Downloads – The Creative Salad

Paper Fun with the Toymaker

This past weekend we attended a fantastic paper craft workshop with artist, illustrator and author Marilyn Scott-Waters of the award winning Toymaker website.

Remember these adorable paper dolls? They came from her site!

I’m excited to have discovered that the instructions for many of the fun projects we did in our class are also featured on her website, so you can do them too!

We made and decorated: fairy books, koi kites, mini books, and paper butterflies.

We even learned how to transform a single sheet of paper into a circle big enough to jump through! (More on that another time.)

Marilyn’s Toymaker website contains a wealth of other fun paper crafts. Check out her Hanukkah Crafts for a gelt box, menorah lighting activity, coloring pages, gift boxes, and more. There is also a fun filled Christmas Crafts page including beautifully illustrated gift cards, paper balls, boxes, and stars to print out and enjoy.

You can also find Marilyn’s affordable books at your local bookstore. She is the author of The Toymaker’s Workshop: Paper Toys You Can Make Yourself and The Toymaker’s Christmas: Paper Toys You Can Make Yourself, two beautifully illustrated books containing hours of paper-crafting entertainment. We’ve had such fun assembling toys from The Toymaker’s Christmas, which she kindly autographed for us!

Be sure to subscribe to her fantastic, FREE newsletter for monthly updates on new paper toy projects. We also highly recommend picking up her books, which feature punch out paper toys (no scissors involved!). We are hooked!

Writing Caddy

We’ve been working on organizing our arts and craft supplies.

I planned on making a writing caddy for our daughter, but we instead found this blue wire caddy at Joann’s on clearance and the little miss insisted we bring it home. Luckily it’s my style too, so I was thrilled to set it up at her play table in the living room. Inside it we keep:

– Letters and Numbers For Me activity book (published by Handwriting Without Tears)
– The complete set of Jan Brett’s free traditional coloring alphabet tracers stapled together with a this free downloadable Handwriting Without Tears Capital Letters Formation Chart
– Lined and blank paper

– Soft pencils and erasers
– Shape and alphabet stencils
– Protractor
– Maria the Scientist Paper Dolls
– Calculator (used primarily as a pretend cell phone)
– A set of butterfly play bank checks that you can download for free!

We keep the writing caddy on the child sized table by the window overlooking our garden. Adjacent to our birding materials (in the baskets/bags on the floor), we’re all set for everyday learning!

Swallowtail Butterfly Bank Checks for Kids

When I created credit cards and play money for my daughter, I showed you a process to inspire and guide you in making your own play money for kids.

This time, I wanted to focus on a project that you could instantly download, print and share with the kids in your life.

Enter this fun Swallowtail Butterfly Bank Checks for Kids project!

After several weeks of Miss Leyba insisting that she should be allowed to write in mama’s checkbook (yes, I’m old fashioned like that and still use one!), I decided she needed a checkbook of her own.

I created these checks with a Swallowtail Butterfly theme and printed out several pages worth (each page has three checks on it). Then I cut the individual checks down to size and stapled the left hand side together to form a book of sorts for her to write her checks in. Easy!

Now my daughter has play money, credit cards, and these bank checks in her own wallet.

Download Swallowtail Butterfly Checks here!

Wondering about the “Bank of West County” and butterfly theme?

We live in Western Sonoma County, more commonly known as West County, and we have lots of Pipevine Swallowtail butterflies. (The actual butterfly images on the checks are of a different Swallowtail and come from DK Clip-Art.) The West County theme seemed fitting and a tad bit educational. (We’re all about Everyday Learning in our house!) What kids aren’t into insects?

Enjoy.