Craft Tutorials|Sparkles and Sprinkles

Stations of the Cross blocks

by sparkle | Mar 22, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

Stations of the Cross for Children

The pandemic has little silver linings sometimes (I hope someday someone will be reading this, and the pandemic will be a distant memory!). As the church of some dear friends of ours is not having soup suppers this Lent, they decided to invite small groups of friends over on Fridays during Lent to share soup together and to pray the Stations of the Cross at their home.

Our friends had printed out stations of the cross coloring pages for the children to color as the adults took turns saying the prayers for the Stations of the Cross. After the prayer time, we enjoyed soup together, and then the children played while the adults had time to stay around the table and visit.

This beautiful evening made me think that perhaps it might be nice to have some Stations of the Cross that children could place around the house and play and pray with whenever they wanted to.

Stations of the Cross are, of course, not so happy for anyone to look at, and might be especially hard for children to look at. However, a few years ago, I came across a wonderful little Stations of the Cross coloring booklet at Real Life at Home. I love this book because the illustrations are as sweet as they can be for such a solemn subject. We decided to use the images from these booklets for our Stations of the Cross blocks. However, you could use any images of your choice. You could find images online, draw your own images, or even take photos of the Stations of the Cross at your church and print them out for these blocks.

Make your own Stations of the Cross for children

Please note that the coloring images we used for these blocks are not our own. You can find them at Real Life at Home (where there is even a prayer reflection booklet to go along with them). You could also get images from another source or draw your own, if you are feeling especially creative!

Step 1: Print and color your images

We used colored pencils to color our images.

Step 2: Cut out your images

Step 3: Cut your blocks

We cut a long 2×4 board into 14 square blocks. However, if you don’t have time for woodworking, there are many Etsy sellers who have blocks of various sizes that are sanded and ready to use for crafts. If you wanted to make the blocks smaller or bigger, you could print out the page with a “custom scale,” or use different images of your choice. The Real Life at Home mini booklet images work perfectly with our squares cut from 2x4s (the wooden squares end up being 3.5″x3.5″).

Step 4: Sand your blocks

We sanded the cut edges, plus sanded at an angle at the corners to make the blocks easier to handle for little hands. Though cutting the blocks is probably a task for an adult (here at Sparkles and Sprinkles, we say, “Thank you Super-Dad!”), sanding can be a fun activity for children.

Step 5: Use Mod Podge to attach and coat images

Use a foam brush to spread a layer of Mod Podge on one face of the block, then lay the image on this face. Brush Mod Podge over the image to seal the image, so that the blocks and images will hold up to children handling them. Be sure to follow the package instructions for drying times. You may want to use 2 coats.

Ready to Play and Pray

We hope you and your little ones enjoy making and playing and praying with Stations of the Cross blocks too!

Are you looking for a soup recipe for your next soup supper, whether at home or at church? You might enjoy trying our recipe for French Vegetable Soup.

Note: Some links on this page are Amazon Affiliate links. Sparkles and Sprinkles is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Other links may or may not be affiliate links. We provide links because we have found these products or services beneficial, and we think you might too.

Saint Patrick’s Day Holy Trinity Craft

by sparkle | Mar 9, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

Children of all ages can enjoy making this shamrock Holy Trinity craft, reminding us of how Saint Patrick explained the Holy Trinity to the Irish people.

1. Gather your supplies: free printable Holy Trinity pages, white cardstock or printer paper (3 sheets: 2 for printing, and 1 as a background), markers or colored pencils, scissors, glue

2. Color the printable pages. (There is an option for printing the shamrock hearts and stem in green, but we found our children enjoyed coloring the hearts and stem too.)

3. Cut out the heart leaves, stem, images of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and titles.

4. Glue the shamrock heart leaves and stem onto your paper (or cardstock), then glue on the Holy Trinity images and titles.

Are you looking for more Saint Patrick’s Day ideas?

Check out our Saint Patrick’s Prayer garland by clicking here.

Click on the image below to get our free shamrock Holy Trinity printable:

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Growing in Lent

by sparkle | Mar 8, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

We are starting a new Lenten tradition this year… growing our own Easter grass!

“Behold, I make all things new.”

I had the chance to talk with some dear friends the other day about Lenten traditions. I shared that one of our favorite things to do is the Lenten Path from Catholic Icing. It is a beautiful way to visualize the days of Lent and also to think of special sacrifices and prayers for each day.

We are planning to do the Lenten Path this year again, but we are also excited to add a new tradition… growing our own Easter grass in an Easter basket. My friend who shared this fun idea said that she and her family plant the seeds on Ash Wednesday, and by Easter time the grass should be nicely growing. I’m not a very prompt person, so luckily, from what I have read, even if you start the seeds at least a couple weeks before Easter, you should still have some beautiful Easter grass by Easter.

Not only is planting grass seeds in an Easter basket a super fun activity, it can also be a beautiful symbol of how the purpose of Lent is really to help us to grow in God’s love.

We created this free printable for you with tags you can attatch to your grass growing baskets. Each tag has a beautiful scripture passage about growing and seeds. There is also a blank tag if you want to add your own phrase (like “Grow in God’s love!”) or perhaps the name of your child.

We took advantage of some unseasonably warm weather over the weekend and planted our seeds in Easter baskets outside.

We lined our baskets with waxed paper* (as suggested on a blog we read, but you can also use a plant saucer that fits your basket). Then we filled the baskets with about an inch of soil, sprinkled the seeds, covered the seeds with a bit more soil, and watered the seeds.

*Update: We wondered if waxed paper would really hold up. For us, it held up for about 2 weeks, then it started to leak when we watered the grass. We would not recommend using waxed paper, unless you are going to have the grass in the basket for fewer than 2 weeks. When we noticed the leaking, we ended up transferring the grass and soil to plastic take-out containers that happened to fit nicely into our baskets (we painted the containers with acrylic paint, so they would match the baskets).

Watering the seeds can be a great opportunity to talk about how God showers us with His graces to help us to grow in His love.

After only a week of growing the grass inside a sunny room in our home, our grass is about 5 inches high. (It can be trimmed if it gets too long before Easter.)

Update: The waxed paper liner only held up for about 2 weeks. We transferred our grass and soil to a plastic take-out container (painted with acrylic paint to match) to avoid leaking.

We are not experts on the details of how to plant and care for this Easter grass, so we followed the suggestions from these two blogs:

Do you want to explore more about seeds and growing? We’ve enjoyed these two books…

We are currently studying the early AD times, and enjoying this book: Who is Jesus? His Life, His Land, His Time. We recently read a passage about the mustard seed… and that the mustard plant can grow to about 10 feet tall! We are thinking we might plant a mustard seed this summer… what a great way to bring Scripture to life!

If you are looking for a simple book about seeds, we love this beautifully illustrated book about seeds: Plant Secrets by Emily Goodman.

Have you grown Easter grass before? Or are you going to give it try this year? We would love it if you want to share your ideas! Please submit a comment in the form below.

May God bless you and your family on your Lenten journey!

Note: Some links on this page are Amazon Affiliate links. Sparkles and Sprinkles is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Other links may or may not be affiliate links. We provide links because we have found these products or services beneficial, and we think you might too.

DIY Stickers (plus Youtube tutorial)

by sparkle | Mar 8, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

Want to make your own stickers? Come watch our latest Youtube tutorial on how to make these fun and super easy DIY stickers! You can draw your own designs, or download our free pdf printable to get started.

(Please scroll down to get your free printable.)

Supplies: clear packing tape, scissors, paper (or our printable), non-stick parchment paper (the baking type), pen or pencil, and markers or colored pencils.

Watch our quick Youtube tutorial and have fun making your very own stickers!

Click on the image below to get your free pdf sticker printable.

Knit a doll hat! Yes you really CAN!

by sparkle | Mar 5, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

Does knitting a hat sound daunting? Normally it would have to us too… but not anymore! I don’t really know how to knit, but I have tried to teach myself at times and to teach my children. We have never gotten too far and have a number of half-knit projects in our knitting supply bin.

I was so delighted, though, this past month when my 7 year old daughter picked up a round knitting loom that we had in our bin and said she wanted to knit something. I happened to have the time to sit down with her and start knitting. She caught on really fast! It is so much easier than a pair of knitting needles!

The knitting looms (24 peg or 12 peg) we used came with directions. However, we found this tutorial from The Sweetest Journey to be very helpful to get started. We found chunky yarn worked well for this project and makes a nice cozy hat.

In this post we have measurement suggestions for you to make a baby doll hat and a hat for an American Girl size doll (or a larger baby doll). We have found that for younger children, or children with limited patience, starting with the smaller 12 peg loom project is better (it takes quite a bit less time, and children can quickly have the joy of completing a project!). We used a 12 peg loom for the hat that this sweet little baby doll is wearing.

To determine which loom size to use, you can measure the circumference of your doll’s head.

For an American Girl doll size (13 inch head circumference), we found a 24 peg round loom works well.

For a baby doll with a small head (10 inch circumference), we found a 12 peg loom works well.

This photo shows a 24 peg loom for American Girl doll size hat, and a 12 peg loom for small baby doll size hat.

After knitting a number of rows, you can periodically check the length of your knitting. Before taking the knitting off the loom, it should be 5 to 6 inches in length for American Girl doll size (or about 4 to 5 inches in length for small baby doll size). If you want to be able to roll the hat up at the bottom, choose the longer measurements (we chose the shorter measurements for the hats pictured here). Be sure to follow the directions in the tutorial suggested above on how to remove the knitting from the loom and secure the top of the hat.

You can add a pom pom to your hat once the hat is removed from the loom. You can find our easy DIY pom pom tutorial by clicking on the pom pom image above.

We suggest the following loom options (these also come with a knitting tool for taking the yarn over the pegs and a large yarn needle for finishing the hat):

12 peg Boye round loom (for a small doll)
24 peg Boye round loom (for a larger doll)
Boye round loom set (smallest loom is 24 peg, and the larger ones can be used to make hats for children and adults)

We think chunky yarn is nice for these hats. We used Bernat Softee Chunky for the hats pictured here. It comes in a nice variety of colors.

We found the tutorial at The Sweetest Journey to clearly show how to make a hat. You can find that tutorial by clicking here.

You will also need a pair of scissors to complete this project.

We’ve become big fans of Lita Judge books ever since taking a writers workshop class she led through Read Aloud Revival. We love how she described that writing and reading did not come easily to her as a child, but that did not stop her from becoming a great author and illustrator! When we read Red Hat the other day, we could not resist adding it to our doll hat knitting post.

Red Hat is probably even more meaningful and fun to read if read after reading Red Sled. It seems to take place in the spring, following the winter of Red Sled.

Both of these books are great for young children and/or children who may struggle to read. There are very few words, and a lot of room for imagination! Our 7 year old daughter even found a sweet lesson in the book: Don’t get discouraged if something upsetting happens, you can probably fix the problem and make things better.

Wishing you and your children a peaceful knitting time together! Enjoy!

Note: Some links on this page are Amazon Affiliate links. Sparkles and Sprinkles is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Other links may or may not be affiliate links. We provide links because we have found these products or services beneficial, and we think you might too.

Saint Patrick’s Prayer Shamrock Garland or Wreath

by sparkle | Feb 25, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

I love the Saint Patrick’s prayer. It is such a beautiful reminder of how God’s love surrounds us!

Christ with me,

Christ before me,

Christ behind me,

Christ in me,

Christ beneath me,

Christ above me,

Christ on my right,

Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down,

Christ when I sit down,

Christ when I arise,

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.

To make this shamrock garland or wreath, you can cut out shamrock shapes and copy lines of the prayer onto each one. If you would like a printable version, please visit our Etsy shop. (Your purchase helps us to cover blogging expenses so that we can continue to bring you more fun craft and baking ideas. Thank you!)

Cut out shamrock shapes with a verse from the Saint Patrick’s Prayer on each one. (Our printable on Etsy has lines from the prayer on each shamrock, plus a page of blank shamrocks if you want to include some blank shamrocks or write your own words. The shamrocks are a pdf of a hand watercolored shamrock.)

We find chunky yarn or 1/4 inch wide ribbon works well for the garland. It fits well through a standard hole punch hole, and allows the shamrock pieces to stay in place in the way you would like them to be spread.

You can create a circle out of pieces of cardstock or cardboard or a paper plate, then glue on shamrock shapes for a pretty indoor wreath.

Garlands can be a nice way to decorate a window, a mantel or any wall space in your home. This garlands brings a bit of greenery to our windows, where the trees are still bare at this time of year.

Of course, our favorite part is making it our very own, with decorations done by the children. We find this can be a fun time to talk about the beauty of the prayer. We hope you and your family can enjoy making a Saint Patrick’s Prayer Shamrock Garland or Wreath to decorate your home this season! Enjoy!

Are you looking for more Saint Patrick’s Day fun? I love the way the CCC cartoon version of Saint Patrick’s life imagines how Saint Patrick first composed this prayer. It shows him as a newly captured slave tending the sheep. Imagine how lonely and scary that would feel! He shows his trust in God, etches a cross in a tree, and calmly says this prayer.

If you are looking for a fun activity for your family this Saint Patrick’s Day, you may want to check out this beautiful movie.

P.S. If you have a formed.org account, this movie is available for free. Many churches have an account for everyone in their parish to access Formed for free, but you can also get an individual subscription (the last we checked, there was a free trial option too).

HAPPY SAINT PATRICK’S DAY!

Note: Some links on this page are Amazon Affiliate links. Sparkles and Sprinkles is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Other links may or may not be affiliate links. We provide links because we have found these products or services beneficial, and we think you might too.

Stations of the Cross blocks

Step 1: Print and color your images

Step 2: Cut out your images

Step 3: Cut your blocks

Step 4: Sand your blocks

Step 5: Use Mod Podge to attach and coat images

Ready to Play and Pray

Saint Patrick’s Day Holy Trinity Craft

Growing in Lent

Watering the seeds can be a great opportunity to talk about how God showers us with His graces to help us to grow in His love.

After only a week of growing the grass inside a sunny room in our home, our grass is about 5 inches high. (It can be trimmed if it gets too long before Easter.)

Update: The waxed paper liner only held up for about 2 weeks. We transferred our grass and soil to a plastic take-out container (painted with acrylic paint to match) to avoid leaking.

DIY Stickers (plus Youtube tutorial)

Knit a doll hat! Yes you really CAN!

For an American Girl doll size (13 inch head circumference), we found a 24 peg round loom works well.

For a baby doll with a small head (10 inch circumference), we found a 12 peg loom works well.

This photo shows a 24 peg loom for American Girl doll size hat, and a 12 peg loom for small baby doll size hat.

You can add a pom pom to your hat once the hat is removed from the loom. You can find our easy DIY pom pom tutorial by clicking on the pom pom image above.

Saint Patrick’s Prayer Shamrock Garland or Wreath

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