Day 3: Baby It's Cold Outside...

~Today is a hot chocolate kind of day.~

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Cocoa for the kiddos.

There have been some bitter days since the snow started to fall. We shiver at the idea of all that cold temperatures that are heading our way. Though, we all do agree it is beautiful to look outside at the white snow covering the ground. Super Sid thought that since winter was coming and the littles do chores and enjoy hot tea along with cocoa that they should have their own mugs.

Let's do this!

First try... Oops!

We thought about doing the permanent marker craft. However, after reading a little more the fact is it comes off in the wash after a little while. Off to the nail polish then. Sophie, James, and Jazlyn helped gather up the colors that we needed to do our project. We gave it a try with Sophie's mug first. It didn't work so well. The nail polish was semi-dry in the bottle. Most of the bottles were almost empty. The children really do enjoy manicures and pedicures. 

Daddy to the rescue! He saved the day by going off to the Dollar Tree and brought some brand new nail polish for us to work with. Now we could get down to business. I created a sample one first just to make sure we have it down before the littles started theirs. Sophie's oops was cleaned with a little bit of nail polish remover. Thank you to the dear husband, Donald on picking that up too. 

After reading a couple different blogs (this idea is every where on the internet), we did the following steps.

1. Boil some water so it is nice and hot. I used our tea pot for this. The water was steaming and ready to go.
2. Chose your colors. We only chose up to three each child. (Chloe wanted more but I explained the time line. She was good with that.) 
3. Think about the design that you want.
4. Pour the nail polish onto the water by holding it an inch or two above the surface.  If you start two high it will go right to the bottom and that wouldn't be good. 
5. Make swirls, zig zags, dots, or whatever other pattern you would like. (But work fast because the hot water helps dry the nail polish.) You have about 10 seconds to get your cup into the water.  
6. You can try to make swirls with a toothpick. We tried it and the nail polish both times just ​clumped on the toothpick. The idea was abandoned. Little hands and over thinking designs maybe was the problem.
7. Gently!​ And I stress gently place the mug on the water and roll it side to side. It is ok to break the surface just a little bit. But again note the GENTLY! (We found this out with Chloe's. She was excited and went a little harder and faster then the others. It caused a more thicker pattern and some air bubbles.)
8. Make sure to tip any water out into the tub of water before placing the cup upside down to dry for 24 hours. (This was the hardest part for our littles. They wanted to use their new pretty mugs ASAP. However, having hot cocoa in another mug swayed that for a few hours.)
9. If any of the nail polish got inside of the mug it can be removed with nail polish remover.
10. *Optional: You can add their names with Sharpie painter pens. This is our plan to do for them. 

Pick your poisons. 

The littles did very well. Here is some of the photos from our mug making event.

Second go around for Sophie. It looks great!

Connor's has a Superman feel to it. Cool!

James chose a very Christmas feel to his. Pretty!

Chloe's turned out to look kind of like a flower. Artsy!

Jazlyn's is AWESOME! She did great. 

The finished work. The blue and silver were mine. 

This was fun to do. It would be nice to know how to do some of the amazing designs that you see or get more of the "Splash" look. If you have done this, or are thinking about doing this craft, we would love to see your results. Blessed be. 

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