Category: Fall

Being crafty, I love it when I have the opportunity to bring a craft to any of my kiddo’s class. This week I got to dress up and have fun in a 3’s Preschool Class for their Harvest Party.

Whether you’re a parent, teacher of a class, or helper in a co-op class, you find out real quick how quickly the sticker price adds up on crafts. Needless to say, a dollar store is very handy when gathering items for a craft, especially when you can find blanks that are in a bundle.

I found these cocoa cups and thought they were perfect for a craft. (The co-op preschool class that my kiddo is in is a wonderful blend where not everyone believes in celebrating all the holidays on the calendar. And I love these classes because there’s an opportunity to bring a little different.) So for this craft, I focused on embracing this comfort drink for the cooling weather.

For the mock up that I made for the teacher, I painted the mug with a single coat of sage colored acrylic paint. The one thing I love about balsa wood crafts is that it absorbs the paint and dries rather quickly with great coverage.

The next step was to add the whipped cream. For this I used hot glue and a cotton ball. For playing around purposes, to build up a 3d effect, I started with putting down a line of glue at the top of balsa wood swoop. I pressed the cotton down and pulled it up to keep a wispy and light effect. Then I added one more line and applied the cotton (continuing to pull it upward) and worked my way down to the lip of the mug. There were about 4 rows that I put in, with additional spots added, to fill in any bald spots.

On the flip side I glued on two sprigs of lavender before laying down the cotton on the back side. If lavender is not your thing, the mini coffee stirring straws would be perfect substitutes because they’re thin enough for the cotton to overlap without any bulges and gives the illusion of something coming out of your cocoa.

To decorate the mugs with a fall theme, I also grabbed these rub-on transfers from the dollar store as well. Each packet of transfers was enough to decorate the packet of 8 mugs.

In order to prevent fussing with all the elements with preschoolers, I put a mug and 3 transfers (a large, medium and small) in an envelope. Mainly I did this to keep things fair so the first group of kiddos wouldn’t take all the large pumpkins and leave the smallest leaves behind for the last group.

Here’s the thing with these transfers, they take some work. My original expectations were that these would be true to their name and take a little bit more rubbing than traditional stickers. In fact, the directions on the back of the package inferred such an expectation. But that’s not what I experienced. They don’t rub on at all. You have to scrape these babies onto your surface. I used a plastic crafting scraper and that tool failed to apply the rub on. I didn’t try using a coin like a scratcher ticket, but that idea is still in the back of my mind. The thing that worked for me was scraping the rub on with my finger nail.

Even with a thorough scraping of my nail, the transfer didn’t apply fully on the larger pumpkin groupings. And this was my biggest disappointment. BUT the transfers are forgiving. You can line these failed transfer sections back up and apply with relative success.

My biggest tip with these transfers is to take your time and gently lift up the clear transfer sheet. If the transfer doesn’t release, put the transfer back down and scrape it some more.

The original plan was to have the right above picture the completed project. The fact that I could see the hot clue peak through on the cotton prompted me to pull out my can of spray glue and glitter. Just by adding this little additional detail was enough to transform matted rough looking cotton back into something frothy and light looking.

That and I like glitter!

I kept this mock up to be pretty basic in design because I wanted it to be re-creatable for the preschoolers. Now if I were making this mock up for older kids or even a MOPS (or other ladies’) group then I would have dressed up the mug and made it more ornate with either some hand designs with acrylic paint pens, glitter pens, metallic embellishments, or so many other crafting items. In fact, I really wanted to take a small cluster of crafting fall leaves and make a little thin ribbon embellishment on the top of the mug handle.

There are other options for the whipped cream portion as well. I used cotton and my hot glue gun because I wanted the kids to be able to take their mugs home that day. But if you have more time with your class, you can use other materials and glues. I thought it could be fun using more glitter, or the tiny foam balls. Chunky white yarn could be amazing, especially for incorporating more whipped cream swirls. And I know kids would have amazing fun gluing marshmallows on top of the mug. (But I’ve seen kids pull off and eat food items off of crafts way too often. So I tend to opt out of that option. But… if I were to throw caution to the wind and let the kiddos play with marshmallows, then I would skip the glue entirely. Instead of glue I would use a royal icing. It dries like glue but is much more child friendly for those who eat crafts!

How did the craft turn out?

Oh my goodness! That day was just as chaotic as you think it’s going to be when you sign up to help in the class on a party day.

First, the schedule got blown out of the water and my party craft was slotted for right before the end of class, and parent pick up. I think it pretty much averaged where the kiddos made these mugs in about 3-5 minutes each.

Fortunately, this craft is easy to punt with and save time. First, skip the painting! Balsa is a wonderfully creamy color. And with the “rub-on” transfers, the focus goes to the transfers. To be honest, one of the girls really did beg to paint her mug the “pretty green”. She loved it and wanted it too. Fortunately the glitter saved me from a meltdown.

Kids love glitter!!!

I probably should have sprayed not just the cotton, but the whole mug to let them glitterfy the whole mug in lieu of the painting portion.

For the cotton portion, I just stretched the cotton ball out and handed it to the kiddo. I applied a liberal amount of hot glue and let the kids put the cotton down. (There was no incident with the glue. This 3’s class did an amazing job!)

The last step was to spray the cotton with spray glue and send the kids back to the table to finger sprinkle glitter onto their whipped cream over a paper plate. (If you spray from the mug toward the top of the whipped cream, you keep the spray entirely on the cotton.)

All of the mugs turned out differently. Some added more transfers than others. These kids lost interest in the transfers because they were not able to scrape hard enough to get them to apply. So if you’re doing this for young children, find a tool that lets you (preferably the kids) to apply with ease.

I wish I would have had time to take pictures of the ones that got made. This one was the one my kiddo made. Of course the one that followed me home was one of the less decorative one. So please don’t assume that this craft was too much for young kids. Time was the failure for this craft. My 6, 5, and 3 year olds were all excited for this craft and I stashed the extra mugs so that they could make them this weekend. I’ll update this post with how the mugs turn out when kids have time to do this project at their pace with the materials they want to use.

Now that November is around the corner, and winter on its’ heels, there is still plenty of time for a craft like this! Change up the colors and decoration add ons for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and even Winter Theme for January and February. Cocoa is something that kids love year round. (In fact, mine begged me for cocoa regularly during the summer!) So feel free to incorporate this easy craft into your curriculum or busy box for when you need something for kids to do. Or even do this yourself for those moments when you want to let loose on some creative steam but need to have it finished in a 10 minute crafting window!

Let me know how your crafts turn out!!!