Fairfield, the makes of Poly-fil have gone green adding a whole new line of eco-friendly products to help green your fiber arts and crafts.
You can now quilt green, stuffyour little critters in an eco-friendly way and have bamboo pillows.
Nature-Fil batting, fiberfill and pillow forms now come in bamboo options and natural fiberfill is made out of both bamboo and PLA corn materials.
There are lots of cute, environmentally kind supply options for the 2009-2010 school year. Who doesn’t love banana paper and Smencils? Sometimes, its the basic items that are the hardest to find. Here is a set of basic back to school supplies from Sustainable Group for your child to personalize.
These supplies remind me of my high school days when I made collages on all my binders with magazine photos and funny quotes. They were the talk of class and several friends requested that I also make collages on their binders as well. How I wish these binders and replaceable covers were around then!
Sand dough is a great choice for recycling the pretty clean sandbox sand that remains in your sandbox at the end of the season, which is when we usually make it, but I can imagine that it would also make a super-fun beachside project, perhaps even your own sandcastle souvenir, complete with seashells and a moat ready to be filled with salt water.
Even for play dough aficionados, sand dough has a terrifically gritty texture that provides an entirely new sensory experience to the act of working with the dough, and it can be an excellent component to a sensory table for a special needs child or as a teaching tool for a tactile learner—use it in conjunction with the sawdust dough for two very neat and unusual experiences.
Like the sand dough and the sawdust dough, oil dough is another unique sensory experience. It’s smooth and creamy and soft, and yes, it will leave your hands and work surface oily, so be prepared.
The oil is what makes this dough truly special, however. You can use the cheapest oil available and your dough will work just fine, but for a treat you can substitute in any other oil that you’d like, taking advantage of its properties—something to soften the skin, perhaps, or something soothing especially for a child with eczema can play with, or you can substitute in some essential oils for an aromatherapy benefit (be cautious, of course, about using essential oils on children—they’re smaller than we are, and you know that a little essential oil already goes a long way).
You will need:
Unlike the sawdust dough, the sand dough, and even the oil dough, the cornstarch dough uses no flour, but instead calls for cornstarch and salt. This makes a good play dough for someone who might be sensitive to most flours, or perhaps to use up some more of that cornstarch that I keep making you buy for other art supply recipes.
Unlike the other dough recipes that I’ve shared, as well, this dough does require cooking over low heat, which actually most play dough recipes do require. It’s just something to be aware of when you have little helpers on hand.
You will need:
One thing about bubble solution is that it’s super cheap. At the beginning of the season I marched stalwartly into Target to buy tampons (I avoid Target, because although I try to avoid new purchases, I am weak in the face of a deal), and somehow ended up with gallons of bubble solution for basically pennies. A lot of which the girls managed to spill into the minivan carpet on the ride home, so it was just as well that I bought extra—bonus carpet shampoo, I suppose.
Sometimes, however, you don’t want to buy something just because it’s a deal. Perhaps you have an empty container of bubble solution and just need some product, not the packaging, or perhaps you and your child like to experiment with recipes, or perhaps you’re just of the DIY mindset and would rather make something yourself rather than purchase it—admirable goals, all.
You can make play dough a gazillion kabillion six million ways. Trust me—I have made play dough from laundry lint, and thusly I know my stuff.
As the packrat/eccentric lady/aficionado of bizarre craft projects and art experiences, I am the designated inheritor of a myriad of passed-down recipes for homemade art materials from both sides of my family. And having two little girls with a lot of time on their hands and a love for anything messy and hands-on, we have taken it as a project to make pretty much every recipe at one time or another. For my next few posts, I’ll be sharing with your our favorite and most unusual of the recipes we’ve collected.
First up: Do you have any sawdust?
I could tell you all the educational reasons for making soap crayons—children’s learning should be experiential, experience with art should be as varied as possible, following a recipe utilizes math concepts, making something that you can use builds self-confidence and self-sufficiency, having a brand-new experience along with an adult adds adventure and models coping—but the truth is just that soap crayons are fun. You’re in the bath, so you’re supposed to be getting clean, but you’re drawing! With color! But the crayons, they’re soap! So you’re still getting clean!
Who would not have fun attempting to wrap their head around that?
To make soap crayons, you will need:
Kidzsack is an eco-friendly backsack made from 100% recycled cotton and soda bottles. A cute bag for back to school, the end of summer, or just to have for fun these bags allow a child’s creativity to come through.
The Kidzsack comes with a set of 8 washable markers that kids can use to decorate the bags. Then they can be washed and colored again. It’s usable coloring sheet for kids to enjoy.