The Jucee Crew Blogger Challenge

We are always up for a challenge, so when Jucee invited us to take part in a fun craft activity, recreating some of the Jucee Crew characters from fresh fruit, we jumped at the chance. Supplied with an assortment of fruit, art materials and some Jucee sugar free drinks to quench our thirsts while we worked, we set about making our own Ozzie Orange, Archie Apple, Lizzie Lemon, Peggy Pineapple, Luigi Lime and Maisie Mango!

Jucee juice drinks, Jucee squash and Jucee 100% pure fruit juices all contain no added sugar. They make up a great tasting, great value range of drinks, made extra fun because of the cute, fruity characters on each bottle or carton. The individual juice boxes and sports top bottles are perfect for when on the go with the kids. They contain no artificial flavourings or colours, and like the rest of the range, are 100% sugar free.

The fruity characters that make up the Jucee Crew are a super cute way of introducing fruits to young children, making drinking juice drinks even more appealing. My crew of Freddy along with his cousins Addy and Dyl were very excited about getting creative to make their own Jucee Crew fruity friends.

Armed with a selection of fruits, some googly eyes, Sharpie markers, glue and other arts and crafts bits and bobs, they made some lovely characters. (they also enjoyed eating the fruits afterwards so nothing went to waste!)

According to the kids, Ozzie Orange is a fruitastic character who loves playing football with his little kicking legs. Archie Apple loves Kung-Fu and Lizzie Lemon wears a pretty blue hat and always smiles. Peggy Pineapple is a crazy character who looks after the little ones! I loved the kids' imagination when it came to making the characters and playing with them, giving them their own personalities and voices.

Find out more about the range and meet the Jucee Crew at www.jucee.co.uk.

Summer Craft Ideas from Baker Ross

We love Baker Ross and always get excited when we receive a box full of crafting goodies to try out.  Our latest box included some brilliant crafts with a summery theme.  There were Flip-Flop keyrings to make.  Sand Art bottles ready to be filled with colourful glitter.  Wooden fish to colour in and some lovely ceramic beach house money boxes to decorate.  There were also some sparkly Deco Pens, which can be used on lots of different surfaces to achieve a sparkly effect with ease.

The kids were in their element using the pens to decorate the ceramic money boxes and the wooden fish.  Freddy had a lovely time designing patterns and let his creativity run wild.  The Deco Pens are lovely to use.  They are filled with water based acrylic paint, which goes on brilliantly giving a matt finish with some added sparkle.  At £9.99 for a five pack, they are a great product for writing or colouring in on a multitude of surfaces.  A definite crafting essential!

The Flip-Flop keyrings allow kids to design their own insert to personalise their creation.  Kizzy used images cut from magazines to make some very funky looking keyrings.  She finished off the designs by colouring in the strap using the Deco Pens, giving a lovely end result.  At just £2.88 for six or £10.80 for 24, they would be an excellent activity to do at a craft party.

The wooden fish have articulated, bendy bodies and are great for even the youngest children to decorate.  Once coloured in they make lovely little tactile ornaments to display.  they are £3.95 for four.

The ceramic beach house coin banks are really cute and once decorated make a fully usable money box.  The Deco Pens worked a treat on them.  At just £5.96 for four, they are great value too.

Here is a video of the kids in action as they enjoyed a crafting session thanks to Baker Ross!

           

You can see the whole range and shop for these and other great crafting products at

bakerross.co.uk

Making Valentine's Day Cards With Freddy

Today Freddy was off nursery as he has a nasty cough.  Having his company meant that we could do some craft activities together for Valentine's Day. As a family, we enjoy any excuse to have a themed day with food and activities planned around the occasion, and Valentine's Day is no exception.  You don't find me and Ian having a romantic meal for two, instead it's family fun for five!

 I dug out all the crafty bits and bobs that were even vaguely heart shaped and let him go wild with a glue stick and some cardboard.  I love the idea of making homemade cards for special occasions.  Shop bought cards are so expensive and I end up binning them, but homemade ones cost nothing and are kept forever.  They are a wonderful record of your child's artistic development, showcasing their creativity.  I have over 20 year's worth of my children's drawings, paintings and cards packaged up in my garage!! (No wonder I have an issue with clutter!)

Freddy is a very active child who runs around, dances, kicks things, throws things and plays hard.  He also has a fabulous vocabulary and a sharp sense of humour and is amazing with technology.  Although he loves educational games on the computer and can recognise many of his letters and numbers by sight, he is extremely reluctant to pick up a pencil or crayon.  He does not like to draw or colour in and makes no effort towards the early mark making that becomes emergent writing.  In fact he can't even hold a pen. He just doesn't get it!  I don't know if it is because he is a confused left-hander (his dad is a leftie) or if his eyes are the problem or whether there is something else going on...or whether it is just a 'boy thing'.  I'm sure once he is at school he'll get into  the swing of writing and drawing, and if not we will be able to work out what the problem is.  But for now, rather than pressuring him into doing something he really does not want to do, I think that doing craft activities is a good way for him to develop the necessary fine motor skills required.  He enjoys it too, so everyone is happy.

Freddy loved sticking the foam shapes, material hearts, paper hearts  beads, sequins and googly eyes onto his design in a display of carefully considered and precisely positioned randomness!

I loved that he made the top heart into a face.  That is a very Freddy thing to do!  So although he wasn't impressed with the idea of signing his name inside the card, which is for his daddy, he stamped his personality all over it and it will be much treasured!

My Clippy Bags of Style

The iconic Clippy Bags are now available as a fun craft kit for girls who can design their own clutch bag or pencil case to suit their own personal style.  By customising cards using stickers, cut out shapes and patterned paper, you can create inserts that pop into clear pockets on the bag.  The finished result is a unique bag that girls can be proud of!

Kizzy demonstrates how she made a stylish bag with My Clippy in this vlog made for UKMums.tv.

Aquarelle…Painting By Numbers has been Re-Invented

I am always interested in arts and crafts products as I have some very creative children who enjoy getting crafty.  I was offered an Aquarelle set by Ravensburger to try out for UK Mums.tv and was impressed with the fact that it had just won the Best New Toy at the London Toy Fair 2012 in the creative category.

We received a mini set in a cute cat design to try out.  It comprises of a pre-printed mini canvas 8.5 x 12cm, a palette, paint brush, dropper and three primary coloured bottles of watercolour paint.  A colour chart in the instruction leaflet tells you how to use the paint plus water to make any colour you like to use on the picture. 

The design on the canvas looks a lot like a painting by numbers, except there are no numbers!  Young artists can be as creative as they like making the picture using whatever colours they wish.  They can experiment and personalize the picture however they choose, which gives them much more freedom in their creativity.  The watercolour  technique is easy to pick up and children can start painting straight away.

The most ingenious thing about the Aquarelle is the fact that the design on the canvas is created using colour repellent lines.  They stay visible even when painted over retaining the detail of the picture even if you go over the line.  The super fine paint brush makes fine detail quite easy to achieve, and the special lines really do help achieve an impressive finish.  The paint is very thin and ink-like and goes on the canvas really well.  It mixes well to make a whole range of shades to get the desired result.  Sometimes, the more complicated painting kits can lead to frustration as young children attempt to recreate the intricate design as per the instructions.  Aquarelle avoids this problem.  The cute picture is brought to life with the colours and looks really impressive from the start with each finished piece being a unique work of art.

Aquarelle is aimed at children aged 8-13 and is definitely one of the best sets of this kind we have ever used for ease of use, creativity and end result. The kits are available as Mini, Midi and Maxi sizes with themes such as cats, dolphins or world cities.  The watercolour paints are much more user friendly than the heavier oil based paints and give a much nicer finish.  Move over Painting By Numbers, Aquarelle is here!