Gift Guide for Single Parents– Arts and Crafts Edition by George Gensler!
It’s holiday gift guide season and we’re focusing on gifts for single parents this year. Whether you know someone who is a single parent for a night, a weekend, a week, or always, these gifts are chosen for any of those times. There will be several guides, themed differently, so you can choose the type of gift you want to give. This one is arts and crafts. For single parents, it can be difficult, sometimes, to find time to express creativity, especially if your children are little. I will include “chunking” tips, where possible. Chunking is what I like to call activities that I can complete in chunks without either losing the thread or taking up space I need when the family is up and around.
Abrams Dot-to-Dot Books
Dot-to-dot books are a great way to relax. From a bunch of dots on a page, you draw out a beautiful image – in this particular instance, a bevy of drag queens, most of whom are recognizable from RuPaul’s Drag Race. And, once you’ve completed the drawing, you’ve got a coloring page for you or your littles. Jennie Edwards is the illustrator of this gorgeous and challenging dot-to-dot book.
Chunking Tip: Decide on a number of dots to connect in a session (I use 100) and stop when you’ve reached multiples of 100. It’s a doable amount, shows progress, and you can do as many sets of 100 as you want.
Buy the above Join The Drag Queens Dot to Dot Puzzle here!
Thunder Bay Press Spiroglyphics Coloring Books
Thomas Pavitte’s Spiroglyphics are a unique type of coloring book. Instead of outlines of images, there are two intertwined spirals that appear as circle. It is nearly impossible to determine from looking at it what the final image will be. You can use fine line markers, colored pencils, or gel pens to fill in the spirals (start at the outer edges of the circle, so you know you’re coloring in the correct spirals). The books are all themed and the “answers” are in the back of the book. I cheat and look at the puzzles, so I can match the color to the image.
Buy the Disney Villainous one here!
Peter Pauper Press Scratch and Sketch
Peter Pauper Press Scratch and Sketch books are a great way to express creativity. If you’ve never seen them before, the pages are black with images outlined in white. When you scratch away the black, the colorful backing appears. You can scratch in many ways: scratch out the interior of the image; scratch around the exterior; scratch out the outline of the image, leaving the interior and exterior black. The Merry Christmas book is an incredible collection of scratch and sketch pages, designed to give you maximum control over the final images.
Schiffer Publishing Watercolor notecards
Schiffer Publishing The Easy Way Paint-Your-Own Watercolor Cards Flowers is based on Sara Berrenson’s Watercolor the Easy Way and includes 12 notecards with envelopes, a paintbrush, a 9-color paint palette, and instructions. Each card has a sketched outline of a flower image for you to color as you choose with a smaller flower image on the reverse, which is lined for easy writing. There’s also a set of coastal designs.
Happy Stitching
are great small projects for single parents. Each kit contains everything you need, including needles, needle threader, canvas, thread, scissors, and the casing for the completed needlework. They have kits of key fobs, luggage tags, coasters, eye glass cases, and passport cases. There are several designs to choose from and, of course, you can choose monograms for the personal items.
Chunking Tip: This one is easy. Cut a length of thread (I cut one arm’s length) to stitch and set it aside when you finish the thread.
Diamond Art Club
Diamond art is a fancy form of paint by number, with gems instead of paint. The canvas is adhesive, and the gems are transferred to the canvas with a waxed stylus. Diamond Art Club has hundreds of designs across many genres, including many licensed images, so you can find something for everyone. While they do have very large canvases of intricate designs, there are plenty of small ones that can be completed in a night or two, so no worries about leaving your projects out for your littles to find. And the Disney Sparkle Pals can be used to decorate your littles’ rooms, too.
Insight Editions Holiday Paper Crafts
Insight Editions Holiday Paper Crafts contains easy-to-follow directions that will help you craft over 25 small holiday-themed paper sculptures. There is a list of the papers and tools you need, including cutting implements, adhesives, etc., so you can be prepared when you start crafting. From ornaments to stars to paper lanterns and more.
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