Squigly's Arts and Crafts

There's lots to do here if you like arts and crafts. There's online fun as well as at-home projects. Here's enough to get you started:

Desktop Pictures and Patterns
Just for fun
Jewellery
Seasonal Crafts
Print & Colour Pictures
Online Colouring Pictures
Online Dressup Games (each game has its own link)
Create a scrapbook
Make clip on braids
Add a touch of fun to your garden with Painted Rocks.
Tell your friend's fortunes with a Cootie Catcher.
Save your coins in a papier mâché piggy bank.
Go wild! Make a wildlife scene.
Make a windmill.
Attract hummingbirds to your backyard with this recipe.
Let it snow, let it snow, with these snowflakes you make yourself.
Feed the birds
Leaf Art
Decorate some flower pots for summer.
Explore the world of underwater creatures with this water scope.
Make a braided bracelet.
Make your own beads out of paper.
Store your treasures in this.

VISIT THE WEBSITE

Disney's Back-to-School Creativity

Be unique and show your creative side! The Disney folks have made a list of fun crafty ideas for young people to do in preparation for going back to school. Make your own back-to-school clothes and accessories by following the easy directions here. Younger kids will need adult or older kid help. Make the other kids at school wonder how you got so trendy. This looks like a lot of fun. VISIT THE WEBPAGE where you can choose ideas like the following (not the whole list, these are just some examples):

Artful T-Shirt
Crayon Transfer Designs
Denim Details
Fancy Footwork
Mosaic Prints
Tie-Dye Like a Pro
White Glue Batik
Crystal-Clear Necklace
Friendship Bracelet
Knotted Anklet
Paper Beads
Paper Jewelry
Word for Word Necklace
Backpack Bead Dangler
Hair Ties
Lunch Money Locket
Secret Code Backpack Chains

...AND LOTS MORE, TOO! VISIT THE WEBSITE TO SEE EVERYTHING.

Paint a House!

That's right, you can paint a whole entire house with the JAVA applet at the Flexbon paint website. This is NOT a kid's website. It was made for adults who are thinking of painting their house and aren't sure what color combinations they want so this applet lets you try out all kinds of colors on different house types. Even though this website was made for adults, it's still FUN FOR KIDS, TOO!

Younger kids will definitely need older kid or adult help in figuring out how to use the controls on the applet.

The JAVA applet appears in its own pop-up window at the same time that the main window opens. It is not a pop-up ad. It's where you have the fun.

FROM THE WEBSITE:

Welcome to SpectraFlex - Flex Bon's Java™ enabled "point and shoot" paint applet, featuring the Flex Bon Color Source Selection of colors!

In order to paint with our applet you will need to temporarily disable any pop-up window blockers. You will also need to have a Java enabled web browser.

To paint a house, first select a color from the palette. You can scroll through the colors with the navigational buttons to the right. If you know the color number and want to find it, press the "Find color #" button and enter the number (not case sensitive).

Next, move your mouse to the area of the house you want to paint, then click. It's that easy! At any time you can press the "View selections" button to see which colors you have selected for each area of the house you've painted.

While in the "View selections" area, you can press the "Color palette" button to return to the palette screen. To select another house to paint, press the "Pick new image" button. To clear the colors you selected and start over, press "Clear list". Have fun!

Please Note: These computer video simulations only approximate the dry paint color. The actual color will vary depending on the vehicle, gloss level, application technique, film thickness variances, substrate and light source. For critical color matches, a sample of paint should be applied, allowed to dry and checked before proceeding with the entire job.

The optimal color palette setting for your video display is 24 bit (16M colors) or higher.

P.S. Yep, I "painted" those houses you see up there.

Pony Bead Craft from Kaboose

Difficulty: Easy
Age: 5 and up
Parental supervision is recommended
This little pin is fun to make and helps develop fine motor skills for those wee hands. Be sure to check out all of their jewelry crafts, wearable crafts and crafts for teens.

CLICK HERE to do the Flower Ponybead Craft from Kaboose.

Fun with Kaleidoscopes

THE KALEIDOSCOPE PAINTER

This is one of my favorite places to goof off while online. The JAVA Applet allows you to move your mouse around to "paint" a kaleidoscope. You can change brush size, too. The above image was made by me using their "Dynabrush" option which changes brush size automatically and constantly as you paint. I've used this applet to make images for web graphics or at least, tiles and textures that are then used to create other images. Here are some more variations (resized to be much smaller than their original size so they don't take up too much space here):

When you combine them all together in an animation "timeline," this is what you get:

You are welcome to save any of these images to your own computer and use them on your own webpage or blog or email, but kids need to tell their parents FIRST before they download (save) ANYTHING to their computer.

There are even more ways to have fun with kaleidoscopes besides this applet. To make your own kaleidoscope, GO HERE. To have fun with FREE online kaleidoscope coloring pages, GO HERE.

Here are a collection of online resources for kaleidoscopes:

And here are some great books and other fun with kaleidoscopes... Kids, remember, these places are selling something and you need to show this to your Mom and Dad. Don't try to buy anything online all by yourself.

Have fun with this interactive kaleidoscope! Just move your mouse cursor over it and see it change:

Paper Toys

Wow. Here's a website with all kinds of paper models you can cut out and make. We're not just talking your simple little airplanes here. Want to make a paper model of Bill Gates' house? They got that. How about a Mississippi Riverboat or a school bus or the White House or even the Taj Mahal? THEY GOT IT. You just have to see this place and check out ALL their models. The best part is, it's FREE.

A boy from Israel sent in to the Paper Toys website this photo of the models he's made... so far.

SAFETY AND HELP WARNING: Very young children may need assistance in using scissors and cutting things out as well as putting things together. They can color and draw on the models and with an adult's help, feel proud of their accomplishment. Older kids to teens and adults will have a lot of fun here.

Online Coloring

Do you like to color? I do! I have a great collection of links to coloring pages, both online (color and paint now) and printables (print out a picture to color later). I organized my links that way plus I added the category for adults. Adults, like me, like to have fun, too! Plus, the adult category not only contains links to coloring that are just for fun but also links to coloring that might be useful to teachers and parents.

PLEASE NOTE: The color and paint now "online" pages usually use a JAVA applet or Shockwave or Flash and your computer needs to have those things to see those coloring pages.

Also, the printables that you download and print are sometimes in a .pdf file and your computer needs to have Adobe Acrobat Reader (usually) to see and use those pages.

SAFETY WARNING FOR KIDS: Always ask your parents if it is a good idea to download anything to your computer even if you find the link to do it on a nice friendly blog page like this one.

If you cannot see the drop-down menus below, you can CLICK HERE to view them in a pop-up window.