Halloween and Autumnal Crafts from Baker Ross

We really enjoy receiving arts and craft goodies from Baker Ross and our latest delivery of Halloween and Autumnal craft kits has provided Freddy and the friends, with lots of creative fun!

We received  the following selection to try out:

Top Hat Craft Kit  Pack of 3 £2.70

Day of the Dead Foam Stickers Pack of 105 £2.99

Scratch Art Haunted Houses Pack of 8 £2.95

Woodland Animals Cross Stitch Pack of 5 £3.49

Hedgehog Cushion Sewing Set Pack of 2 £4.70

Year of the Monkey Stained Glass Monkey Decorations Pack of 6 £3.96

Wooden Trophy Magnets Pack of 8 £2.79

The Baker Ross craft kits contain almost everything required to create some lovely crafted pieces. With impressive end results, they allow children to feel confident in their creativity and help develop their skills. Freddy really loves to invite his friends over to share the fun and help him to test out the Craft-it! sets. Having a Craft Party is a great idea for entertaining children, and the Baker Ross sets lend themselves perfectly to this.

The first activity they enjoyed was the Scratch Art Haunted Houses. The pack includes 8 black house shapes and the tools for scratching away the top surface. Underneath the black is a shiny holographic style, silver design, which contrasts really well giving a striking effect.

The top layer scratches away really nicely so you don't damage the under layer when creating your design. Once completed, the houses are made free-standing by slotting in semi-circular cardboard feet. This was a little bit fiddly as the slotted feet are quite easily ripped, but with an adult's help the display of Haunted Houses made a dramatic and spooky Halloween scene!

This year is the Chinese Year of the Monkey. The Stained Glass Monkey Decorations are a lovely way to celebrate that fact. The set comprises of 8 pre-cut monkey shapes in black card, with push out, pre-cut holes. There is also a bag of coloured cellophane squares in assorted colours and some ribbons for attaching to the hanging decoration.

You need to use glue to attach pieces of cellophane to the back of the monkey shape, which show through the holes in the design. The boys enjoyed doing this, but it was very messy with glue going everywhere! They made some very colourful (and very sticky) monkeys that look very pretty hung in front of a window with the light shining through.

Older children would be able to take more time and cut smaller pieces of cellophane to make a more multi-coloured and neater effect. But even when done by a 4 year old and a 6 year old, the end results are still pretty good!

The Day of the Dead range of products on the Baker Ross website is absolutely brilliant. I love the colours and the designs. The set of self adhesive Day of the Dead foam stickers are lovely. There are 35 assorted designs including skulls, guitars, hearts, flowers and maracas in each pack of 105 stickers. They lend themselves to a whole host of crafting activities from card making to decorating jewellery boxes or photo frames.

The boys used them to decorate some cool Halloween Top Hats.

The Top Hat making kit comprises of pre-cut, thick black cardboard pieces that are glued together to make the rim and the top of the hat. There was no way the boys could do this unaided so the adults stepped in!  Given time and a good glue and something to hold everything together while it dried, I think you could make a pretty good and sturdy top hat. However, trying to get it done quickly so the boys could get sticking with their Day of the Dead stickers, meant the end results were not as good as they could be. This is not an activity to be rushed.

The materials themselves are good quality and well cut. In hindsight, I think using glue dots would have been a better way of assembling the hat. The hats would be a good addition to a Halloween costume and can be personalised using any decorations you like.

Freddy and his friends decorated their hats with the Day of the Dead stickers and they looked pretty cool and ready for a Halloween party! The foam stickers have a peel off back making them easy to stick on. They are such good quality and give an impressive effect.

As ever with Baker Ross, I was impressed with the quality and the designs of the finished crafts. I love that everything comes pre-cut or pre-punched and ready to use with minimum preparation needed. Almost everything you need is included, we just used our own glue and scissors to complete the crafts. The activities are quite straightforward and can be completed by children with varying degrees of skill. Even the youngest children will be able to participate in many of the crafts with supervision, while older kids can unleash their creativity independently and put their own artistic spin on the finished results.

Baker Ross products, including the ones we tried out, can  be found on their website at www.bakerross.co.uk.

Hosting a Craft Party with Baker Ross

We received a brilliant delivery from Baker Ross this week and so we organised a crafting party for Freddy and his cousins to try their hand at some fabulously arty activities.  I love Baker Ross's craft kits. They are excellent quality products that create great end results that the kids can be proud of.

I covered the dining room table in an old plastic tablecloth and laid out the craft sets along with some extra paints, glue, paint brushes and scissors. The kids tried their hand at decorating their own rainbow fish, making mermaid bookmarks, painting garden gnomes, making scratch art monster fridge magnets and decorating little Superhero themed gift bags that we filled with chocolate coins for them to take home along with all the other things they made.

Crafting is great for children. Not only does it fire their creativity, it also helps develop their concentration, their dexterity, their hand eye co-ordination and their ability to follow instructions. The children have lots of fun as they involve themselves in some constructive activities, which teach them lots of new skills.

We received the following sets:

Ceramic Gnomes
£4.96 for 4

Decorate with acrylic paints or ceramic paint pens and personalise with a name. These gnomes are suitable for inside and outdoors and look really cute with their pointed hats and big boots.

The children really went freestyle on their colourful designs and enjoyed getting messy with paint. Freddy used googly eyes on his gnome, and later when it was dry, he wrote his name on the plaque with a Sharpie Marker.

Polystyrene Fish
£2.49 for 6

Decorate your own colourful fish with Deco Pens, sequins and glitter. This activity goes perfectly with a reading of the story of the Rainbow Fish. Children will love to re-enact the story of the Rainbow Fish with their own multi-coloured fish.

Their is some lovely detail on the fish with its scales, fins, tail, mouth and eyes. The polystyrene is very solid with a close weave so it didn't have that cringey feeling that you get with the polystyrene used for packaging. The fish could be suspended on strings to make a lovely mobile or underwater diorama.

Mermaid Weaving Bookmarks
£3.49 for 4

Foam shapes, self-adhesive foam decorations, coloured ribbon and googly eyes are included in each individual kit, to create a colourful mermaid with a woven tail. This is a lovely activity and the finished bookmarks look really pretty.

I really appreciated the fact that the things needed for each mermaid came in its own individual, sealed bag.  This means you don't need to sort through lots of stuff beforehand. You get spare eyes in each pack too, so you don't need to panic if you lose one! Weaving with ribbons is a bit fiddly, but with a little help, everyone did a great job.

Tropical Fish Cushion Sewing Kit
£2.99 for 2

With pre-punched felt pieces, self-adhesive felt shapes, yarn, plastic needle and stuffing, children can create their very own Blue Tang and Clown Fish (aka Dory and Nemo!)  It's a great introduction to sewing for children aged 5+.

Monster Scratch Art Fridge Magnets
£2.99 for 10

This is a fantastic activity comprising of 2 each of five designs of scratch art monster shapes along with scratch tools and adhesive magnets. As the top surface is scratched away it reveals rainbow colours, creating some cool designs. Once the design is completed, the magnet can be stuck on the back.

This was a lovely activity that gave some great results. Everybody enjoyed scraping away the top surface to reveal the colours underneath.  It was very easy and very satisfying to do, using the tools provided.

Super Hero Foam Stickers
£2.99 for 120

With 30 assorted designs including girl and boy superheroes, city skylines and 'Wham' and 'Pow' emblems, these self adhesive foam stickers are great fun.  We used them to decorate gift bags, but they are perfect for all kinds of activities.

It was lovely to see both male and female superheroes in the designs. It kept everyone happy!  The foam stickers really are great value and would be really useful for hosting a Superhero birthday party, for decorating party bags, invites, decorations etc.

Coloured Sequins
£2.99 per jar

These colourful sequins can be stuck or pinned to add colour and sparkle to lots of different crafts, such as collages or card making. We used them on our Rainbow Fish, sticking them with a dab of Baker Ross PVA glue.

You get a lot of multi-colured sequins in this 90g jar, each colour bagged up individually. It's a great value product for keeping in the craft box.

Hosting a craft party is a great alternative to a traditional birthday party. Children are kept entertained and engaged as they take part in the set activities and get to take home all the goodies that they create. The Baker Ross products are ideal for this. They are super value and the quality and designs are excellent. There are so many different themes available you could easily base a party around a single theme such as animals, flowers, sports or under the sea, or just pick a selection of products from the range.

I like that they are so well thought out, without being overly ambitious or too complicated. The sets give the children an activity that they can add their own creative spin to, whilst still being structured enough to give a good, consistent end result.

Freddy loved doing all the different crafts and was very proud of the things he had made!

www.bakerross.co.uk

Getting Creative with a Zack & Quack Craft Party

Zack & Quack is the new hit TV show on Nick Jr featuring Zack and his duck friend Quack who, together with the help of their friend Kira, enjoy adventures and solve problems in their pop-up paper world.  To celebrate the premiere we were invited by UKMums.tv to host a crafts party to coincide with the showing of the first episodes.  Armed with mountains of cardboard boxes, glue, stickers, paper plates, cardboard tubes and lots of imagination, the party guests made their own creations inspired by Zack & Quack!

There were cardboard cameras, paper plate faces, decorated treasure boxes, iced biscuits, origami Belly Up frogs and a brilliant box racing car!  Crafting is always so much fun and kids love to get creative. 

The Zack & Quack show itself kept a roomful of boys and girls totally engrossed!  They all really liked the animation and the humour had them giggling.  The stories were fun and the children loved how Zack solved his problems by making things out of paper in his pop up world.  It was definitely a big hit.

Look out for Zack & Quack on Nick Jr at 4.30pm on Fridays.  You can also check out the Nick Jr website on www.nickjr.co.uk/shows/zack-and-quack where you'll find lots of craft ideas and activities.  You can also watch clips from the show and meet the characters.