Bare-foot Sandals and other cottage crafts....

We had such a nice time up at Steve's sisters cottage for the past week and a half. We had a little more rain than we would have liked but that was okay since it left us with some fun time to craft with the kids.

I brought up some metallic glitter pipe-cleaners, some glue and stick-on gems. All you need is a cardboard paper towel tube to make these cute glitter bracelets. Just slit the paper towel tube all the way down the center. then cut a 1" strip. this will make the perfect cuff/bracelet to fit around a child's wrist. Then have the little ones wrap the pipe-cleaners over the cardboard from one end to the other. Glue on the jewels and use a cloths peg to hold them in place until the glue is dry.

I have a ridiculous amount of beads, so I brought up a couple of boxes for the girls to play with. We made these really cute bare-foot sandals for the beach. All you need is some clear stretchy/elastic thread and a variety of beads. You'll need about 30-35" of elastic thread for each foot (less for a child's foot). Start by using seed beads to make the ring to go around the middle toe (I used about 36 seed beads for the toe loop) Then string the two ends through a larger bead to complete the loop. You can use any design leading up to the ankle. You can make a "Y" design like I did on mine, or you can make it a little more simple by just doing a "T" shape like Meagan did for her's. I think it would be fun to experiment with other beads like pearl or shell beads for this too! They're fun to make and the best part is I could almost trick my Mom into thinking that Meagan was actually wearing shoe's!! LOL!....that little monkey would go barefoot in winter if I let her!