When it comes to taking time to craft with my kids, I don’t win mom of the year.

I have to work up to it. Plan in advance. Then I have to chicken out, see their pouty faces full of disappointment and just declare it a craft day to make myself feel better.

I’m trying really hard to break that habit.

I want to be a fun mom.

This was a craft we finished a few weeks ago, I’m just now getting around to writing about it. The background is of our old cluttered, chaotic schoolroom. The new one is amazing. I’ll eventually post good pics of that.

Over Valentine’s Day, I let the girls tear pages from a old book and cut out hearts. {fitting to the holiday, it was some trashy romance novel that ended up being given to me from a Freecycler donating educational books}

I let them watercolor the paper hearts and set them out to dry. Two weeks later I remembered we had them. *sigh*

So I morphed that old craft {since Valentine’s Day was long past} into a new one. I let the kids take out some acrylic paint and instructed them to paint grass and sky.

They did. And we set it aside to dry, again.

Yep, it was over a week later when I remembered the canvases.

To their surprise, I pulled out the Mod Podge and decided it was high time Momma finished this craft!

We took pipe cleaners and made antennae by folding it in half, and then wrapping the ends around a pencil to make curly ends.

I used some pretty hefty glue, E6000, to glue it to the canvas. Mostly because they are young and impatient and the Elmer’s was taking too long to dry.

{okay, I’m impatient too}

Then we decoupaged the watercolored paper hearts to the canvas creating butterfly wings.

Bubbagirl really took her time and thought carefully about every stroke. Even the splattery ones.

Taderbug finished one butterfly, and decided to add a second one.

Lil Man covered his canvas in Mod Podge. I had to stop him a couple of times from just glopping it on. He had fun playing with the big kids, and really, that’s all that mattered.

When the new school room was complete, I hung their three butterfly pictures above the back door. I’ll save those pics for the post about our room, so make sure you come back and see!