Crafts & DIY

How to Bleach Pine Cones for Craft Projects

When using pine cones to create natural home decor or ornaments, you may want to bleach them to give your pinecone project a more beachy and clean look. Once your pine cones are bleached you could hang them from your dining room chandelier or in a window by attaching sheer or velvet ribbons to the top. Just use a glue gun or attach with a tack to the top. Pine cones make great decorations and if you can find them in your local park or yard, you have a cheap or free decoration for Fall, Thanksgiving or the Christmas season.

Photo Source: Country Living Magazine on Instagram

How to Bleach Pine Cones

Supplies Needed:

assorted natural pine cones
bleach
water
plastic bucket
large plate
paper towels
baking sheet

Directions for Bleaching Pine Cones:

1. Add 2 parts bleach to 1 part water solution to a glass or plastic container (or bucket) that you don’t mind having bleach in. Example: 2 cups bleach + 1 cup water.

2. Add pine-cones and weight them down with a plate to make sure all of the pinecones are submerged in the bleach water.

3. Let the pine cones sit in the bleach water for 48 to 72 hours. As they sit will close up.

4. Place paper towels on a baking sheet. Remove the pine cones from the bleach water and place on the paper towels.

5. Let them air dry for up to a week. You will know they are dry when they open back up.

TIP: To speed the drying process, let the pine cones air out for one day after you remove them from the bleach water and then dry them in a 250 degree oven until they open up and are completely dry.

18 Halloween Crafts Kids Will Love

Here are 18 Halloween crafts kids will love to help make. Some are for preschoolers and some are for older kids to help with Mom or Dad. Get the kids involved this Spooky season making all kids of crafts, decorations and more.

Popsicle Stick and Yarn Spiderweb Craft for Kids

Craft by Buggy and Buddy

Buggy and Buddy created a fun and easy Halloween craft for kids that encourages fine motor skills practice and turns out really cute. The spider webs are made with popsicle sticks and yarn so it’s an super inexpensive Halloween craft for kids for the home or classroom.

Paper Plate and Cupcake Liner Halloween Wreath

Craft by Fun a Day.com

This Happy Halloween pumpkin wreath gives kids the joy of painting and added a jack-o-lantern face to cupcake liners. If you can’t find orange cupcake liners the kids can paint them with orange paint. A trick is to add some water to the paint to make it thinner.

Preschool Halloween Craft: A Family Pumpkin Mummies

Craft by Hands on as We Grow

This preschool craft will sure to delight your little ones. You just need some real or fake pumpkins, gauge and googly eyes to make your family of mummy pumpkins.

Haunted House Scratch Art

Craft by The Inspiration Edit

Are you looking for a super fun Halloween Art Project for kids? This Scratch Art haunted house is the coolest! It’s a great art activity that lets kids be as creative as they want to be. And the more that they scratch, the more that they’ll be able to create something really unique and fun at the same time.

Spider Web Weaving Craft

Craft from My Green Toddler

This spider web craft is really easy, even for very young children. It’s perfect for when you’re learning about nature, mini beasts or getting ready for Halloween.

Easy Halloween Pencil Stamp Art

Craft from Lil Tigers

Let’s design spooky ghosts or flying bats with help of a pencil eraser and paint. It is super easy and fun.

Mummy Wrapping Craft

Craft by Taming Little Monsters

Make a mummy craft for kids that promote fine motor skills. Preschoolers and kindergartners will love creating their own yarn wrapped mummies.

DIY Spider Painted Rocks

Craft by Dollar Crafter

The spooky season is here and that means it’s time to plan your Halloween festivities. Here we have a fun project for all of our crafters out there that you can do with your kids: DIY spider painted rocks! Grab some rocks, black paint, googly eyes and pipe cleaners and you have a simple kids DIY Halloween craft.

Halloween Popsicle Stick Pumpkins

Craft by Honey and Lime

Whether you choose to use these as home décor, give them as gifts, or just love to make fun projects, this Jack-O-Lantern craft is a good one for kids to try. To make this DIY Halloween pumpkin popsicle sticks craft, all you need are a few items that you more than likely already have at home.

Spooky Flower Halloween Paper Eyeballs

Craft from Taming Little Monsters

This craft let’s you turn egg cartons into spooky Halloween eyeballs using paint, black straws and googly eyes. Super simple but very “eye” catching.

Kids Halloween Handprint Spiders

Craft by Craft Bits

This kids craft project takes your little ones handprint and turns it into a Hand print Halloween spiders for art projects, Halloween decorations or cards.

Zombie Paper Plate Craft for Kids

Craft by Simple Everyday Mom

This Zombie Halloween paper plate craft is not only super easy to make but it’s also lots of fun to make. It comes with a free printable template that kids will be able to easily follow.

Popsicle Stick Witch Hat Craft

Craft by Hunny I’m Home DIY

This Halloween, get creative with your little ones and make this adorable witch hat popsicle stick Halloween craft. Popsicle sticks are one of our favorite craft supplies because there’s just so many ways you can use them to create something fun.

Paper Plate Frankenstein Halloween Mask

Craft by Red Ted Art

Grab the Free Frankenstein Mask Template, paper plats, scissors, pencil, paint, glue bun, bum chenille or pipe cleaners, wine cork and a few other craft supplies to make the most clever Frankenstein Mask ever!

Easy Mummy DIY Halloween Wreath

Craft by Craftidly

Make this fun Mummy Wreath in minutes using Dollar Store supplies. This wreath is fun and simple enough for older kids to help with. Hot glue the skeleton hands, eyes, and spider on. Cut the excess ribbon ends and hot glue to the back of the wreath. That’s it! Just add ribbon or string to hang.

Toilet Roll Spooky Tree Halloween Craft for Kids

Craft by Taming Little Monsters

Halloween Toilet Paper Roll Bat Craft

Craft by Two Pink Peonies

Monster Windsocks Craft

Craft by Crafts by Amanda

How to Make Hummingbird Nectar (Step by Step)

Hummingbirds are some of the smallest birds in the world. Flapping their tiny wings burns up calories fast so to maintain their momentum, hummingbirds need to eat a lot. And what do they like to eat? Nectar of course. If you don’t have a lot of nectar in your yard you may not attract hummingbirds so you can make your own hummingbird nectar with two simple ingredients – sugar and water!

Why do Hummingbirds need to feed so often?

These fast flying birds consume half their body weight in bugs and nectar, feeding every 10 to 15 minutes. They will probably visit from 1,000 to 2,000 flowers per day just to get enough nectar. With this DIY nectar recipe, you can help hardworking hummingbirds get the nutrients they need.

How often should I change hummingbird nectar?

Hummingbirds like fresh nectar. If you make your own hummingbird nectar and put it in a feeder, you will want to change it at least once a week, every few days if it is very hot. Hummingbird nectar can turn sour. If the nectar becomes sour they hummingbirds won’t drink it. You will know it is sour from the smell but also by seeing what the hummingbirds do when they come to your feeder. If they come but won’t drink the nectar is probably sour. Rinse out your hummingbird feeder well with a bottle brush but do not use any form of cleanser or detergent.

Video: Mike Fernandez/Audubon. Footage: Camilla Cerea/Audubon

Hummingbird Nectar Ingredients:

1 cup boiling water
1/4 cup white sugar
Bowl
Spoon

Important! you should never use red dye here as it is not necessary to attract hummingbirds and the chemicals could prove to be harmful to the birds.

How to Make Hummingbird Nectar:

1. Mix sugar and boiling water until sugar is dissolved.

2. Cool. Add a bit of ice if you want to speed the cooling process along.

3. Fill your hummingbird feeder.

4. Hang up your feeder outside and wait for the hummingbirds to arrive.

A quicker way to make hummingbird feeder nectar is to microwave a cup of water, stir in the sugar, add a couple of ice cubes and wait about 5 minutes.

It’s so simple to make your own hummingbird nectar at home that you not only save money because you aren’t buying the pre-made mix, you can make it easily with just sugar and water.

Create Dancing Scarecrows for Thanksgiving

Here’s a quick and easy projects kids can make for Thanksgiving. The project kit comes from Oriental Trading Company and is perfect for classroom, Sunday school, home school or an afternoon fun-time project.

Suggested Age: 5 and older

There are 12 individual kits in one package and each kit comes with pre-cut cardboard pieces, red paper fasteners, a ribbon awhat you nd some extra pieces. The rivets are used to hold the arms, leg and head to the body piece and make your scarecrow jointed. Each piece also has pre-drilled holes so it’s all ready to assemble. The ribbon can be taped on the back to be used as a hanger or tie it on the front and glue it on for a bow decoration. Each scarecrow ends up being about 15″ tall when assembled.

The first step is to have the kids use markers or crayons and color in each of the scarecrow pieces.

Next, use the red paper fasteners to attach the pieces together. Then tape the ribbon on the back of the head to make a hanger and Voila! Your scarecrow puppet is all finished. Easy Peasy!

Disclosure: Oriental Trading Company sent us these kits to test out for our article.

How to Make a Tiny Unicorn Backpack (Free Template)

Tiny toys and crafts are all over YouTube. We decided to try making the Tiny unicorn backpack we have seen on the “Alexa DIY & Crafts” YouTube Channel. She makes it look so easy and she is super talented. We could watch her videos for hours.

This is actually a pretty complex project so make sure you set aside about an hour to work on it. Oh, and you need a bit of patience. We made plenty of mistakes so don’t worry if you make mistakes too.

Some of the steps are optional because they are based on how you want your unicorn to look. Feel free to design and decorate your backpack the way you want. You don’t have to follow the video exactly as shown. Each child will want to do their own thing and skill level depends on the age of your child.

The smile on the face of a 5-year old tells you our attempt was a success. It might not look as perfect as the one in the video but kids are happy just getting to make the project and see how it comes out. They aren’t looking for perfection.

Tiny Unicorn Backpack Supplies List

First, we gathered our supplies. This is what we bought or had on hand

Craft Foam
Scissors
Ruler
Scoring tool
Pipe cleaner or piping cord
Glue Gun with glue sticks
Tacky Glue
Sparkle stickers
Markers (Sharpies are great)
7″ zipper ($1 each at Walmart)

Tiny Unicorn Backpack Template

Next we printed out the paper unicorn backpack template pattern. The pattern Alexa provided is super small so we made our own version slightly bigger and made into a PDF so you can download and use it too. The template Alexa offers only includes the backpack. We also included the center strip the zipper gets added to, the tiny ears, unicorn horn, straps, and nose piece in our template. Hopefully they are to scale. We aren’t experts in these things but we tried the best we could.

Our tiny unicorn backpack measures finished approximately 3″ tall x 2-1/2″ wide.

Click here to download and print the tiny unicorn backpack template pattern.

Kids even as young as age 5 can easily cut out the paper template, trace it on the craft foam and then cut some of the larger items out of the craft foam.

Tiny Unicorn Backpack Printable Instructions

Follow along with our instructions and use the video as needed. We found the video to be super helpful because we could pause when we needed and rewind to go back to previous steps. We just wanted to give you a kind of printed summary of what the video shows along with some helpful tips.

Prep: Plug in the glue gun to get it warmed up so it is ready to go.

Step 1: A grown up needs to use a scoring tool and ruler to make the fold lines at the base.

Step 2: Cut the side strip piece and then cut out the center area.

Step 3: Place the zipper on this center piece and cut off the excess from either end of the zipper.

Step 4: Use the glue gun to glue the zipper to the center piece. This step was tricky. You have to make sure you don’t get too much glue near the teeth of the zipper or the pull. Otherwise it won’t open or close easily.

Step 5: Glue the main backpack piece and the zipper piece together. Alexa makes it look easy and seamless in the video but we struggled a bit. In the end we did manage to get it all glue together. Watch those fingers because the glue gun gets hot!

Step 6: Glue piping cord or pipe cleaner around the edges. If you are adding a pipe cleaner make sure to add a bit of glue on the tip to cover the metal ends.

Step 7: Cut out the tiny ears. Using a marker, fill in the center with the color of your choice. You may want to add piping around the edges but we skipped this step. Those ears are tiny! (3:53 in video)

Step 8: Cut out the unicorn horn. Decorate as you like. (4:26 in video)

Step 9: Glue the ears and unicorn horn to the top of the backpack (see 4:35 in video for placement)

Step 10: Using a Marker, draw the eyes on the front of the backpack.

Step 11: Using pink paint or a pink marker, lightly add pink to the cheek area. You may skip this step if you don’t want rosy cheeks on your unicorn.

Step 12: Cut out the nose piece and draw 2 dots with a black marker (Sharpies work great). We skipped this step on one of our backpacks. It’s a cute idea but it almost makes it look like you are making a unicorn pig! (5:18 in video)

Step 13: Cut slits in the back of the backpack and add straps. (5:30-6:18 in video)

We hope you had fun with this tiny unicorn backpack project.

Let us know if you would like printed instructions, templates and tips for other YouTube craft videos.