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By Mom Unplugged, December 22, 2008 9:44 am

Here I am, better late than never! After a very busy day of cooking yesterday in preparation for last night’s winter solstice get-together with friends, I am finally able to post our Weekly Unplugged Project.

The theme this week is Dark/Light, in honor of the solstice (be it winter or summer depending on your hemisphere).

We made solstice napkin rings that, in all the excitement, we actually forgot to use. Oops.

First we gathered “nature-colored” beads and pipecleaners, or at least as close to nature colored as we could find (I am not sure that that shade of green pipecleaner really exists in nature, except perhaps in Ireland!).

We strung them on the pipecleaners.

Then we twisted the ends together to form a ring (make sure the size is big enough to hold a cloth napkin).

We curled the loose ends of the pipecleaner around a pencil:

We discovered that the curly ends made a great holder for some pine needles!

This was simple, fun, and even my two year-old could do it.

You could make Christmas ones with red and green pipecleaners and tinsel or holly in the curly bit, or how about summer ones with a flower stuck in there?

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Did you join in this week’s Unplugged Project? If so, then please link to your post (not just your blog) in Mr. Linky below. That way, readers will always be able to easily find your project post. If you didn’t join in, but like the idea of it, please do not link, but read more about how to join us here.

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The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

Wrapping Paper

What can you do to recycle some of that holiday wrapping paper after it has been ripped off the gifts? I can’t wait to see your creative ideas!

Happy Holidays!

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By Mom Unplugged, May 19, 2008 6:56 am

Sorry this didn’t get up last night, but when I went to post it, my site was down! The support people told me that there was a “migration” taking place on my server. “Oh, of course!” I said with knowledgeable techie certainty, but I was really thinking: “Isn’t that what geese do?”

I decided that whatever it was, it sounded important enough to take a Long Time, so I went to bed. I’m happy to report that the geese did not fly away with my site, as it is back this morning. So finally, here’s my post:

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This week’s theme, chosen by my oldest daughter, was ribbon. It seems that she had bookmarks in mind when she chose that theme. In between running around outside in the glorious weather, and despite my lack of preparation, we somehow managed to make two kinds of ribbon bookmarks for this week’s Unplugged Project.

As usual, I had not prepared for this project and at the last minute we scoured the house for odd bits of ribbon or anything that we might be able to use. Here’s what we found:

My daughter wanted to decorate a bookmark-length ribbon with glitter glue, buttons, and flat beads. First she cut a length of wide ribbon, and then she added some glitter glue, and positioned some beads and buttons that I glued on with the glue gun. Here is her finished book mark:

For my book mark, I decided to do a bit more experimenting with weaving with pipecleaners. I attached four pipecleaners at the top like this:

Then I tied two different colored ribbons at the top too. I then weaved the ribbons between the pipecleaners, twisting the two ribbons together as I went along:

When I had about 2 inches of pipecleaner unwoven at the end, I stopped and knotted the ribbons around the pipecleaners. I then threaded beads on the ends of each pipecleaner, and a few on the ribbon ends. TIP: To thread beads onto fat ribbons, wrap the end in scotch tape (so it is kind of like the end of a shoelace) thread the beads, then cut off the tape:

I also added a few beads to the hanging ends of the ribbon at the top of the bookmark, just to dress it up a bit. Here is my final product:

I was rather pleased with the result of this. It would be fun to experiment with different colors and widths of ribbon instead of just using what one has on hand.

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Did you join us this week? If so, then link to your ribbon project post in Mr. Linky and please leave a comment.

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The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project :

Metal

I look forward to seeing your wonderful ideas! Hopefully the geese will leave my server alone from now on, and my post should be up Sunday night as usual. Enjoy your week!

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Comments (12)

By Mom Unplugged, February 3, 2008 8:36 pm

It was a wintry, windy, snowy day here in Arizona’s mountains. Without TV there was no Superbowl to watch (I would probably have preferred The Puppy Bowl anyhow!). All in all, a good day for a project.

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project was pipecleaners (or twist-ties, or wire in case you don’t have pipecleaners).

Last week I realized that we were sorely in need of stocking-up on craft supplies. So in addition to buying a lifetime supply of assorted pipecleaners, we also found pompoms, googly eyes, craft sticks, glitter, and even feathers. Now we have plenty to work with!

I set it all out in front of the kids, along with some corks that I had been saving (at the request of my 7 year-old), and let them have at it while I cooked dinner.

This is what my 5 year-old and 7 year-old came up with:

Later I joined in and made a spider (kind of an obvious project, but I had fun) and started some coaster weaving. My 7 year-old finished it for me while I put the baby to bed.

The weaving seemed like an inspired idea for teaching weaving to a child since it is very easy to thread pipecleaners under and over. You just have to watch out for the sharp, wire ends that can easily prick fingers. Perhaps folding over all the ends before using the pipecleaners would solve this problem.

If you joined in the project this week, please remember to put your link in Mr. Linky below so that we can find each other easily.

Tomorrow might be a good day for a project too. I suspect we might have a snow day. 100% chance of snow tonight (6 to 10 inches), 80% tomorrow (3 to 7 inches). More pipecleaners perhaps? Or maybe an early start on next Monday’s project:

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Next week’s project idea comes from Jess who suggested collage/magazines (thank you Jess!). We have done collage recently (although I do love it and we missed it last time), so how about magazines/catalogs (but you can still do a collage if you want).

Some ideas:

- collage

- decoupage

- finding colors

- clipping pictures and making up a story

- clipping letters: make a cut-out alphabet