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.

Father's Day Crafts from Baker Ross

When it comes to special occasions, nothing beats a homemade gift from a child who loves you. Knowing that they have put in their time and effort to create something special makes them the most precious of presents to receive.

For Father's Day, Baker Ross have a brilliant range of crafting goodies to help children make something really special for their dads. Freddy received some of the sets and we hosted an after school get together with his cousins to try them out. 

The things we tested out included:

Father's Day Foam Stickers: pack of 120 £2.99

Tie Book Mark Kit: pack of 4 £2.99

Toolbox Photo Frame Kit: pack of 4 reduced from £3.96 to £1.99

Car Wooden Desk Tidy Kit: pack of 3 £3.45

Father's Day Car Cards: pack of 8 £1.99

With Baker Ross products, you know you are getting a brilliantly thought out craft activity containing everything needed to make something that looks great. With pre-cut foam pieces and self-adhesive stickers, many of the kits are really easy and straightforward to do. Children just need to add their own artistic flair to make a design that their dads will love.

The children seemed to really enjoy doing the crafts for their dads. They don't always stick religiously to the instructions, but they all put their own unique spin on the activities to create unique gifts. The foam stickers were stuck on with some wild abandon at times, but this makes the gifts even more unique!

We particularly loved the Father's Day self-adhesive foam stickers. With shapes such as guitars, ties, lap tops, footballs, moustaches, newspapers, remote controls, power tools, golf clubs and PS3 controllers, there are designs to match any dad's personality. There are also slogan stickers with phrases such as 'World's Best Dad' and 'King for the Day', which are ideal for card making. We used the stickers to personalise the car shaped wooden desk tidy, which we filled with sweets to make a lovely gift. Alternatively, you could use paints to create a unique design on the easy to assemble 3D wooden car.

The tool box photo frames will grace any dad's desk and will look fabulous with a family photo inserted. They look really cool once completed and are a lot of fun to make with the assortment of self-adhesive tools to stick on around the foam frame. The frame is free standing, slotting into a base.

The tie bookmarks come in four different designs and the 'Dad Rocks' one complete with a guitar sticker is perfect for Ian. The other designs include sports, a race car theme and a #1 Dad design. They would be a perfect additional gift if buying a book for dad this Father's Day.

The colour in car cards come in three designs; a camper van, a Mini and a race car. They can be coloured in with felt tips, crayons, pencils or paints and come complete with envelopes. 

Seeing how proud Freddy was to have made his daddy a selection of such lovely gifts was a delight. He and his cousins carried out the crafts with such enthusiasm and really enjoyed creating the things that they made.  There are going to be two very happy daddies on Father's Day!

Find all these Father's Day craft packs plus hundreds of other themed craft ideas and accessories at www.bakerross.co.uk.

Alphabites - Monstrously Good Cereals

Breakfast is often referred to as the most important meal of the day, so I make sure Freddy starts the day with a wholesome bowl of cereals. Unfortunately, many of the cereals on the market, especially those  aimed at children, tend to contain high quantities of salt and sugar. These are not the ingredients I want my kids eating first thing in the morning.

BEAR Alphabites are a fun and kid friendly cereal that is free from refined sugar, salt or nasty additives.  They are made from just six all natural ingredients - five tasty multigrains and coconut blossom nectar.  Cocoa Multigrain Alphabites are also available for those looking for a healthy alternative to chocolatey breakfast cereals.

BEAR Alphabites provide children with a bowl of crunchy and tasty alphabet letters, that spell an end to hungry bellies!  They are so good, they won't even realise that they are a healthy option!  At the moment, the fun factor is increased by the addition of free monster fridge magnets inside each box. Featuring letter shaped characters from Monsterbet City, the 26 magnets each represent one of the monstrous inhabitants, such as Barney the Bin Bellied Bloover and Horace the Hairsniffler!

Not only are the fridge magnets really cute and a lot of fun, they also get the kids' minds going as they think about their own ideas for monsters representing the different letters of the alphabet. Freddy made a monster using the BEAR's Monsterbet Creator and some lovely crafty bits that BEAR sent us.  He had a monstrously good time!

He started by drawing a big letter F, the first letter of his name, and then made the letter into a monster using tissue paper, feathers, glitter glue, felt, shiny card and pompoms. His monster was called 'Fearless Freddy who eats French Fries.'  He was very proud of his creation.  I love how the BEAR Alphabites manage to combine being a healthy breakfast cereal with being appealing to children and inspiring their creativity and imagination.  They really do make a great start to the day!

BEAR Alphabites are available in Sainsbury's, Waitrose, Ocado, Tesco and some healthfood shops and independent stockists for £2.69 RRP.

How To Make A Easter Bunny Mask

With the weather being more akin to winter than spring, we have kept ourselves cosy by staying indoors!  Thankfully, we have had lots to keep us entertained and busy including doing some Easter arts and crafts projects. 3M Scotch set us a challenge to create some Everyday Magic at Easter with the kids by working on an Easter craft challenge using the Scotch Brand products. We were sent a bundle of Scotch goodies including their Magic Tape to use, which was perfectly timed to tie in with our own Easter craft activities.

For the challenge we decided to make an Easter Bunny Mask and Kizzy took charge!

What You Need

A4 foam sheet

Scotch scissors

Scotch Magic Tape

Scotch Double Sided Tape

Scotch Expressions Tape

Felt

Cotton wool

Cardboard

Feathers

Pipe Cleaners

Elastic

Hole Punch

What You Need to Do

Simply draw a mask shape onto card and use it as a template to draw the shape onto a piece of craft foam.

Cut out carefully (including eye holes - that are the right size and position for your child to see through!)

Using Scotch double sided tape, stick cotton wool onto his ears to make them fluffy.

Cut out cheeks from felt and teeth from white card and stick onto the mask with the tape.

Twist 3 pipe cleaners in the middle to make whiskers and stick with Scotch double sided tape.

Use Scotch Magic tape to secure the whiskers and then stick a felt nose on the top using a loop of tape.

Cut thin strips of Scotch Illusions tape and stick down as eyelashes.

Add a few finishing touches using feathers, felt shapes, glitter etc. to personalise your Bunny!

Carefully punch a hole on either side of your finished mask, thread elastic through and secure ends.

Here is Kizzy's video tutorial on How To Make an Easter Bunny Mask!

It was a fun activity allowing Kizzy to use her creativity to create a rather spangly and funky Easter Bunny.  I think she did brilliantly well!   Why don't you challenge your little ones to make some Easter crafts this year? From bonnets, to painted eggs, to decorated sweet jars to pompom chicks, Easter is a great inspiration for craft activities.  We are having a lot of fun getting arty this year (especially as we can't go outside!)

Check out Scotch's Facebook Page  for hints, tips, chat and competitions!

We were sponsored by Scotch 3M to take part in this challenge and were given a selection of tapes to use in our Easter arts and crafts activities.