Think Crafts Blog – Craft Ideas and Projects – CreateForLess

Returning Guest Blogger, Gillian, from the blog “Dried Figs & Wooden Spools”.

Since my husband is a good Texas boy, we’ll be celebrating Cinco de Mayo this year even though it’s supposed to be pouring down rain and falls on a Tuesday. And because I’m sure part of that celebrating will come in the form of the outrageously good spicy queso that our local Mexican Restaurant makes and that we bring home on a regular basis, I thought I’d embark on a rainy weekend project with my son and make a Cinco de Mayo Chip bowl.

“What’s Cinco de Mayo?” He asked while I was gathering the Mod Podge, paint brushes and paper.

“Well, You’ve been taking Spanish, what is Cinco de Mayo?” Teachable moments, gotta love them.

“Cinco is five. But I don’t know what Mayo is.” He says, thinking aloud.

“Mayo is May” I tell him.

“Oh, you mean Mayo, your saying it wrong mom.” He’s probably right, given that he has, at 6, taken more Spanish than I have and has an uncanny knack for mimicking just the right accent.

I started to explain Cinco de Mayo to him, the bits of history that I remembered, the cultural tidbits I thought he would be interested in, but all he wanted to do was get his hands sticky with glue so away we went. There’s something about getting all gooey and sticky that just brings out the best in little boys, and this was no exception.

Using a recycled balloon, well past its prime, but still big enough for a bowl and strips of white paper that we cut and ripped we dipped (well, he dipped, I spread) the paper strips in the glue and then smoothed them onto the balloon in criss-crossing patterns, ripping pieces in half when we needed to fill in the smaller parts and dousing the whole thing in an extra generous layer of Mod Podge that Briton smoothed out till his hands were as goopy as humanly possible.

After a quick hand wash we let the first layers dry and set about cutting triangles out of green construction paper and then folded them like snowflakes so we could snip away diamonds and triangles and circles the way Briton reported they had done with tissue paper flags last week in art class. Our triangles ready, we pasted the decorations around the edges of the “bowl”, smoothing as we went.

In the morning I popped the balloon and peeled it away from the shell of a bowl we had created. Briton cut the edge in a scalloped pattern and we gave it a test run at lunch, which his little sister much appreciated as she hammed it up for the camera.

The whole project turned out to be an easy, fun and just the right time span for six year old concentration kind of activity. A good chance to pass on some cultural history and get nice and gooey in the process. And with its watermelon like appearance, we might just keep it around for summer dinners on the patio.

To read more of Gillian’s posts, Click here.