A few busy months ago, I was contacted by the lovely Amy of Mod Podge Rocks to see if I wanted to participate in a super duper Plaid sponsored giveaway. Yes, yes, yes! I really did want to participate for so many reasons, but especially because it coincided with a new little project I was busy developing.
Please meet my Story Trading Discs. They are kind of like those art cards that people trade, but they are smaller, and are meant to have one, simple collaged image on each disc. Kids can tell stories with them, trade them, or store them up in a shoebox like I was known to do with my kid collections.
I was designing this project right at the time when my children were going back to school, which led me to think about all of the silly little trinkets and bobbles that occupied my kid brain space for hours and hours many moons ago. I collected plastic charms, garbage pail kids, stickers, black rubber bracelets, and pencil tops (not all at once, mind you). I’d trade them, but mostly I’d just sift through them while admiring all of the images and colors and shapes. And, so, I figured that it would be really fun to make a handmade version, for trading and admiring.
Materials:
wooden discs
craft paint
Mod Podge
scrap paper
scrap fabric
hole punch
scissors
tooth pick
How To:
1. Paint the discs with bright, interesting colors. Set them out to dry.
2. In the meantime, draw and cut out simple images from fabric and/or paper. Plan on having one image or small set of images (think bowl & spoon) per disc. When dreaming up designs, think about engaging shapes and people and things that will get kids thinking and imagining.
I like to use buttons as stencils for faces. Isn’t Chick’s hand still chubby and baby like. You guys, she is 5 1/2! How lucky am I?
3. Once the discs are dry, choose one and coat it with a thin layer of Mod Podge. Use your fingers and a tooth pick to place all of the pieces of an image onto the disc. Coat the image with a layer of Mod Podge and set out to dry. It will look white and gluey, but don’t fret because it will dry clear and beautiful.
4. After they are dry, you might want to give your discs an extra coat of Mod Podge for protection and longevity. After all, they are going to be traded on school buses and play yards!
I have this 8 oz container of Mod Podge as well as six containers of Plaid paint in six different beautiful shades of blue to give away. Leave a comment on this post, and I will choose a winner, using a random number generator, at midnight on Saturday. I’ll announce the winner on Sunday. If the mood strikes you, feel free to share something that you collected or traded as a kid.
* updated * Contest expired. Thanks to all who participated!
And, be on the lookout for more Story Trading Discs to pop up in this space in the coming weeks.
What a cute idea!
I collected troll dolls when I was a kid…I probably still have some hanging around somewhere.
Thanks for the giveaway! Folk Art is my acrylic paint of choice. Here’s hoping!
Really cute!! I collect bottle caps now, at the age of 31! Using Mod Podge, I turn them into necklaces.
I love these. What an awesome literacy/writing manipulative! (says the teacher in me) xoxoxo
These are soooooo cute! I wish I had seen this when my kids were little!
I want to collect these! They are like pogs (milk caps), only cuter! I collected pogs. And concert shirts. And cake pans when I was a young adult. Now I collect dust!
These are quite fun! 😀
the kid in me would love to collect these 🙂 i loved collecting things when i was little… stickers, erasers, stamps, keroppi, and i went through a pog phase too.
I had a great shell collection — I wonder whatever happened to it??
Anyway, I LOVE this idea!! I have a great stash of kids’ fabric filled with little characters that someone donated to our classroom. I am always looking for ways to use it!!
These remind me of the Pogs and the Pog Creator machine from the ’90s. My son loved them, but they never caught on with his friends, so he didn’t have anyone to trade them with. His favorite pogs were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pogs! It’s hard to believe he’s 22 now.
This is awesome! I was definitely a collector of just these types of things as a kid. I had all the best Pogs. And all I did was look at them 🙂
These are a great idea. I can’t wait to make some up for my own kids. To me it’s a boredem buster. You never have to hear the same story twice.
I LOVE these! What a fun & cute idea! My kids would ADORE these! I would love to make these!
cierralarsen@hotmail.com
Those are some pretty shades of blue. I used to collect marbles when I was a kid. I could really see my boys getting into these.
Wow! My niece would love these!
Very clever…..love the idea!
mthimjon@aol.com
Perfect! I was trying to come up with a unique way to reinforce concepts with my grade 2 religion class. Something they’d like enough to want to collect, and to save, and to spark conversation with parents . . . I think this is a winner!
I LOVE the idea! And the disks look so cute 🙂
I collected lots of things when I was a child.. but I did not have enough patience.. so I didn`t have great collections 🙂
What a neat, fun idea! It will certainly help develop kids’ imagination while giving you an insight to the stories they create in their minds.
This is a great idea. Love homemade stuff to spark imaginations. Childhood was a long, long time ago for me. I vaguely remember some cards with ugly creatures on them. Can’t even remember what they were called now. Every generation seems to have it’s ugly collectable creatures. I like yours better.
Wow! One of the best parts of being Mom was being reminded by my little Chunklets of the sheer joy of little things. My passion for a short while when I was 10 was comics! Reading, collecting, trading, marvelling in the beautiful colors and intricate pen work and thrilling in the continuing sagas of all my heroes and heroines…