Mother's Day Project and Finishing a Journey!

We have our last "classroom" meeting of the school year tonight. The girls will be finishing their second journey, "Between Earth and Sky" and receiving their journey patches.

I am excited about our Mother's Day craft tonight. I had bought some old teacup and saucer sets when the service unit was trying to decide what to do for Thinking Day. We ended up not using them and that left me with 9 sets to find a use for. I also have left over GS cookies my troop paid for to use up, so I'm throwing them into the mix. I decided to try making teacup bouquets with the girls.

You will need:
Teacups/Saucers -- they don't have to match
Hot Glue Gun
Styrofoam Balls cut in half -- use a bread knife
Coffee Filters
Spray Bottle of Water
Washable Markers
Plastic Cling Wrap
Popsicle sticks
Cookies
Lollipops

The only prep work that is necessary before your meeting would be to cut the Styrofoam balls in half and to hot glue the cups to the saucers.

To start, give each girl a coffee filter (I have a huge package I got at the dollar store), flatten it out and have them each color a design around the outside edge. Now this is where I recommend having a second adult on hand. If you have a spritz or spray bottle you can just mist the coffee filters with water, it will make the markers run and look very pretty. They dry pretty fast. If you don't have a spray bottle, the girls can lightly flick water drops onto the filter to get the colors to run. This should be done on a paper towel to save the work surface and extra hands can help dab off extra water to speed drying.

I then placed the coffee filter into the teacup, trying to leave a little bit out. Place one of the halved Styrofoam balls into the cup. Depending on the size of the cup and the size of the Styrofoam balls, you may have to put it in dome-up or dome-down. I don't think it really matters which. Press it firmly down in, the coffee filter should create a kind of ruffle around the opening of the teacup.

The next step was to stick the lollipops and cookies in as the "flowers." The lollipops don't need anything done to them but the cookies do. I used 1 cookie with a Popsicle stick and then wrapped it tightly in plastic cling wrap. I considered tearing the cling wrap in advance but then I realized I'd have a huge mess on my hands, so I'm going to draft one of the troop volunteers to tear them off and keep them orderly.

After putting all the "flowers" into my bouquet I was done! It was a fun and easy craft and I hope the girls will really have fun with it. I have a lot of cookies for them to use if they want so the bouquets can be much fuller than the one I have pictured here. The best part is, if the girls want a treat tonight, we'll have cookies on hand!

We finished our first journey!

Well, we finished our first Daisy Journey last night! I decided to try to finish Welcome to the Daisy Garden last night because my co-leader, Becke, is close to having her baby, and due to holidays and council events, the troop won't meet again until December. So I thought it would be nice to finish the book while she was still with us (she will be on maternity leave for the rest of the year.)

By finishing our journey book, our newest troop member earned her Daisy petals and the entire troop earned their journey patch. I am working today on sewing my daughter's to her vest. I actually decided to resew most of her fun patches on her vest. I had spaced them liberally and I was worried there may not have been room for the patches we earn this year in scouts. I took the opportunity to fix a few things that were bothering me -- I had sewn her petals on with a variegated rainbow thread that is cute on fun patches but just didn't work on the petals. I usually sew patches on with my sewing machine's zigzag stitch. If I can't match the patch's color with my thread, I try to use a contrasting thread from the patch itself, and if all else fails, I use my rainbow thread. It usually works out pretty well. My theory is, if you're going to see my stitches, then SEE my stitches. On the journey patch though, I decided to sew the background patch on with my machine and then hand-sew the 3 smaller patches on. It is so much easier to hide stitches when they are hand sewn.

Pom-Pom Pumpkins & Scrapbooking Freebies

We finished up our fall sales last weekend. And our troop was about to put over $500 in the bank. I'm so proud of my girls. Our troop meeting this week was a simple one. Since we started the hat/scarf sets last time, we needed to finish this week -- which is good since the weather here in South Dakota has been cold, windy and wet. I decided that the scarves are really a lot of cutting and not a lot of hands on work for the girls, so I asked my co-leader to take the moms and dads into our work room and make finish the scarves while I read Chapter 5 of Welcome to the Daisy Garden to the girls. I loved how the flowers each represent a color of the daisy petals we learned last year! After our reading lesson we started working on our pom-pom pumpkins. I found the idea and directions at domestifluff.com. You can find the directions on that site.

The only thing we changed on the pom-pom pumpkins was that we used green and brown pipe cleaners to tie off the bundle, using the ends to create a stem and curl of vine. I thought the difference in color from the orange yarn would make it easier to keep the girls from accidentally cutting the wrong piece of yarn.

I'd also like to offer a free digital scrapbooking set to anyone who would like it. I tried to encompass all the levels of Girl Scouts with this set: Daisy, Brownie, Junior, Cadette, Senior, Ambassador and Leader. There are bridging embellishments, word art, and Girl Scout awards among other things. The last items to be finished was the "recycled" alpha. I tried to make something that looks like a craft project I might actually make with my girls. I think this alpha really looks like something a Daisy troop could make. Let me know what you think. If you make any layouts, send me a copy and I'll post it if you want.

Please go to my other blog to find the download link.

What a great meeting! No-Sew Hats project

I thought we had a great meeting last night. We started our meeting off by a question and answer period about our fall sales, which we started last week. I regret that I forgot to go through the Promise and Law with the girls. I will do better next time!

In the Daisy Journey we read Chapter 3, learning about Amazing Daisy and her cousins from all over the world. It was at this point that I realized I'd forgotten to bring the herb gardens with me to the meeting! I will do better next time! The girls' homework for next time is to draw a picture of what they think our gardens will look like as they grow.

Our Fashion project for this week was our no-sew winter hats. I found the patterns in an amazing book by Judy Ann Sadler called, Making Fleece Crafts.

Most of the girls could not wait to get started on this project, but a few forgot their fleece. I was so proud of my girls! They offered to share extra fabric with each other and EVERYONE got to make a hat. It was so great! I don't have a picture to post yet because we weren't able to make our scarves last night. We will complete the set at our next meeting and get pictures I can post.
If you would like to download my instructions for this project in pdf format, please click here.

Much better!

Our second meeting of the year was so much better than the first! We started out with practicing the Promise and the Law together. The girls are getting pretty good at them, although more than one has problems holding up the 3 fingers.

Next, the F. earned her "Animal Tracks" patch. She told us about her family vacation to North Dakota where they went to the National Fish Hatchery and on nature hikes. With the help of her mom, F. found the tracks of animals like deer. Then the made a circle out of poster board--using paper clips to hold it together, and then mixed plaster of paris. (F.'s mom brought the p.o.p. pre-measured in plastic bags, then added bottled water and mixed it when needed.) We were able to see the tracks of the deer very clearly.

We were able to read Chapters 1 and 2 from our journey books. The girls are assigned to do the workbook pages of those chapters as homework for our next meeting. I think I'll send out an email reminding them about a week before our next meeting. We also planted our herb gardens. I was able to buy 4 herb garden kits at a local store when they were clearanced at the end of summer. The herbs in each garden are Lavender, Oregano and Thyme. The girls worked together to plant the seeds. I will keep the gardens here at my house transporting them to each meeting so the girls can see the plants' progress.

Our craft this week was to finish the pincushion sewing kits we started last week. Last week the girls chose the fabric they wanted to cover the pincushion. We then glued it onto the Styrofoam and then to the lid of the little plastic containers. This week the girls glued a ribbon around the edge of the Styrofoam (pinning it in place until dry) and then I gave them each 2 tiny spools of thread for their kits. Here is a picture of my pincushion sewing kit.


I also handed out the fleece water bottle carrier bags. My daughter and I sewed them at home and then cut the fringe in for each girl. The girls' job now is to tie the fringes to complete the bag. Once they have brought it to show me they have completed it, they will receive a patch with their name and troop number to glue on to their bag. This will be the second of their 5 fashion projects towards earning their fashion patches.

Starting our second year!

We are getting ready to start our second year together as a troop! It's so exciting. There are so many ideas bouncing around in my head. We will start this year with our first Daisy Journey, "Welcome to the Daisy Flower Garden". The journey book will teach us about becoming leaders.

We will also be learning to do basic sewing. Our first project will be making pincushions using this design:

Click here to see the full tutorial on CraftPudding.
The only difference is that I will be using small plastic jars instead of baby food jars. The plastic jars are much less breakable and so are better suited to the girls. I plan to have the girls work on their pincushions at our first meeting in September after we finish our work in the Journey books. I am also planning to have 2 or 3 sewing machines at the meeting so that the girls can start working on their water bottle carriers.
The carriers are made from fleece. I think fleece is nice to start with since it doesn't fray. The girls will sew a simple zig-zag seam to make the bag and then can cut the fleece to tie the sides into "tassles". You can click here to see a .pdf with instructions. They are rough instructions as I created the project as I went yesterday.
I think that our troop will have nice results taking turns working on projects. The projects will take more than one meeting but that is okay, since girls sometimes have to miss meetings.

Here are some of our goals for 2010-2011:
1. Complete "Welcome to the Daisy Garden" journey
2. Complete 5 simple sewing projects
a. make a pincushion
b. make a water bottle carrier
c. make a pillow
d. make a SWAP sash
e. make a bean bag frog
3. Complete "Between Earth and Sky" journey
4. Host a SWAP