Vicki's Craft Room: May 2014

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

DIY Water Table

Summer project #2...
Water Table

And not just any old water table. One with custom parts and moving water. Kids love water, especially running water. My kids play with this non stop. They collect water in containers and water flowers, play with little dolls in the water, and change the pipe fittings.

I got my inspirations from a Pinterest pin which had excellent instructions and pictures. Click here to see it. But I wanted to take it one step further. I didn't just want water to squirt through the pipes and drain to the bottom, I also wanted the water to pool on the top before draining to the bottom. The challenge with this was finding 2 containers that fit together.

I found these 2 storage containers at Lowes. The top one fit perfectly into the bottom while allowing a large pool of water in the bottom for the pond pump. Time to start the plumbing...

I wanted 4 pipes coming up the top so the plumbing had to be in a sort of I shape with the main tube and pump coming off of the middle. The pond pump that I used was a 290 GPH pump with an adjustable flow.

I had to drill 4 holes in the shallow bin for the plumbing to come through to the top. Don't worry about making the holes slightly too big because you will want a way for the water to slowly drip back to the bottom bin. Now I was able to attach the top pipes and figure out how I wanted the water to spray out. I made a variety of attachments and drilled holes into the pipes for the water. I have about 8 configurations so that my kids can change things once in a while.

I hope that this serves as an inspiration for your own creation. The final outcome will depend on how you want it to work and the type of plumbing parts you have access to. I spent a lot of time in the plumbing isle trying to figure out which pipes and fittings would work. But it was worth it.

One final thing to note: this will be heavy to move around once it is filled with water. I ended up building a box with casters to set the water table on. Then I was able to wheel it into the garage and it was at a better height for my 4 year old.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Teacher Gift

Summertime fun! It's been a long, long winter here in Pennsylvania. But this past weekend we finally had a taste of summer and the weather forecast looks like it is going to stay. So I am going to have some summer time fun projects this week. Starting with...

End of the School year Teacher Gift.

My daughter finished her first year of preschool this week. I can't believe that it's over already! But looking forward to spending more family time this summer. I had her paint flower pots for her teachers as gifts. She painted her name on one side and flowers on the other. The flowers were painted with her fingertips and then she added stems and leaves with a brush. She did a great job and couldn't wait to give them to her teachers.

I planted Forget Me Not flowers in the pots and painted "Forget Me Not" under her name. I had a ton of these flowers growing in my garden and thought the name of them were appropriate.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Happy Birthday Pop Up Card

I"m at it again! I just love these pop up box cards. I'm not going to explain how to make the boxes because there are so many tutorials out there that would be much more helpful than what I could do. splitcoaststamper.com has directions or you can do a search on you tube for tutorials.

The box/card base was made from the Skylark paper packet. I used the Artiste Cricut cartridge to cut out the cupcake and stamped the cupcake from the stamp set that is included with the cartridge. The sentiment is from my favorite stamp set, Holiday Tags. This set really has something for every occasion and it coordinates with the Artiste cartridge.

Here is the card laying flat and ready to mail. I cut off the zip strip from the edge of the paper and used it to decorate the outside of the card. I also made a few girly ones with ribbon and bows on the outside.

Hope you like it. I've had a lot of people tell me how complicated it looks but it is soooo easy. Give it a try.

Friday, May 9, 2014

Happy Mother's Day

Thank you for joining us on My Cricut Craft Room's May Blog Hop. Today I made a card to share with you.

Happy Mother's Day everyone! This card is a box card or pop up card. To get the directions on how to make it, do a search on you tube or pinterest. There are many great tutorials out there. This card has flowers from the Walk in my garden cartridge. The sentiment is Holiday Tags from CTMH and coordinates with the Artiste Cricut cartridge. This is my favorite stamp set lately. It has something for every occasion.