Ideas from a crafty mom...

Got kids?

Got scrapping leftovers?

How about a personal die cutter?

The last 2 weeks Elijah, AJ, and I have been learning about the following:

You can see how easy it is with the tools we already have lying around from our paper crafts! The Circle Cutter works perfect to create a circle shape, use your personal die cutter for the letters "red" and "circle", or the large letters A and number 1. (You can also use stencils for the large letters and numbers, or print off the letter from the computer, trace it onto your cardstock, and cut away!)

Here's some things I do with my leftover paper scraps and my die cutters...

I used my personal cutter to cut the "1" shape. You can also trace a big "1" and cut by hand. It was a perfect way to use up some red paper I had. (So the goal here was to grab the beans and place them on the paper ONE-by-ONE... but if you have kids... you can guess how the 2 year old viewed the project: grab them and dump them ALL on!)

AJ's version of the project. Same "1", except we used the baby friendly paste (mix flour & water until it is like an oatmeal consistency) and I helped him place goldfishes one-by-one.

Here we cut an apple in half, dipped it red paint, and checked out the cool, almost heart shape, the apple made when we "stamped" it on paper.

This helped reinforce the shape of the "1" (early literacy skill), and helped reinforce the circle shape. I used my Stampin' Up! 1 3/8" circle punch, and my Stampin' Up! 1 1/4" punch to create the circles from leftover cardstock and let Elijah glue the circles to the "1".

Here we used the "cookie cutter" (or playdoh shapes!) as a "stamp" and stamped the letter A and number 1