• 2 slices of white bread with the crusts cut off
• 30ml glue
• Food colouring

What to Do:

• Crumble bread into crumbs (or put it into the blender)
• Add glue immediately & mix well
• Add water if needed
• Add a couple of drops of food colouring if you want to colour it

Then it suddenly occurred to me that they don’t have to lather their hands with it.
We actually have some paintbushes in the house!

What a great idea: Painting with paintbrushes. D’oh.

Okay, so I’m not exactly painting with a full palette at the moment…

You will need:

• PVC glue
• Shaving Cream
• Food coloring
• Paint brushes.

What to do:

Put some pvc glue into a small container and add shaving cream.

Mix gently until the consistency is thick and even. Your mixture needs to be thick but still puffy.
Does that make sense?

Add some more food colouring for stronger colours. Make all sorts of different colors in separate containers.

Paint thickly to create puffy artworks and allow to dry.

Other thoughts:

• Jazz it up by adding a bit of fine glitter.
• Use a black permanent marker to draw a picture that has large areas to fill in.

By the way, Wren wanted me to say a huge “thank you” to everyone who said “get well soon”.

~She’s back on track and arguing with her brother again.

Life is back to normal, thank goodness.

The problem is that she’s not that sparing with her sprinkling, and those sprinkles don’t come cheap.

So this is an easy & cheap way for mums of girls keep up with the demand for bath salts. Not to mention fun for the kids to make.

What You’ll Need:

• 3 parts epsom salt
• 2 parts baking soda
• 1 part table salt
• Essential oils
• Food colouring

What To Do:

• Mix epsom salt, baking soda & table salt in a bowl thoroughly, with two or three drops essential oil and mix thoroughly to ensure it’s well~distributed.
• Add a small amount of food colouring and mix. Add more & mix if needed to get the colour you want.
• Store in an airtight container & add to bath in small amounts.

Other Thoughts:

• Most ages can enjoy this crafty activity.
• Take care when using essential oil that you don’t get it on sensitive skin or in eyes. Undiluted essential oils can cause painful, burn~like irritation.

Solveig’s son Daniel is Mr Bump’s best friend at pre-school and the boys & Daniel’s sister Rebekah had a ball adding the ingredients and mixing them in the pot. We made ours green, because that’s Mr Bump’s favourite colour.

You will need:

• 2 cups plain flour
• 4 tbspn cream of tartar
• 2 tbspn cooking oil
• 1 cup salt
• food colouring
• 2 cups water
• saucepan & stove

What to do:

• Mix the ingredients in a saucepan, stir over medium heat for 3-5 minutes until the mixture thickens.
• We found that ours was a bit too moist, so just add more flour a bit at a time if that happens with yours.

Other thoughts:

• This is actually the recipe on the back of McKenzie’s brand cream of tartar.
• You can make black play dough by using black powder paint or black tempera instead of food colouring.
• Try adding glitter for a bit of extra pizzazz!

!!! We normally use olive oil for cooking, so Solveig was kind enough to bring over some regular oil. She also claimed to have ‘an inordinate amount of salt’, due to the fact that they make play dough regularly, so thanks Solveig!

When it was time for the kids to have a bash at it, the d*mn thing was so strong that none of them could break it.

I kinda think we put a few too many layers on there…

Even when the ribbon holding it broke and the thing dropped to the ground, it didn’t break.

We soaked strips of torn~up newspaper in an old ice~cream container filled with this stuff and covered a big balloon with layer after layer after layer of it.

I stuck the ends of a ribbon between the layers to hang it up with, and the last layer was colourful wrapping paper in bright colours.

Once it was all dry we popped the balloon, poked goodies in the hole we’d left at the top and covered it with more layers of paper mache.

Okay, this is a kinda sketchy how~to but you’ll be able to work it all out.

I have faith in you.

You will need:

• Plain flour
• Warm water

What to do:

• Gradually add flour to water while mixing, until you have a thick, slimy consistency.
• If your mixture thickens while you are ‘layering’, just add more warm water.

Other thoughts:

• Try adding some fine glitter or coloured sand to the mix.

!!! I would have given exact proportions, but each time we do paper mache it seems to change! Perhaps it has something to do with the weather….