A dirty, old bucket with water for rinsing.Bucket of clean, luckewarm water with a 1 cup scoop.This is all her idea… (Thanks, Joyce!) Supplies needed for pouring plaster of paris mouldsĭisclosure: This post contains affiliate links for your shopping convenience. I’m so grateful for our former craft shop lady who patiently taught me her system that she had perfected for over 20 years. Here’s how the whole process goes around here. You also need to read all the warnings for the plaster itself. Wear an apron to protect your clothes, rubber gloves to protect your skin (if only I could find some with short enough fingers for my hands…!), and lay paper or cardboard on the work surface and floor.

**WARNING!!: This is a messy job! Prepare yourself and the location accordingly. You may want to check your local building supply stores. What type of plaster of paris should you use for plaster crafts using moulds?īecause we were pouring such a large amount of plaster craft moulds, we purchased these “No 1 Pottery Plaster” bags. This post will walk you through the process of how to pour your own plaster designs using moulds. Once a year, we spent a few weeks pouring hundreds of plaster of paris moulds so that they’d be available for campers to paint during craft time. It is an inexpensive craft to provide, and went through hundreds of plaster moulds a year. It was my job for some time to choose the Summer camp crafts options, and there was one craft that NEVER went out of style – painting plaster craft moulds. When given a choice of all the amazing activities available, crafts was hands down the most popular! Kids and adults will love adding their personal style by painting designs on plaster crafts moulds.įor over 20 years, my husband and I worked at a year round camp and retreat center. This post was originally published on September 19, 2016.Enjoy crafting fun with this super popular plaster of paris crafts idea. These yarn pumpkins are such a fun fall craft idea! They’d make a beautiful centerpiece or mantle decoration, or you could even use them to decorate for Halloween. My 4 year old looked really enthusiastic until it came time to touch the glue, then she informed me that she wanted me to make it for her. My 6 year old didn’t want to get her hands dirty, so she took a balloon and left. I tried getting the kids to help out, but they lost interest really quickly. It’s not the quickest project in the world, but I love how they turned out! It took about 20 minutes per pumpkin to wrap the yarn, and then 24 hours to dry. Ha! Oops…) You could also try making a white yarn pumpkin! (I’ll admit that the red one kind of looks like an apple. We made orange, yellow, and red pumpkins, and we definitely prefer the orange ones. What colour yarn makes the best yarn pumpkin? So this craft is entirely from the dollar store – Glue, balloons and cotton yarn… and of course you can get pipe cleaners at the dollar store too, but I had those left over from the pipe cleaner flowers I made. I really wanted cotton yarn, because somehow I thought it would dry stiffer (no idea if that’s true?), and I managed to find it at the dollar store! I found my yarn at the dollar store, which quite honestly, I thought was a little crazy! I was at the craft store last week, and all the yarn was at least $5 to $7 per ball, and it was all acrylic. Where can I get supplies to make a yarn pumpkin? (Just know that if you use glossy Mod Podge the pumpkins will end up with more of a shiny finish when they dry, rather than the matte yarn finish that you get with white glue.)

A mixture of corn starch or flour and water.The balls aren’t rock solid, so you want to give them as much glue power as possible to hold their shape. Using plain white glue, the pumpkins still hold their shape very well, but they can be easily crushed if you accidentally put something on top of them (or let the kids play with them…). We did not water it down, like a lot of tutorials online will tell you to do.

Originally we made this craft with straight white glue from the dollar store. We did a mixture of half Aleene’s tacky glue and half water, and it made the pumpkins strong, sturdy, and resilient! When we recently re-made this craft (see our video tutorial above!) we decided to use Aleene’s tacky glue, like we did with our twine ball ornaments. What type of glue works best for making yarn pumpkins?ĮDIT: We used to recommend using dollar store glue, but have found over the years that dollar store glue gives you soft, flexible pumpkins that may not hold their shape very well. We recommend using half Aleene's tacky glue and half water mixed together to get a firmer pumpkin. If you use regular white glue, your pumpkin will be somewhat soft and flexible.

Easy kids plaster of paris crafts