coloring page|Sparkles and Sprinkles

Ballerina Bunnies – drawing tutorial and coloring page

by sparkle | Apr 20, 2023 | Craft Tutorials

Our 11-year-old’s love of bunnies and ballet comes together in this post. Follow along with her tutorial on how to draw a cute ballerina bunny. Or if you prefer a coloring page, print our FREE Ballerina Bunnies coloring page. These sweet bunnies are practicing their ballet positions and steps. Have fun!

Click on the coloring page image to get your FREE printable of the ballerina bunnies!

Love bunnies too?

Meet our bunny and learn to make a flower crown bunny treat.

Love ballet too?

Learn to make a ballerina sylph doll!

Have fun!

Thanksgiving Hymn Garland – to color and create

by sparkle | Nov 10, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

Decorate your home for Thanksgiving with this fun craft the whole family can enjoy making together! You can download our FREE printable, or you can simply let the idea inspire your own creation. And if you would like book recommendations for some cozy Thanksgiving reading time, keep reading for some of our favorites at the end of this post… Cranberry Thanksgiving, Balloons Over Broadway, Fletcher and the Falling Leaves, and The Lion and the Bird.

The banner has pencil sketch style leaf images overlayed with words from the hymn, “For the Beauty of the Earth.”

As the children colored, we realized that this would be a good opportunity to really look closely at fall leaves… there are often many different colors in each leaf.

Our FREE Thanksgiving place cards coordinate nicely with the garland. These are so fun for children to write on and color to make your guests feel welcome! Click on the image to get your FREE place card printable.

If you would like to listen to the song as you create your banner, you might like to try this version by Michelle Swift.

Let’s make a garland…

Print the images on cardstock

Click here to get our FREE printable, and print the images on cardstock. Some of the leaves have words from the hymn. Other images have no words. You can string them together in a pattern you like, using all or only some of the images. Alternatively, you could draw your own leaves and write the words of your choice.

Color the leaves and pumpkins

Color the leaves and pumpkins. You may want to look closely at real leaves from your yard for inspiration. Fall leaves often really have many different colors in each leaf.

Cut out the images.

Some of the leaf shapes are quite detailed. Don’t worry if they are not cut perfectly.

Punch 2 holes in each leaf/pumpkin

Punch 2 holes at the top of each pumpkin/leaf. Punching 2 holes, rather than one, helps the shapes to stay facing forward when they are strung on the garland.

String the images to create the garland

Cut a long piece of twine, ribbon, or yarn. Thread the twine (or ribbon or yarn) through the holes. Consider the order of the hymn. Add in wordless images if you would like to.

Toddler tip...

We found it was helpful to print some extra pages that our toddler could have all to herself. She was quite proud of her own little banner (we love it too)! These Melissa and Doug toddler scissors help make cutting safer.

If you enjoy making this garland, and would like to make one for another holiday (including Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, and the 4th of July), you can find other garland printables in our little Etsy shop.

Our favorite books for a cozy fall and Thanksgiving family reading time…

(The book images are Amazon links if you are interested in finding out more about the books.)

Fletcher and the Falling Leaves is a sweet story about a little fox who is so concerned about the leaves that fall from his tree, but then comes to learn of the beauty of the changing seasons. The illustrations are adorable!

With Melissa Sweet’s illustrations, Ballons Over Broadway is a joy to read! The book tells the story of the beginnings of the Thanksgiving Day Parade. We had fun making balloon puppets and having our own little parade after reading this book.

Cranberry Thanksgiving is a classic with some sweet lessons about forgiveness, hospitality, and not judging others from the outside. We first learned about this book years ago when doing a 5 in a Row reading program, and have read it every year since then at Thanksgiving time.

The Lion and the Bird is a beautiful story of friendship and care for others. This book has very few words, and the pictures tell a sweetly slow-paced story. A beautiful book to look at over and over again.

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.

Easter Egg Garland Craft

by sparkle | Apr 8, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

It seems we’ve started a little tradition at Sparkles and Sprinkes…holiday garlands to remind us of God’s love. (Perhaps you made the “Love is” garland or the “Saint Patrick’s Prayer” garland?) For this Easter season, we made an Easter hymn garland! Would you like to make one too?

This Easter garland has words from the Easter hymn, “Jesus Christ is Risen Today.” For us, this song brings back sweet memories of meeting with our Making Music Praying Twice group when our oldest children were toddlers. Making Music Praying Twice has a beautiful version of this song that young children love to sing…and children naturally have so much sweet Easter joy!

Let’s make an Easter egg garland!

These instructions show making a printable version of the garland, available in our Etsy shop. Our garland is hand-lettered and ready to color! The garland on Etsy has illustrations to go along with the song verses, plus blank eggs so that you can be creative and add your own drawings. However, you can make your own in a similar way. Simply cut egg shapes from cardstock, write verses from the song on some eggs and decorate some eggs with your own drawings.

Print the pdf or draw your own eggs

Print the eggs from our Etsy shop on white cardstock, or pastel cardstock in colors of your choice. We used white Astrobrights cardtock.

Color the eggs

Color your eggs with colored-pencils, or crayons, or markers. We think the Botanical Garden colored-pencil set from Prismacolor has a perfect palette for this Easter garland.

Cut out the eggs

You can cut slightly outside the black line if you want to have the outline in your garland (our pictures show this option). If you do not want the egg outline, simply cut slightly inside the egg outline line.

Punch 2 holes at the top of each egg

Punch two holes next to each other at the top of each egg. We used a standard 1/4″ hole punch. It is important to punch two holes so that the eggs will face forward when strung on the ribbon or yarn.

String the eggs onto ribbon or yarn

To determine the length of ribbon or yarn, decide on the length you would like the garland to be and add some extra (keep in mind it is easier to cut off extra than to have to restring a garland that is not long enough). If you are using all the decorated eggs (a total of 18 eggs), the garland nicely spans a fireplace mantel. If you used a standard ¼” hole punch, we recommend ¼” wide ribbon, or chunky yarn. This size fits nicely in the holes and allows the eggs to stay in place with the spacing of your choosing along the ribbon or yarn.

Decorate your home

Hang the garland in a place in your home to add some extra Easter joy and reminders of God’s love!

HAPPY EASTER!

If you are looking for some Easter basket treat ideas, scroll down for some books we love that might also make nice Easter gifts…

Do you want to do your own hand-lettering? We love practicing hand-lettering with this beautiful book: Pretty Simple Lettering by Whitney Farnsworth. It is such a joy, and brings so much calmness to the day to spend some time with this book.

If you are still looking for Easter basket treats, we wanted to share with you some of our favorite Easter-themed books…

Jan Brett’s The Easter Egg is full of beautiful illustrations, and the story has a sweet message that everyone has unique talents. Wonderful for your budding artists!

Our children love Rechenka’s Eggs by Patricia Polacco. Lovely Easter egg art, and a beautiful message of friendship and the importance of caring for others.

Margaret Wise Brown’s The Golden Egg Book is just so fun! Little children love reading this over and over again.

We love Maite Roche’s books with such sweet illustrations! The Beautiful Story of the Bible is of course for any time of year, including Easter.