creative jewish mom

Fun With Air Drying Clay

Air drying clay is a wonderful way to experiment with clay, without having to worry about firing or baking. We haven't taken our project to the next step yet, namely painting them, but I thought I'd share this with you anyway, since summer is a great time to sit outdoors and sculpt something!

My daughter made the little dishes and I made these houses, which have a hole in the top to add a flag after they're painted. Of course one can do so many many things with clay, like making mobiles and beads and plaques of all kinds. Happy Crafting!

Cut Paper Collage For Tisha B'Av

Tonight is the solemn Jewish holiday of Tisha B'Av, (which commemorates the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem) and as with all holidays we try to get in the mood, whether it be joyful or the extreme opposite in this case, by doing a little crafting. Yesterday I had four boys hanging around and decided to engage them with a little cut paper collage, with the theme being the wall of the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The green plants represent the bushes that grow from between the cracks high up on the wall.

I just love the results and the simplicity of cut paper, always one of my favorites regardless of the topic.

So get out the colored paper, some scissors and glue, and get to work. 

I just realized that this craft has much more meaning that I originally realized - it's really all about rebuilding the Holy Temple stone by stone. And how can each and every one of us do this? By doing acts of kindness for others every single day, and by working at being considerate and caring, and thankful for all the good in our lives. Let's get started, shall we?

For those of you honoring the holiday, may you have a meaningful fast and may we all merit to see the reconstruction of the Beit Hamikdash again soon, speedily in our days.

Welcome To Craft Schooling Sunday!

Welcome to Craft Schooling Sunday! Last week's party was packed with summer crafting goodness, thanks to contributors from The United States, Portugal, Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark, Muldavia, Turkey, Italy, Israel, Australia, Jakarta and South Africa!

Here are some of my favorites from last week's party:

Rosi Jo is just amazing, and her egg carton fish diaramas are fantastic! Yes, these fish are made from egg cartons, amazing.

Love this sweet little shelves made from vintage tins from maker mama, and this sweet retro looking crocheted watermelon pot holder from muscetta. It's just a circle folded in half, love it!

Here's a fab idea for a super simple pin from homemade at my place, and cookie stick wand from Red Ted Art.

Super sweet crocheted lambs with pattern, from aduo scriptum, and inspiration for a beautiful crocheted cuff from little treasures

Fantastic knit baboons from Ginx crafts, and an adorable sewn bunny with the best little crocheted cape from sweet pea family.

Love this mini summer wreath from spoonful of crafts, and Mich in LA has another brilliant jewelry making idea using coil bracelets.

Mini cheesecakes with store bought cookie bottoms, and gorgeous pink cake both from Winnie.

A reminder to enjoy some sidewalk chalk this summer from Stacy Sews, and a great terrarium project from Se7en. That's it for the amazing features, what have you been up to?

Baking With Kids: Classic Cinnamon Rolls

 The other day my daughter came home with this gorgeous concontion, well actually this is what it looked like after we baked it in our oven, what she came home with actually looked like this:

So of course I just had to share this idea with you, as mini sized cinnamon rolls is a fun little baking project to do with kids, in mini pans of course!

I just asked my daughter about the recipe and apparently is has lots of margarine in it, so I won't be sharing it with you, since I really don't think baking with margarine is necessary. Just make your favorite yeast dough, and cinnamon roll topping and roll em up. Okay, maybe you need more instructions than that? I'll have to get back to you, my little baker is out at the moment, be back soon!

Super Quick Birthday Cake Decor: An Underwater Castle

Need a super quick birthday cake idea, you're in the right place! Those who read my blog already know that investing huge chunks of time in birthday cake decoration is neither my forte nor my desire, nor at all realistic. Quick and cute, that's my thing! And maybe I should add spontaneous, though not recommended for everyone. And spontaneous this cake decor for my daughter's 11th birthday, which was inspired by the goldfish bowl centerpiece I made (while the cake was baking) to go with the summery ocean breeze crepe paper photo backdrop.

  

This method of cake decor is my favorite, as with just some basic drawing skills you can create a themed cake in very little time, with basic supplies. And if you have some cute drawing books like anything from Ed Emberley on hand, that certainly is a big help.

Oh, and here's what the back looks like, even used up the last of some paper left over from a bubble wrap printing craft years ago!

You'll Need:

• colored card stock paper
• black felt pen
• aluminum foil tape, from the hardware store, great stuff
• wooden skewers
• toothpicks

How To: Decide on a theme and draw in black pen on colored paper, or on white paper with colored pens, which I've done before. Cut out drawings and tape a skewer on the back. In this case the top of the skewer was also a flag pole. If you use thin paper, it may need extra support, so add some toothpicks too, which was necessary on one of the towers, as you can see. Save the decorations, and if they're tall you can put them in a vase to extend the birthday spirit just a bit. Enjoy!

No time to run to the store for sprinkles? Maybe you'll find some coconut in the pantry which you can color with food coloring (preferably natural) to suit your theme!

Need some more inspiration, here are some  past cakes I decorated using this same technique:

• figure eight road race birthday cake
• penguin birthday cake
• merry go round birthday cake
• castle and loch ness monster birthday cake

 

Crepe Paper Photo Backdrop For An 11th Birthday!

At long last, on a whim, I decided to try making a small crepe paper photo backdrop for my daughter's birthday yesterday. I went with just a few summery colors that I had on hand, and the results were festive and a great backdrop for some family photos after the party!

 After I assembled the crepe paper fringed backdrop, it was time to choose a tablecloth — I just love how this rainbow striped Marimekko flat sheet from my childhood works with the crepe paper stripes. See, it is sometimes good to be a hoarder, and flat sheets do make great casual (and easily washable) tablecloths!

My eight year old was wondering why I didn't make such an installation for his birthday! He's already forgotten about the elaborate 8 shaped roadrace cake, and the penguin cake, sigh. Good thing there's a blog which encourages us to photograph all these creations for posterity!

I explained to him that mommy almost never does birthday decorations with forethought, she just grabs some supplies and gets to work, phew, a little stressful though I might add! And even a simple backdrop like this one will take at least half an hour, so if you have grand plans to cover a large wall, do make sure to leave ample time.

You'll Need: crepe paper, in flat sheets if you want to cut fringe, tape, scissors and some string or wire

How To: I stretched a piece of string between two wall sconces, you'll need to do something similar, or put two screws discretely in the wall....I'm sure you'll use them all the time for similar decorations, so don't dispair.

Cut 3" sections off the flat hank of crepe paper, and cut fringe on half of the piece from one side, and on the other half of the piece from the other side. Unravel and you've got a piece of fringed crepe paper that twists a bit. Tape the top over the string and continue cutting and unraveling. The results are gorgeous, just make sure there aren't any toddlers or crawling babies around that will easily be happy to pull the whole thing down. Enjoy!

 

 

Welcome To Craft Schooling Sunday!

Welcome to Craft Schooling Sunday! First of all, my apologies to those who didn't get a comment from me, just pushing the limits of fitting this into my schedule. Last week's party was just busting full of amazing projects to get us all inspired for some creativity this summer! There were as always contributors from around the world, places like: Sweden, The Netherlands, Denmark, The United Kingdom, Portugal, Macedonia, Muldavia, Italy, Hungary, Turkey, Israel, The United States, Guatemala and South Africa, pretty amazing don't you think? (Not to mention that some regular contributors from Greece, Australia, France, Germany and Jakarta didn't show up this week.....sigh.) And now for the features, lots of em!

First off, we have an amazingly creative and beautiful project from Rosi, which combines crocheted fish using rocks and a medusa...love it! And Ginx crafts is still up to her crafty ways, and love this freesia faerie best of all.

Serving pink lemonade made this barn a while back, and I very likely featured it as well, but can't resist showing it again. And this sweet retro headband? Ginx crafts, of course.

Love this zebra hat with pattern from repeat crafter me, and lacy crochet shares a great stitch pattern called the spider stitch to make a triangular shawl, perfect for a little summer chill.

A fabulous idea from mitt marmin borg to use a clock that you don't love, add a poem to the face! And a embroidered felt cuff from HGK is just so special.

Hanni crafts did some fun fabric stenciling, and Lanas De Ana made a nice yarn wrapped can to hold her knitting needles.

Winnie is at it again with chocolate chiop muffins that look just too delicious, and living design shares with us her apricot jam making process, a great activity to do with the whole family

Love these cute crochet appliques from little treasures, and happy in red, has a great summer time beach tote pattern.

Estrea chikitu made some inventive tags from cloth, and crafty journal is still coming up with more ways to recycle milk jug plastic, now it's bubble wands!


 Red Ted Art, shared with us a fabulous quick pirate ship project from recycled boxes, and Se7en is moving on from the month of drawing to a month of painting, do consider doing with your kids!

 

Kid's Drawing Project: A Drawing A Day....Or Even A Few A Week

We are still working at developing drawing skills and the patience that one must foster to produce studied drawings. I mentioned previously the month long drawing-a-day program that Se7en introduced us to, and while we aren't drawing every day, we are drawing a few times a week, and keeping at it, which is really the most important thing.

My almost 11 year old daughter and just 8 year old son are game for the exercises, while for my 9 year old it's really torture. I'm going to have to sit down with him individually to help him build his confidence and at least work on drawing basic shapes that he can use as an adult, there's no budding artist as far as I can see, though of course one should never give up!

The exercise above was to draw a toy, my 8 year old bravely said he was going to draw the box of a monopoly-like game, though quickly realized that was a bit too ambitious. They both settled on drawing the box of a card game called Race, and the results were really quite impressive. My daughter got the proportions of the elements of the box just right, and my son realized afterwards that he had way too much space above the cars, all part of the adventure!

 

Baking With Kids: Modern Art Marble Cake

Yesterday my daughter came home with this modern art marble cake, and of course I just had to share it with you as maybe crafting with some batter might be a fun project to do with your kids, or even yourself during a quiet moment in the kitchen!

I love the dramatic swirls in this cake, and the fact that no icing is required. You can really make a cake like this with the batter ingredients of your choice as long as the two batters are distinctly white and chocolate, or even some other color, wow, that could be something, namely if you color with natural food colors of course, or something like raspberry syrup.

How To Make Modern Art Marble Cake:

1. Start with white cake batter and chocolate cake batter. You'll want to use a recipe that you know produces a nice flat cake. 
2. You can make this cake in small individual pans, square looks great, or as a larger cake, in which case I'd go with round.
3. Fill one cup with white batter and one cup with chocolate batter. 
4. Pour small amounts of batter into the pan in the following manner: pour a puddle of white batter, and then pour a smaller puddle of chocolate batter on top of that white batter puddle. The puddles start to swirl naturally and no toothpick or fork manuvering is required. Continue in this manner until the pan is roughly half filled with batter, height wise.
5. Bake and enjoy your edible modern art. 
6. If you make a large cake in this manner one certainly could add some strawberries or cherries (adhered with whipped cream or icing) around the perimeter and in the middle to make is just a bit fancier.

A Simple LIttle Plant For A Teacher Appreciation Gift

School is out for my daughter, and of course we couldn't end the year without giving a little gift to a beloved teacher. I would have loved to make something as I have in past years, but some new work has drastically reduced my creative time at the moment, so we decided to be like normal folk and give a store bought gift. Fortunately I had a sweet little pot on hand, and my daughter went to the nursery herself and chose a little plant. Of course we wrapped it up nicely with a thoughtful handwritten note from my daughter, together with care instructions for this tiny dracaena.

Small plants are always a great gift, so when you see inexpensive pots do snatch up a few to have on hand. Running out to pick up a small plant to put inside is much simpler that figuring out a more complicated gift when time is of the essence! Happy Vacation!

Israeli readers: I got this pot at Max Stock for 5 shekels, a good price I must say!