Kiddie Craft: Lacework

The other day, during my bonanza gold-rush, I found some things that I had been looking for to do this craft idea with my small fry. I saw this idea when I was checking out pre-schools the other day. I loved it so much, I wanted to try it at home.

So what you need:

- some marbles (3-5, varying sizes are good)

- a round plastic basin

- at least two different coloured paints (non-toxic)

- spoons & a couple of plastic bowls

- paper doilies that you can buy at the supermarket

- one rubber glove is a good idea

I could only get my mitts on these silver doilies, so our demo lacework is inadvertently bling blinged. White ones are just perfect.

To get your little one doing little lacework pop a paper doily in the basin. Get them to choose which colour paint they want to work with (a couple of colours are good), and get them to scoop the paint in - big, fat dollops on the doily. Oh yeah baby.
Pop your marbles in the bowl.
The next step I like to call - the rock and roll. Get your small fry to roll the marble around in the basin, through the paint, until your doily has a crazy-cool pattern going on. When they're finished, hang up to dry. I say hang up because if you leave them on newspaper, the delicate parts of the doily tend to stick and rip. And that ain't much chop.
Et voila! Lacework.

Cute huh?

Oh and you might be wondering why the heck I advised a rubber glove? Well the marbles tend to roll under the doily all the time - so instead of getting paint all over your pretty self, glove up and tell those marbles to keep a-moving. Capiche?