Happy New Year! Card with a snowman

Happy New Year!

May this year be a year of peace, love, health, joy and happiness for you and your families!

Hanukkah magnets with quilled dreidels

This is the last Hanukkah-themed project this year. These magnets are friends of the magnets with Hanukkah Menorah I made before. All the magnets have been handed out as gifts to their new owners' pleasure :)

And I want to wish a Happy Hanukkah to all those who celebrate!

Quilled decorative Hanukkah Menorah

Hanukkah is one of the most joyful Jewish holidays, Israeli Children especially love it. They have fun making Hanukkah Menorahs, lighting candles, playing dreidel, eating latkes and sufganiyot (fruit-filled doughnuts) and receiving gifts, of course. We made this hanukkiah with my older daughter, even though quilling isn't the easiest craft for a 5-year old.

It was designed in the shape of daffodil flowers. Each light is made of two paper strips of different colours. My daughter helped me gluing them together. She also rolled coils, which I later turned into bowls for the candle holders. So, here's the result of our collaboration :)

Hickory Dickory Dock cake

This is another cake from my archive. I found the idea for this cake in Quick & Easy Party Cakes for Kids: Over 130 Delicious Recipes, although my way of making it is different.

Homemade clay Hanukiah with houses

I already suggested some ideas for making a Hanukkah Menorah. Those all were old ones, but this hanukiah with houses was made this year. To be honest, we had lots of new wonderful hanukiah ideas, but most of them have been rejected because of technical difficulties: we just didn't know how to make them :( As a result, they remained on paper in the form of notes and sketches, and we ended up building one we had enough skills for. Nevertheless, it turned out quite cute, and we're really satisfied with it.

Quilled Hanukkah greeting cards

The preparations for Hanukkah aren't over: I'm currently making simple greeting cards for friends and family. Quilled, naturally :) This version features the Hanukkah Menorah, but I'm also planning to make some with dreidels, too. I glue magnetic strips (cut out of business magnets) on their reverse side, so that such cards can also be used as refrigerator magnets. Their width is about 10-11 cm (4 inch). You can see more cards of this style below:

Homemade Hanukiah with jugs

Let me tell you an almost detective story :) Hanukkah was already coming, but we still didn't have a Hanukiah for our older daughter to take to the kindergarten. So, when it became impossible to postpone making one any more, I went to the crafts store and bought 9 small clay jugs. Then I had a wooden plank painted orange with watercolours. In its middle I glued a small wooden stand for the Shamash, then glued the jugs onto the plank. To decorate the Hanukiah I painted a girl's face on each jug. Next morning the child went to the kindergarten with her new Hanukiah. Happy end :)

More Hanukiah ideas:

• Cardboard Hanukiah
• Polymer clay Hanukiah with flowers
• Peackock Hanukiah

Three-dimensional quilled bird miniature

This yellow bird is my new three-dimensional quilled work. When I was skimming through my new book on 3D quilling — Three-Dimensional Quilling: Making Characters — for the first time, two ideas popped into my head right away: a fish and a birdie.

Cardboard Hanukiah kids craft

Our preparations for Hanukkah are in full swing. Here's another idea for Hanukkah Menorah, this time from cardboard, paper and toilet paper rolls.

For its base I cut out a strip of thick cardboard and wrapped it in a piece of pretty wrapping paper. Then I glued a small cardboard square, also wrapped in paper, into the middle for the shamash. I used Ferrero Rocher sweets wrappers for the candle holders :) The candles are made out of toilet paper tubes. I cut the tubes lengthwise, rolled tighter and stapled them to make them thinner, attached the candles to the base.

You can make such a Hanukiah almost in no time, if you engage all of your family members. My children helped me cutting, gluing and painting and we had ours finished in just half an hour :)

Check out also this version. You might like it better. It uses toilet paper tubes and aluminium muffin cups.

Cloud and rain kids' craft

Winter in Israel means a lot of rain. To make a rainy day fun despite the bad weather, we made this pet cloud out of paper. We painted a cloud on an A3 sheet and cut it out. Then we cut out raindrops and glued them to pieces of thread, attached those pieces to the cloud and hung the cloud in the doorway. I recommend using aluminium foil or glitter paint for raindrops to make them sparkle as the wind moves them. You may use aluminium foil for the lightning too, or paint it by blowing through a drinking straw like we did.