March = National Craft Month!

Wow how awesome is that! Not only is March the month of my birthday, but my birthday is also St. Patrick's Day (which I have to say is a pretty awesome birthday!!!) and the best part of that is that March is ALSO NATIONAL CRAFT MONTH! I am seriously the luckiest girl EVER! My favorite color is green and EVERYONE gets me something green for my birthday (hmmm ... wonder why) and crafting is my passion and I happen to be born in the month that every craft supply ever known to man (or woman) is featured and put on sale at some point throughout the month!

On that note I just took the order for a leotard today and the little girl picked out her colors (orange with silver straps) it is going to look so cute! Hopefully I can start on it tonight when the kids get into bed! Then I have cupcakes to make for St. Patty's day for Ethan's preschool class. They will be rainbow cake with green frosting and a rainbow sticking out of the frosting. I am insanely excited to make these because I have never made the rainbow cake batter before and am excited to see how they will turn out, and excited to see the kids reaction when they bite into a cupcake and it is 6 different colors!

So for now I leave you with a cute craft you can do with your kids for national craft month.

This pretty rainbow is so easy even little ones can make it. It’s perfect for teaching kids about colors and improving dexterity.

What you'll need:

• 1 brick of styrofoam
• 1 each purple, blue, green, yellow, orange and red chenille stems
• 15 purple pony beads
• 18 blue pony beads
• 23 green pony beads
• 27 yellow pony beads
• 32 orange pony beads
• 36 red pony beads
• Bag of cotton balls
  

How to make it:

1. String pony beads onto chenille stems, matching the colors. (i.e. string green pony beads on green chenille, purple pony beads on purple chenille, etc)
2. Start with the purple beaded stem. Center the beads on the stem and trim the ends of the stem leaving about 2” on each end.
3. Find the center of the Styrofoam block and insert the two chenille ends into the brick, forming an arch. Hint: use one of the pieces of chenille that you cut off to create the holes first, pull them out then insert the beaded chenille into the hole.
4. Repeat step 3 for each beaded stem, in the rainbow sequence (next is blue, green, yellow, orange, and red).
5. Glue cotton balls all around the bottom of the rainbow to form clouds. Cover the Styrofoam brick with cotton balls.
6. When cotton balls and glue are dry, stretch and gently pull the cotton balls to cover any exposed Styrofoam edges.
   

Tips:

• If making several of these (i.e. class or preschool project), cut the bricks in half. This will give you twice the supplies as a full brick is not necessarily needed.
• Find large bags of pony beads in multicolored value packages at craft supply stores.
• Show small children the ends of the chenille stems so that they know there are pointy edges.