It has been a chaotic first full week back at work this week, I definitely got writers block this week. For the first blog of the week, I wanted to start sharing art projects I do with my son. Doing art projects with my son helps us do something together, I am not really a “play” kind of person – so this give me some mummy time, and I hope it allows him to be creative later on in life.

About 12 months ago, I stopped buying children’s birthday and thank you cards. Instead my son and I make the cards. Our favorite cards are monster birthday cards, each one is unique. We start with a standard white card, a body for the monster made out of adhesive foam. Then for the arms, hair and legs my son helps by instructing me the shape he wants and he colors in the arms, legs and hair. We add glue on eyes.

For his birthday recently we had a dinosaur theme and went to the Life and Science Museum in Durham. For the Thank You cards, I got my son to draw dinosaurs on adhesive foam using dinosaur stencils. He then helped cut out the pieces and we added spots.

Inside we used fabric for a background and color card for the area in which we wrote our note. We also included a photo of the child in the card so they have memories to keep as well.

Today, he was off to a girls birthday party, we decided to make the card match the strip birthday paper we used. We added flowers to the card, using left over buttons I have from the Four Seasons Quilt. My son was able to cut the strips, choose the buttons he wanted to use and do all the glueing (with supervision).

I think this helps add a personal touch to the kids gifts we give.

I would love to see and hear what you do with your kids. I will continue sharing other art projects we do and some of the products/books we have – we are trying to recycle when we can.