Smart Fab Fabric

Details: Smart Fab is a disposable art and decoration fabric, colorful, durable and easy to work with, endless creative possibilities, and an excellent choice for schools.  Smart fab fabric is super easy to cut, sew, paint, staple, fold and glue.  The colors don't fade, while the fabric is strong but very flexible, and will not fray.  Indoor and outdoor use and most importantly recyclable.  Smart fab rolls are available in 3 sizes and 15 colors: 48"x 40ft, 48"x 120ft, 36"x 600 ft.  Smart fab cut sheets are available in 2 sizes and 3 color variations: 9x12 (for a 45 sheet pack) and a 12x18 (for a 45 sheet pack).

Disclaimer: I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

My Review:  Let me tell you, this product had me so impressed just by reading about it.  As a school teacher I'm always looking for creative supplies to use in my classroom, as well as creative tools my students can use for school projects.  I love all the beautifully bright fun colors, perfect for any holiday, event, bulletin board or what have you.  Just by going on to Smart Fab's website they give you project ideas, lesson plans, and how to directions to make some super cute ideas.  For my review, I was given a sample size of Orange, Sky Blue and Dark Pink smart fab rolls.  These sample sizes are the same as what you can buy except the length and width of these sample rolls.  I was also given a free color swatch book, which I just love because let me tell you I'll be keeping it on hand throughout my school year so I can get holiday colored fabric rolls, and sheets for my class.  I'm such a creative person that when I'm given a limited supply of anything super fun, I tend to save it and just not use it, so coming up with a cleaver idea on how to test and use this fabric was actually hard for me...but what I chose I'm very pleased with.  Here is what I have found out: this fabric really doesn't fray, is easy to paint or use markers one (but with colored fabric only specific colors work best), can be sewn.  I love it, and once school starts I'll be able to let you know if my students like it as well, but I'm sure they will.

What I created: I made a bulletin board, using the sky blue smart fab as the background, and some of the orange and pink flowers are smart fab, but not all of them.  I also made 16x20 pin boards for each of my kids for school to use along with fun colored wipe off boards.  Lastly I made simple aprons the kids can wear during messy activities.

Pros: awesome product, great company, claims are true

Cons: none

My Rating: Thumbs UP

Home School Craft Time

 One of my favorite parts of home schooling my children is being able to do fun crafts outside when the weather is nice.  This was a fun one, hand painting ceramic train banks.

Home School Christmas Craft

This is a blast from the past from 2012.  Today started our first Christmas craft.  I bought 6 foam cones from the Dollar Tree, beaded garland from Big Lots, and pompoms and spray adhesive from Wal-Mart.  What we did to start was create our work area, spray adhesive is very messy if you are a first time user.  I learned the hard way.  Okay, so we sprayed the foam cones really well and then wrapped them in green construction paper.  After that set (in about a minute or two) we sprayed the construction paper and started to wrap the beaded garland around the cone starting at the base first.  This wasn't very easy for kids to do.  I would wrap a few strands and spray more glue, wrap and spray until we reached the top.  The beads didn't stick very well at first when the ends needed to be glued so I held them on for a good minute for good measure.  We then sprayed more glue on and I let the boys go crazy with pompoms.  The blue beaded garland was glittery and the glitter stuck to my hands for hours afterwards until I figured out that Goo Gone got this stuff off.  We let our Christmas trees cure for the rest of the night before moving them to be decorations.  This was a $10-$15 dollar craft, even though we've only done 2 of 6 cones.  We'll have pictures of the other 4 when they are done.

 December 4, 2012  Our second Christmas craft was making presents from the boys to give to family members.  We bought a bag of the big glass jewels from the Dollar Tree.  My boys chose white and light blue colored jewels.  Then we bought a pack of 52 round magnets, and a large bottle of Crafting Super glue from Wal-Mart too.  We started by testing out 4 magnets first.  Since we chose lighter colored glass jewels they are more transparent than the darker blue and green ones also found at the Dollar Tree.  We glued the magnets on right away and let them sit to see if we liked it or not.  Well this crafting super glue needs to cure for 30 minutes, instead of 30 seconds, so you have to 1. press the magnets on very tight, 2. make sure they are resting on a flat hard surface, 3. aren't disturbed during that 30 minute time period of curing.  So on the 4 test magnets you could see the black magnet right through the pretty glass. But it didn't look very pretty.  So we decided to get some glitter glue and smear some glitter glue to the bottom of each jewel and let that dry for an hour, then super glue the magnets onto the glitter side of the jewel to hide the magnets.  They look amazing!

 We did red and gold glitter glue on the white jewels, and silver glitter glue on the blue jewels.  It was a 3 pack from the Dollar Tree as well.  They turned out very well!  We had enough magnets to give each adult family 4 magnets for Christmas from the boys.  So my 5 year old could easily help out, but my 3 year old had a hard time, so he did all the counting, and organizing under supervision.  But after that he did get bored.  This is a $10 craft.  We were able to make 52 magnets.  Oh, and for those 4 tester magnets, we put the glitter glue on the top side of the jewels, but over time it will rub off very easily.

Swirl Paint kit for Kids

Details: Kids Stuff Swirl Paint art set with 3 color paints.  Hand turned dial for swirling/ spinning options.  Set the preset cards in the appropriate grooves and locked securely in position.  Pull the handle to make the card spin.  Squeeze the paint on the card while it is spinning.  Colors and contents may vary from illustrations.  Conforms to ASTM D-4236.  Each bottle of paint is 3.5 grams.  For ages 5 and up.

My Review:  I love these painting tools.  They are so fun to use with kids.  a great tool to learn about color mixing, and force and art of course, if you are thinking along a Homeschooling mind set.  We were given 2 for gifts for our children.  We opened one and the kids started using it without adult supervision, as they sneaked into my art boxes while I wasn't around.  The cards that come cut to size are glossy card stock.  There are 6 cards per set.  The paint I thought would be similar to acrylic paint, but it is more like thicker finger paint, as its thick, and gloppy. The colors mix really well, and if you use too much paint everything turns to blackish brown.  Again, with the paint being thicker than normal paper paint, it does take a few hours to dry.  The paint being thick builds up along the inside of the spinner and ends up messing up the cards when in use.  I'm still not sure how to fix this, but hopefully with more use we'll figure out how to overcome this negative issue.

Paint master pieces

paint build up

Pros: fun for kids, easy to use, spins great, you can control the amount of paint squeezed out of the bottle

Cons: thick paint, paint build up on inside of the spinner

My Rating: