giveaway + other fun stuff

New Hybrid Template
I have a new hybrid template being released tomorrow. Remember these from last week?



I have the full template ready to go, and it will be available tomorrow in my shop at ScrapMatters. This means you can customize these fun little boxes with any digital papers/elements you want and make them for any occasion!

I would love to give a copy of my new template to one lucky person. To enter for your chance to win, simply leave a comment here. You can have another chance to win by posting about this giveaway on twitter and/or your blog. Just come back here and post a new comment with a link to your post. I'm late in posting this, so you can have all night to enter. I will choose a winner sometime tomorrow morning, so you have until I get a chance to sit at my computer for a minute (which will probably be around 9 a.m. MST).

Okay... on to other fun stuff.



Rebecca Cooper has a fun blog... one of my favorite follows. She hosts a Friday Craft Day each week where you can link up fun, simple ideas for kids' crafts. My kid and I love to do crafts, so I'm going to try to share them here as we do them. We don't have a set day, we just pull out the craft stuff when the desire hits us! Yesterday, we decided to make these Butterflies. They are so simple and so much fun.



Supplies
You'll need some paper filters to start. One pack will go a long way... we've had ours for a few years now, and several projects later still have quite a stack of them. You'll also need washable markers and some pipe cleaners.

Use the markers to make a colorful design on the filter. The more color you add, the more vibrant it will be in the end. Hint: Use black sparingly as it tends to take over other colors quickly.




Use a squirt bottle to spray the filter with water. Do this over a sink as the colors tend to run off the filter. (This is also why it's important to use washable markers... non-washable won't run like this.) As you're spraying you can turn the filter around to make it run in different directions. Place it on a paper towel and put another paper towel on top and pat to remove most of the water. Lay flat to dry the rest of the way. You can use a hair dryer on low to speed up the drying time.



Once dry, pinch the colorful filter together in the middle, wrap a small length of pipe cleaner around it, and twist it at the top to form the antennae. You can tie string to them and hang them from a window, or do what we did and glue them to construction paper to make a butterfly scene. We also added some fluffy clouds using cotton balls.



We also read one of our very favorite books to go along with this craft. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.



Right now they have this book in hardcover at Kohl's for $5! Five dollars for hardcover? Can't beat that. It's part of their Kohl's Cares for Kids collection, so all proceeds go to a good cause. Even better. I love a good deal, so I thought I would share.