Home With Children I

Mother and Children, by William Adolphe bouguereau (1825-1905)

Children at home provide an excellent opportunity for mothers to grow and develop maturity and talents. Trying to make some little thing, such as the card below , made especially for boys, is like learning all over again the things you might have missed when you were a youngster.

No mother should be bored at home if she is aware of the many things there are to do with children. I will elaborate more about this on a future post. In the meantime, here is a simple card, made to look like a paint can, that a child can have a lot of fun making.

Click on for a larger view. This fits inside a square card envelope. For the brand-name, write your last name across the paint tin. There are so many things you can use to make this, that it is hard to know what to choose. You can either use textured cardstock, as I did, to represent the spilled or drippy paint on the edge of the can or the brush, or you could use crayons, or glitter glue. Glitter glue takes awhile to dry and should be set out in the sun or in front of a heater, but it looks so glossy and real, that it might be fun to use, if the child is old enough, and you can write your own words on the inside, and send it to whomever you wish.
Make a tab to put the handle of the paint brush in. there is one included in the pattern, below.

Cut two pieces of cardstock and clip them like a brush and insert them under the cap on the other side of the brush. Punch a hole in the handle.


Here is the pattern. Highlight it and paste it on another page and print it out. And Then glue it to cardboard for a template to trace around. This project works best with cardstock, especially textured cardstock.


Here is another project your little boy might enjoy. It is a fold open card that stands up and shows a scene, cut from a used calendar picture.




This is just a portion of a calendar picture that is glued onto a back of a cereal box. It is folded strategically so that the flat part of the scene is on the table and the building and sky are standing up. Add a little stand-up boat to the water by cutting out the little boat I have provided on the pattern below.

Just paste the pattern below on card board and trace around it. This takes a larger envelope if you plan to mail it.