Posts Tagged ‘St. Patrick’s Day’

Rainbow Cake

Monday, March 11th, 2013

rainbow-cake

My kids squealed with joy when they saw how beautiful this rainbow cake turned out. It was not difficult to make.  Buy a box of white cake mix and some white frosting. Mix the cake batter together, and divide the batter equally into six bowls.

rainbow-cake-2

Using cake icing dye (that you can find at craft supply stores in the cake aisle), put a few drops into each bowl with the following colors: red, orange yellow, green, blue, and purple.

rainbow-cake-3

After mixing them well so that they look like bold colors, spoon three colors one by one on top of each other. Try not to mix the colors. If you want the cake to have straight colors, you could bake each color layer separately, but being a busy mother, I don’t have that kind of time. So I just put red, orange and yellow into one greased and floured round cake pan, and green, blue, and purple into the second pan.

rainbow-cake-4

After the cakes come out of the oven, cool them on a rack. Place them on top of each other, and put them in the fridge to make the cake easier to frost and  cut smoothly. Mix green food coloring into the frosting, and frost the cake. Now you can enjoy your delicious rainbow cake.

rainbow-cake-5

How to Make a Felt Clover Pillow

Wednesday, March 6th, 2013

st-patricks-day-crafts-5I’ve been writing a series of St Patricks Day crafts to go with a one-day unit study on Saint Patrick. Today’s craft is a simple sewing project that kids of all ages can enjoy. You will need the following supplies:

  • two dark green pieces of felt
  • one light green piece of felt
  • black permanent marker
  • needle
  • green thread
  • fabric scissors
  • pins
  • sheet of white card stock paper

felt-clover-craft

On the sheet of white card stock paper, draw a clover. Fold the paper in half, and cut the clover out so that both sides are identical. Open the clover leaf. Set down a dark green piece of felt. With a permanent marker, trace the shape onto the felt. Do this with all three pieces of green felt. With the light green felt, draw a line about one centimeter in from the outer clover leaf shape. Now cut the light green felt to the smaller size. Cut the darker felt along the outside lines you drew.

green-felt-clover

Now you are ready to sew. Pin the light clover leaf to one dark clover leaf. You only need three pins, one for each leaf of the clover. Sew a straight stitch with green thread. Remove the pins as you sew.

st-patricks-day-felt-craft

Pin the two dark green pieces of felt together. Use a straight stitch to sew around the clover. Leave one part of a clover leaf open to put the stuffing into the pillow. Shred up all the leftover felt by cutting it into small pieces. You will use this to stuff your clover pillow. Gently place the stuffing into the almost-finished pillow. Now sew up the remainder of the pillow. Enjoy your finished clover pillow!

Decorate a Clover Leaf

Tuesday, March 5th, 2013

decorate-a-clover-leaf st-patricks-day-crafts-12St Patricks Day crafts are fun for young children. One craft that even toddlers can enjoy is to decorate a clover leaf. Dump green craft supplies on top of your table and have your kids design their own green St Patricks Day clovers!

This is how we decorated our spectacular green clover leaf: Grab some green card stock paper and draw a large clover leaf. Cut out the leaf. Get some sparkly green paper (found at craft supply stores), and glue the card stock paper to the glitter paper. Now cut around the clover leaf, leaving about a centimeter of glitter paper showing.

st-patricks-day-crafts-13Have your child glue fake green jewels all around the outer edge of the clover. We just used regular white school glue, which dries clear. Now glue any design you want on the rest of the clover, using green art supplies such as feathers, buttons, sequins, scraps of cloth, and other similar items

We drew large tear drop shapes with glue, and then my daughter shook green glitter on top of the wet glue. (The green glitter looks like pixie dust.) Just pick up the paper, and all the loose glitter falls off, revealing a beautifully decorated clover leaf!

How to Make a Paper Leprechaun Town

Monday, March 4th, 2013

leprechaun-city

Are you looking for St Patricks Day crafts? You’ve come to the right place! This super cute Leprechaun Town was built by my 9-year-old son in about an hour.

The supplies you will need include green card stock paper in many shades of green, stiff cardboard for the bottom base of the town, tape, glue, scissors, green markers, green pipe cleaners, green fake jewels, and green plastic vines. Or just use whatever green craft supplies you already have in your home. You might also want a hot glue gun if you want green plastic vines to grow all over your town.

Start with the base. We glued grass paper to the cardboard. You can buy scrapbooking paper that looks like grass at any craft store. Or you can grow some real grass in a tray, and then build your town a week later on top of the fresh new grass.

Make your buildings out of green card stock paper. Draw windows and doors on them before you tape them together, since it will be harder to mark on the buildings later. Tape roofs to the buildings. You can tape the roofs on from the inside so that the tape doesn’t show. We used glitter paper for a couple of the roofs.

We made a crazy miniature swing set for the leprechauns to swing on. Cut out two letter A’s out of card stock paper. Make a swing from pipe cleaner, winding it around the top bar. Add a seat to the swing with a small rectangle of card stock paper. No glue was necessary for the swing set. We just stabbed the pipe cleaner through the A’s.

Decorate with fake jewels, and hot glue some plastic vines to the houses. Now your Leprechaun Town is complete.