharing my last post in collaboration with Canon USA and their photo printers. I have loved working with them. The printers are great and these varied projects have been so fun to dream up and execute.

Since the beginning, I planned to make Ellerie a photo memory game with pictures of our family members. I scheduled it to be the last project, knowing that she'd be "older" then and hopefully more interested. It was sort of wishful thinking though. She's only 21 months so I had no idea if she'd "get it."

Surprisingly (and so happily!) she LOVED it. She doesn't get the actual memory concept of flipping over two at a time to match yet, but she spent 20 minutes (about 48 hours in Toddler Standard Time) turning over the pieces, stacking them and pointing out who is who. It was so awesome for me to see (making stuff is fun...making stuff that people enjoy and use is the dream) and I expect we'll enjoy this game for awhile.

Here's how I made it...

I gathered 10 photos. (me, Paul, both sets of grandparents, Aunt Kristen, Uncle Rob, Teddy and Coco, the beloved cat that lives with Paul's family.) I choose photos that had Ellerie in them. She's just a few days old in one and about 20 months in one.

I cropped them into 3x3 squares using PSE and printed six at a time on 8.5x11 sheets of photo paper on my Canon PIXMA MG7520. Because it was going to be a memory game, I printed two of each photo so there were 20 photos in all.

Using my paper cutter, I cut them down to size.

I really wanted each square to have some heft to it so I decided to mount them on balsa wood. I found some that was already cut into 3 inch strips (at Jo-ann's) and then used a razor blade to score each side. After a few swipes down each side, the balsa wood broke cleanly into 3x3 squares.

I used PVA glue (book binding glue that doesn't warp) to mount the photos on the wood. On the backside, I glued polka dot scrapbook paper (that I cut down to 3x3 from 12x12 sheets).

I stacked all the pieces in between books and let them dry for a few hours.

And then we played! I set things up and called Ellerie over to take photos, thinking I would have to "art direct" my tiny hand-model a bit. But she was way into it. No direction from mama needed.

I'm thrilled with how this turned out. The photos are colorful and fun. The balsa wood is sturdy. And the 3x3 size seems just perfect for her little hands.

This post was brought to you by Canon USA. As always, project idea, words, opinions and photos are my own. Special thanks to my girl for the inspiration.

To see more projects from this collaboration :

• palm tree gallery walls using thrifted frames
• modern silhouette coasters
• accordion fold NYE invitations
• photo Valentine's Day cards using kiddo art
• giant photobooth strip for a narrow wall