Make a Disney Princess Castle - Arts & Crafts

Hello,

So with all this talk of recent heat waves and only non stop rain the girls and I got stuck into some Paper Mache Arts & Crafts.  We decided on a Disney Princess Castle. You could just paint it grey to make it more boyish or pick colours to create a neutral Fantasy Castle.  In my house as usual, we went for an explosion of pink!! 

                                             
                                         










So I started with getting the base ready. I collected a series of cardboard tubes and taped them together.  I then taped this to a cardboard piece. See below;

To make the towers you roll up a piece of paper in one corner.  As you roll, turn the paper to the right to form a cone.  Tape along the edge of the paper to hold the cone in place.  You will need to make a number of cones for each tower top. Tape cones onto the cardboard towers. These will be the turret roofs. Don't worry about the tape looking untidy as all this will be covered in Paper Mache later.

See below;

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To make the Paper Mache glue I just mix flour and water. So simple!! Tear strips of old newspapers, the kids will love doing this.  I get the girls to use big paintbrushes when applying the Paper Mache glue then place a strip of newspaper then recover it with the glue mixture again.  Cover the whole thing with layers of this Paper Mache glue and newspaper.  It will look like this;

Leave this to dry overnight. Then the painting fun begins!  So we went for all over pink for the base colour.  Get the Aprons on, these are from Ikea. I find them great.

So after the painting was finished we had a very pink Disney Princess Castle.

That was left overnight to dry also and then we just added some details.  Farrah informed me Disney castles have blue tower tops. We just added some windows and doors.



Here is the finished result;

 We are getting some fun out of it with the Disney Princess characters :-)

Have you ever tried Paper Mache with the kids? Give it a go, Great for the rainy days! 

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Thanks for reading,

Orla & Kerri X

Toddler Knitted Snood **Free Simple Pattern**

With it now being September and Autumn being certainly upon us, I thought it would be a perfect time to give you a knitting project! Even if you are a complete beginner you will still have it ready in time for winter when your toddler needs it most! 

I consider myself a knitting beginner. I only got back into it when I first became a mum. I had learnt it in primary school, just the basics. A lovely lady I work with inspired me to start and she has really helped me along the way. Thanks Lorraine! 

The 'Toddler Snood' is a really simple piece. It will only take you a few evenings to finish. The toddler snood is unisex, just pick your colour wool to go with your child's personality. My girls love pink and purples so I went with those. The girls wore their snoods everyday in the winter and I got lovely compliments about them! Another bonus is that because they go over the head they can't be easily lost when they are out and about.

For the snood in the image I bought the wool in Dealz where it was 3 for 2, each ball of wool costing 1.49e 

Give it go! You never know you might catch the knitting bug!!
                       

   
*PATTERN*

I used 5.0mm needles

Cast on 40 stitches

I used two colours for each snood.

For the snood I used the basic knit stitch

15 lines of pink

15 lines of white 

15 lines of pink

15 lines of white

15 lines of pink

Cast off

Double over your knitting and sew together inside out to hide stitches and loose ends.

Sew the two ends together.

Let me know how you get on, I love to hear from fellow knitters! :-)

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Thanks for reading,

Orla & Kerri Xx

VOILA TODDLER SNOOD!