A Few {More} St. Patrick’s Day Decorations and Crafts

This momma isn’t the only one decorating for the luckiest holiday ’round this house!

The kiddo has a showcase space for her most prized artwork – a frame shell I picked up at Michael’s on the cheap!

Because she gets to decide what goes in the frame, sometimes we have 3 or 4 pieces of artwork stuffed in there, but for now it’s “the noodle show.”

With all the crafting we do, her other artwork gets relegated to her bedroom door, the fireplace brick stack, or well, any other wall or flat surface in the house. Is it sad that the 2 year old adds all of the design elements to this house?

Click on “Read More” to join us in setting up the play space for St. Patrick’s Day!

At any given time, we have some kind of colored manipulative out for free play and most of the time we have two or three. Colored pasta is impressive, but vibrantly colored pasta is magnificent! 

These photos don’t do the colors justice mainly because I have next to ZERO photography skills, but Elise (26 months) wants to play with these at least twice a day. 

Do you want to know the secret to vibrantly colored pasta? Ditch the liquid food coloring and opt for a few of the gel-based ones. Both the Wilton 601-5580 1/2-Ounce Certified-Kosher Icing Colors, Set of 12 or the AmeriColor Student Soft Gel Paste Food Color 12 Pack Kit are available online (partner links). Wilton is available at some of the larger chain craft stores. 

I didn’t use a tutorial, but I’m sure there are some out there if you care to google. Yep, I just used that as a verb. 

Here’s what I do:

• I stash some pasta in a seal top plastic bag (one for each color I am making).
• Then I put some rubbing alcohol in a color-safe bowl (a couple of tablespoons for a sandwich sized bag full of pasta). 
• I try to mix the gel food coloring into the alcohol thoroughly – no clumps.   
• Then I dump the colored alcohol into the pasta sammich bag and let Elise mix it around completely, coating everything we can. Note: If you are using a pointy pasta, I’d recommend an over pack bag because those sharp little edges can cut your sandwich bag and you might end up with little blue fingerprints on your counter. Just saying it could happen. 
• Then we let the colors sit for a few hours in the sandwich bags, mixing again and turning them every once in a while.
• Finally, we spread it out on a cookie sheet or two to completely dry and then we play, lace, and craft our little hearts out.

The paper garlands we made were easy-peasy, as any decoration for a two year old should be. :)

The paper chain is construction paper and tape – it was quicker than glue and I think we were heading out to the library for story time or a play date or something. 

I really shouldn’t wait so long to write up a post… Just take it from me: we had somewhere to be and this was one of those, “just appease the kiddo for 15 or 20 minutes until we have to leave” kind of crafts.  

The small garland at the corner of the frame shell is a free printable of cupcake toppers made by Sonnet over at Soho Sonnet. 

Yep, I was looking for something quick and easy because I am lazy of the library thing or play date thing or whatever, and this fit the bill! 

Ok, I’ll admit it was a bit lazy to use a party cupcake topper printable as a garland but it turned out really cute! You could also make one for the edge of a mirror or picture. 

As you can imagine, the holes were too small for Elise to thread the string through, so I did this one. 

We had some cupcake toppers left over and it wasn’t time to leave for the {fill in the whatever-it-was here}, so I asked Elise if she wanted to make some St. Patrick’s Day cards for friends we were going to visit that weekend. 

A foam necklace made from ribbon and scraps. 

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