New projects completed
The frogs are the best with FREE being the best part! The dragonflies (3) took too many hours to create, glad they are done. I like doing the fairy wings way better than the dragonfly wings! (See picture in same category to see what i mean.)
New Finds and TP Tube Flying Creatures in progress
I found ladybug push pins at WalMart. They will be great to tack things to walls or just to push into the trees. The star tacks will be perfect to hold up the dark 'sky' in the hallways. Cheap, >$2 each. (30 Ladybugs, 50 stars in each pkg)
The bobbers are started. I must confess I have never
paper mache-ed before and i HATE it. YUCK! I will do the 6 i planned but no more and NEVER again!
The TP Tube Flying Creatures are adapted from Mama Rona on the Forum. I let the girls paint the tubes (with no guide lines, sorry to say) and then i bent a pipe cleaner in 1/2, gluing the center inside the tube. The 'tail' is a practice golf ball (12 for less than $2) wrapped in neon colored duct tape (Walmart paint section). I hot glued it into the other end of the tube. To do the wings, i found irridecent wrapping sheets (Dollar Tree) and cut them into long rectangles. I sliced holes in the side of the tube and shoved the 'wings' through. (i folded the end of the paper over the scissors and shoved the scissors through...). I outlined the 'design' with a paint pen in hopes of helping it. I have not figured out the head yet. I have 18 done and think that's enough. Not my favorite project but the girls like them.
Snakes, turtles and crabs
The Crabs:
Made from different bowls from Dollar Tree. Some were already red so they didn't have to be painted. Added practice golf balls (from Walmart) and large google eyes (Dollar Tree, pkg of mixed sizes) and red pipe cleaners. The pichers are made of felt. Sooo easy!
The Turtles:
Made from different bowls from DT, some were already green (How nice of them). Painted them and added some highlights with different greens and foam paint brush. Heads were different things, mini gladware bowls, bottom of coke bottles, left over ball pit balls (from PL). The eyes are from DT and the feet/tail were so simple! They are just cut from green foam sheets (Walmart).
The Snakes:
Made from wrapping paper tubes. Painted by my kids and a head cut from 2 pieces of green foam. Make sure you cut the 2 pieces of foam together, with the base wide enough to go around the tube. Hot glue works great to glue it together. The tongue is left over red felt. Eyes from the DT pkg. Nose marks were with a paint pen.
I love the turtles!
Foyer decortated for VBS Registration
Here it is! All the 'stuff' worked well. Had to glue down the Cattail Forms so the kids wouldn't knock them over. The little things like frogs and lizards and dragonflies really make this fun. I think i will need more! And lots more moss! (OH NO!). We will see if it helps with registration...people are always waiting to the last moment and that is scary for the director!
More Dollar Store Finds
I found fishing hats, alligator (and others) bath mitts that will be great in the preschool rooms as puppets. They are adorable! Also, in the pet section they have 'fishing poles' with stuffed fish on the ends. Cute and a great deal for $1!
Pictures coming soon!
Warning signs
I had wanted to get the pilings done today, but Madeline is sick. Instead i held her and worked on the warning signs. They print nicely and will be great laminated.
Shacks and the Things I Have Learned
Just finished the 2 little shacks. Only 20" deep, more like a store front. Tomorrow i will put them together and take more photos. The big shack is a different color, opps paint.
Making the Shacks and the things i have learned (a.k.a. don't make my mistakes)
Some of these are such stupid, simple mistakes that you are wondering 'how could she have done that', well i must admit my hubby did the cutting. :)
1. When you are drawing the shack, make a small arrow on the front of each piece and show the 'up' direction. This will help you not CUT THE SLATS THE WRONG WAY OR ON THE WRONG SIDE.
2. After you have cut the pieces out, BEFORE YOU CUT THE SLATS, stack all the pieces up on top of each other so they are straight. Then mark the slat intervals by drawing a line down the sides of all the pieces. This will help you not HAVE PIECES WITH 10" SLATS AND AND ANOTHER WITH 6" slats. And it's really bad when they are supposed to be on the same side (front!)
3. SAND! I have cut foam for 4 years now and never sanded. We painted one shack and it ate up our foam brushes quickly. Before i painted the others, i quickly sanded the slat groove. The difference was unbelievable! DON'T SKIP THE SANDING!
4. Make sure you have enough paint! I used a Pint of opps paint and ran out towards the end. You can see where we started to run out. It's lighter! Bummer!
5. Paint the inside a solid dark color. I set up the shack and you can see all over the inside. Kids will poke their heads in, it's too tempting.
6. Paint all the ends! Trust me.
7. The nails got left out in the rain, they rusted. They are perfect! Finally, a good mistake.
8. Lay the front two pieces out together as you highlight them, It will help make them look like one piece...having your highlights continue through the cut...
More to come, i'm sure. Mistakes are something i am great at!
To Buy Still or Find
8 Black Plastic Table Cloths,
10 Navy " " ,
List Of Completed Projects
125 beaded fireflies
106 Cattails,
30 Moss Bases for Cattails
2 Buckets of Moss squares and Hanging vines,
5 Buddies,
Lanterns/Flickering tealights,
12 Fishing Poles,
Buddy Posters with daily verse and power point, printed, laminated
3 Shacks
Gary the Gator
11 warning signs
7 Turtles
9 Crabs
4 Tube Snakes
Okay, I have to add on here: Buying all the other stuff, supplies, props. That is a huge accomplishment!
List Of Yet To Do or In Progress
Highlighted means in progress:
20 Tin cans with 'Worms' label,
Large Dragonflies from paper towel holders,
Flying bugs of some kind- Practice golf balls, Irridesent Pipe Cleaners, Googley eyes...,
Flowers from coffee filters,
Room signs
Cheese Cloth Moss & Monster Mud,
6 large, 8 medium, Giant bobbers,
Giant tree for stage,
Sanctuary Pole turned into Huge tree,
16 crew boats for crews to sit in,
1 boat for stage,
36X3=108 Pilons or Pilings...6 groups for stage, 20 for halls and Entrance, 6 for snack shack area, 4 for in front of Chair Stacks, 16 done
Large Weeping Willow Tree, figure this out...,
Dock for halls and entrance. 120 feet of cardboard planks, 6 done,
Signs for rooms,
2 large 'Crock Dock' signs out of 4" foam,
Various animals out of foam,
50 'vines' of twisted brown paper to hang from rafters,
2 Large Crocks 1/2 bodies to look like coming out of walls. One for entrance one for stage,
Tarps Painted: 3- 8x12 for stage,
1-8x12 for hall,
2- small or 1 large for behind snack,
1-8X12 to cover stacks of chairs,
2-8X12 for the two Crawfish Shack Rooms,
maybe 1-8x12 for Weeping Willow Room,
Holy Cow! I will never be done!
Water Reflector for stage,
Wooden Cardboard
Step one: Cut cardboard to various sizes/widths. Cut ends to look jagged.
Two: Using one color of ink pad, run along cardboard, adding pressure to make grain. If it's a wide piece of cardboard make it look like 2 or 3 planks.
Three: Grab a different brown pad. Do same thing as first. This adds depth.
Four: With a sharpie or paint pen outline planks and add 'nail holes'
Cattail Forms
Here are pictures, step by step of making the forms for my cattails. These will go all over. I will probably put an 'onion bush' with some but those are already at church, waiting for June. 104 Cattails don't look like that much. I don't want to do any more!
I did it! I am so excited it worked. I bought 10 bags of moss from the DT and was worried about how to use it because the forum notes said it was so messy! Even ending up in someone's punch (YUCK). So i thought about hot gun gluing it to material in 'blobs' to be able to lay over rocks and tree limbs...Someone said they would glue it to their ropes. Well, i glued it to pieces of thin material and was thrilled with the results AND thrilled that the enormous MESS left over would not be all over church. However, i felt bad because there was a huge waste of the 'little moss pieces'. Then i remembered the forum note about glueing to a rope and grabbed the twine i had in my craft pile. I made a pile of the 'trash moss' and cut a 18-24" piece of twine and ran a bead of glue down the twine. Then i squished the moss onto the twine...making perfect hanging strands of moss for my trees-WITH STUFF I WAS GOING TO THROW AWAY! I have used 6 1/2 bags and filled a large laundry basket with my moss pieces. I then decided to pull out my can of spray sealer and sprayed them, hoping to reduce the mess they make even more. In my hubby's cabinet i found green spray paint and sprayed a few to see if i liked green moss better. Still don't know which will look better...
Anyways, it worked! The moss will be so easy to place around the sets and with little mess, which truly is one of the best parts of this.
See pictures above. Onto the next project, hopefully one a little less messy!
Skin done and First paint job
Okay. His top is covered in Monster Mud. I think he will take days to dry before i can flip him over and do his bottom side. I HATE the color he is, so i will be painting him when he dries. I might go get some spray paints. Highlights, lowlights...
He is what i hoped he would be and will be better with the new paint. I did have one problem with his nose being heavy and his mouth closing. I put a pint size can of paint in there and it is holding it open while it dries. I think i will put a chunk of foam covered in moss and a broken cattail in there to hold it open. Of course he will be eating something...maybe a 'beware of crocks' sign, or one of my kids stuffed animals.
It was quick, especially without the birdseed. Adding it at the end was great.
Be prepared to use a lot of burlap. I purchased 4 yards and will have to get more for the bottom. He is big though. He is also very heavy.
Gator 1 Crystal 1 Tie for now. Soon i'll get him all done. Onto other things!
5-7-09 Just did his first paint job. The pictures show the colors as vibrant but he's pretty muted in real life. I will do another coat when he dries...and his eyes...
The Skin
I bought a small container of the joint compound added my opps paint and birdseed. It is sooo messy but lots of fun! Unfortunatly i ran out of the 'mud'. And the color of paint i had used was opps...SO i cleaned everything up, put it all away and will have to go get a GIANT box of joint compound today. It was horrible to run out! First time doing anything like this. It was an mistake on my part never to be duplicated! So, Gary will get a new coat of mud tonight and i will just have to smear some on his head to match it to the rest of his new color body. AND i will not add birdseed to the mix until he is covered in burlap because it makes it hard to get seams to lay flat.
So Gator 1 Crystal 0
Rematch tonight!
Gary the Gator!
He is 11 feet long and made out of 4" foam. I used the ideas from Make it Mike and just kept going. He is in 3 pieces. I will do the monster mud stuff tonight i hope. He is so big, it will be a favorite of mine i think.
Right now he is enjoying a little acupuncture. :) The messy picture is what he left behind. Thankfully it cleaned up quickly.
More pictures to come.
Making My Moss
I did it! I am so excited it worked. I bought 10 bags of moss from the DT and was worried about how to use it because the forum notes said it was so messy! Even ending up in someone's punch (YUCK). So i thought about hot gun gluing it to material in 'blobs' to be able to lay over rocks and tree limbs...Someone said they would glue it to their ropes. Well, i glued it to pieces of thin material and was thrilled with the results AND
thrilled that the enormous MESS left over would not be all over church. However, i felt bad because there was a huge waste of the 'little moss pieces'. Then i remembered the forum note about glueing to a rope and grabbed the twine i had in my craft pile. I made a pile of the 'trash moss' and cut a 18-24" piece of twine and ran a bead of glue down the twine. Then i squished the moss onto the twine...making perfect hanging strands of moss for my trees-WITH STUFF I WAS GOING TO THROW AWAY! I have used 6 1/2 bags and filled a large laundry basket with my moss pieces. I then decided to pull out my can of spray sealer and sprayed them, hoping to reduce the mess they make even more. In my hubby's cabinet i found green spray paint and sprayed a few to see if i liked green moss better. Still don't know which will look better...
Anyways, it worked! The moss will be so easy to place around the sets and with little mess, which truly is one of the best parts of this.
See pictures above. Onto the next project, hopefully one a little less messy!
I went to set up my first part of VBS and all was well until i pulled out the moss forms. My hot glued moss was not sticking to the green florist foam. It came right off :( I loved having it ready, it really was fast. So i just set the moss (already in the form of the florist foam - say that three times fast!) on the form, stuck in the cat tails and it was fine, couldn't tell there was a glitch in the idea. Then, one of the forms fell over when i moved something. I needed to put i piece of tape under the form, it's a bit top heavy...so, I am going to fix the problem by: Wrapping the form (TIGHTLY) in a plastic grocery sack (Wal Mart bags, goodness knows i have enough), cutting off extra, taping the bottom close. and then putting a drop of glue to hold the moss to the form. I may shoot it with a bit of green spray paint before putting the moss on. When poking the cattils in, i might have to poke the end of my scissors through before the cattail...hope that makes sense. I got the set up done in 1/2 hour because everything was pre-done. What a huge change from previous years! Hope this helps, sorry to have to change the original idea, but this will be better. It's all about getting ready for doing the decorating, i don't want to be at the church for 72 hours before VBS...24 yes, 72 no.
Cattails, Cellophane, Flowers, Snakes
I am painting
shacks today in the garage because it is raining! Yesterday DeAnna and I got some little fireflies started.
I made 5 Cattails to see how it would go! They are so cute and so easy. I bought a velvet type brown dress from goodwill ($4.50) and green sticks ($1 for 14 from DT). I found some batting in Emily's sewing bin and cut it into 3X4 pieces, cut the velvet into 3 1/2 x 4 1/2. Hot glue on the end, or roll it up, glue the end and do it again with the velvet. SO EASY. So it will cost $10 for 70!
Flower Duster i found at the DT was instantly (in my head) a big, beautiful flower for the preschool room i am decorating as 'Under the Weeping Willow'. I just have to make some leaves to wrap around stem. My kids love the feel of it and i think the preschoolers will too.
The Cellophane that they use on the decorating video is expensive and have only found blue at DT. I did buy 1 of the Green Metal Paper (10 square feet) and looked at it at home. It is great. I bought 15 more.
Snakes from DT. The grow ones are great. They are working, we are at 72 hours in the water and it's a lot bigger. They also had some in the toys that are coiled.
Attachments:
4-27-09
Finished the buddies. Going to start the 'creatures' tomorrow. Frogs, armadillos, cranes ect...
7/18/2009 4:53:59 PM - 002074960033
Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful creations. I have used many of them to create our decorations. People like you who are 1)creative and 2) very generous to share, help those of us who are not very creative. Thanks again for sharing. Everything is wonderful!
6/26/2009 8:11:20 PM - 002058788615
I do not have any way of making transparencies of the critters to make them life size. I have the decorating CD and all of the images are colored .jpgs. How did you set them up on transparency? Can you share please? I am NOT creative enough to freehand draw these characters! thanks for any assistance. abcasl@cox.net
6/19/2009 2:30:38 AM - 002012557826
Crystal, you really have a gift, you ROCK the DOCK! Thanks for sharing all of your decorations, ideas and talents!
6/11/2009 12:03:57 AM - 002073832373
I love the frogs. Where did you get the design? Thanks, Raye Ann
6/8/2009 6:56:38 PM - 002072399398
Would you be willing to share the directions for the wooden cardboard, the ccute frogs and the dragonflies?
oslcyouth@birdislandmn.com
~jayme
6/7/2009 4:13:57 PM - 002072979699
Crystal...you are just amazing...I am so grateful to partner with you in this...our Horizon kiddoes are blessed by the fabulous Bayoo adventure you have created for them...!!! hugs...Suzy Swamp Angel!!! :)
6/4/2009 4:11:08 PM - 002064599006
joanna, yep they were missing! I have no idea where they went...Put them back up. If you cant get them to download to your computer just email or pm me and i will send them to you.
6/4/2009 4:07:25 PM - 002064599006
Mysti, I have a company nearby that makes them. They use them to make facades for building. Where are you located?
6/3/2009 10:06:18 PM - 002072631228
Where do you find the big sheets of foam? I have looked everywhere!
6/3/2009 6:16:15 PM - 000074823344
Crystal, Didn't you have some signs here for each day. They were 12x12 square and you mentioned that you could have them printed off at Costco. Am I being blind and just not seeing them or am I thinking of someone else?
6/2/2009 1:48:48 PM - 002064599006
No, it's been completed in pieces and put up into the attic at church. We will set up the stage on the 14th (oh my goodness, that is soon) and i will post pictures ASAP! :)
6/2/2009 3:46:27 AM - 002072401175
You are so gracious to share all you wonderful ideas with all of us! Your creations are unbelieveable! Thank you so very much!
6/1/2009 12:32:45 PM - 001080543902
do you have a completed picture of the set ... I would LOVE to see it all put together!!! I have saved some (ok ... MOST) of your wonderful ideas!!! Thank you so much!!!
5/29/2009 6:06:03 AM - 002064599006
Andrea, i would love to, but i need your email address. You can pm me in the group forum. I will send them as soon as i get your email.
5/27/2009 1:01:26 PM - 002037838209
Crystal, would you be willing to email the design for daily posters the two sizes that you printed? Also, your warning signs, did you do those the same way? Would you be willing to share?
5/22/2009 7:19:25 AM - 002064599006
Gramma, I used rollers on everything on the first set of picts (except the branches were done with a foam brush) It goes so fast! Have fun with yours!
5/21/2009 5:36:12 PM - 002064666345
Crystal your creations are GREAT! Good job. I had a question on your backdrop as I am going to start mine next week. Did you use rollers for the larger sections?
5/21/2009 4:14:10 AM - 002070627598
Thank you so much for sharing your talent. It helps so much!
5/16/2009 11:06:06 PM - 002064599006
Linda, if you go to the decorating forum and search 'beaded dragon flies' you will find the post with the instructions and the template for the wing pattern. The head of the dragonfly is a pony bead sideways with two googley eyes glue dotted over the holes. Hope that helps. Happy decorating!
5/16/2009 10:49:22 PM - 002064599006
KaraG405-Thanks! I trace the characters from the web toybox onto a page protector and put it on an overhead and project it onto the foam. It's really easy to do.
5/16/2009 10:19:17 PM - 002007328610
I really like all that you have shared. It is awesome! I would love to make the beaded dragonflies. I can almost tell from the picture how to make them but the head with eyes has me stumped. Could you post directions on what you did? thorton@carolina.rr.com
5/15/2009 10:20:13 AM - 002069342986
I'm so thankful I found your site. Your ideas are the best. I do have a ? for ya. How did you go about doing the enlarged characters in VBS 2009 at bottom of pictures? I'm lost from the very begining on that one. I have to have the largest I can get. Oh, I liked the tongue twister about the moss. It was hard to say. Thanks for the laugh.
5/14/2009 2:27:17 PM - 002069930882
These are awsome I am excited over how talented you are.
5/12/2009 12:34:24 PM - 001071798927
Crystal..you are so crafty... I am sooo imressed by your work. Excellent job!
5/7/2009 7:22:19 PM - 002064599006
I did them in my digital scrapbook program. Then printed them as a photo through Costco. I did a set in 12x12 and 8x8, then laminated them so they last through the summer, going from church to church.
5/1/2009 8:35:09 PM - 001062787842
Wow! How did you do your Daily Posters? Those are amazing! Are they paper or styrofoam?