Visiting IKEA was always a pleasure for me. The displays were always beautifully curated and I always loved the decorative stuff and glassware that the outlet carries at affordable pricings! There are just so much pretty stuff available that there will sure to be something suitable for any home, regardless of the theme. However I am honest in that I do not think of IKEA as the first place to go for arts and crafts stuff. But I changed my mind after my last visit there, specifically looking for some ideas. In any case, I ended up with a bunch of stuff I needed to create the following with the kiddos during their June school holidays!
Game Station Build
We brought the kiddos over to Uncle Ringo fair a couple of weeks back and the carnival atmosphere there was really great. Beside the various rides they got on, they also had great fun trying out the various games stations in the hope of winning some prizes too of course. The prizes were really attractive and that explains the pricing of the games. This was when my wife commented that maybe we should have such games at home and hence I decided to build one!
Bonding - Using 2 x A4 carton boxes, an A3 box cover and some items from IKEA, I went about recreating the game station I had in my mind. I had a general direction how it should be done, but as the fixing went along, the kiddos also gave their suggestions on how they wished the game to be played, which ended up with us making some tweaks to the assembly methods as well as the choice of materials used. I could have done up every thing on my own but chose to involve the kiddos in the process as well. It gave them a sense of ownership and it was a good bonding session for us too!
Creativity Through Art - I spray painted the entire body white after assembling the boxes and fixing up the ramp, and then engaged the help of the 3 older kiddos to beautify the game station with their painting. For this, we used MÅLA Paint and they were given free rein in expressing their artistic talents. The MÅLA Paint pack also comes with a colour guide and the kiddos were happy to mix the different colours up to get their desired outcome. There were no good or bad, or right or wrong. Just plain "real" colouring fun which they enjoyed tremendously and that sure beats any colouring app on electronic devices!
Honing Business Acumen - I had intended to build this so that the kiddos can have some fun without needing to pay any money but they actually requested that we "play" it like the real thing. Hence I decided to charge them $1 for each play with the intention of awarding them prizes too! I was positioning the "pins" on the machine and fine-tuning the path of the marbles and the points system, Leroy was actually able to tell me that the path which the marble ends up in the most, should have the lowest points. Not too bad after playing a few rounds at the carnival.
And when he noticed that I was trying to make it more difficult for the marble to land in the centre position (with the most points), he added that I should not make it TOO difficult because customers will just stop playing after a while. He went as far as recommending that I should allow customer to buy additional games to add on to their previous scores so that they can win something after all the tries, and that they will tend to come back and spend more! He definitely impressed me!
Homemade Snow Globe
I chanced upon some beautiful glass bottle during the shopping and the idea of making a snow globe out of it came to my mind almost instantly. With that in mind, I picked a couple of other items to complete the mini side project. They shall be nice prizes for the game station too!
Making it was really easy and all you need to do it to use the cap of the jar as a base and build whatever you like onto it. The kiddos had some minions figurines lying around and with Despicable Me 3 trailers now showing, they all wanted a minion snow globe.
I could have just hot-glued the figurine onto the base but it will not look good aesthetically. Hence I slowly hot-glued a small mound layer by layer using crushed glass. The idea worked but it was time-consuming and used up quite a fair bit of glue too. An alternative idea with be using a plastic bottle cap as a base and hot-glue the crushed glass onto it instead.
Some tips when making your own snow globe is to try to close the lid of the glass jar tightly and note the orientation before sticking your ornaments or figurines so that they are facing the right direction when you seal it up.
I absolutely hate air bubbles in my snow globes. Thus I first mixed the glitter with water so that the glitter all sink to the bottom of the jar. Then I slowly sink the entire jar into a pail of water before closing the lid fully underwater. So go on and have fun creating your very own!
IKEA items used:
RAJTAN Spice jar and
KULÖRT Decoration
This blog post is brought to you in collaboration with IKEA Singapore!
