Seven creative craft activities to do with your family this summer

Summer is nearly here and with it your children's shouts of "I'm bored!". Are you looking for craft activity ideas to keep them busy this summer? Make the most of the vacation time to suggest to your kids some craft activities that will boost their creativity and imagination. Manual activities and crafts are popular with children of all ages.

Coming this summer: colorful craft activities for creative family-time and memory-making! Need some help with inspiration? Here are 7 innovative and creative craft activities to do with your kids!

Does your child love handmade art and craft activities? During the vacation, why not suggest painting with their handprints (or even footprints!). Place their hand directly onto a palette with a little paint, then press it down onto a piece of paper. Once the paint has dried, draw in the details. You can also glue on beads or feathers to decorate.

What you'll need for this craft activity:
● Paper: Our mixed media paper pads are ideal
● Tubes of Studio gouache paint
● Neocolor® I wax pastels

Here are some colorful examples of animals that you can reproduce with your kids. You can also have fun with different themes: animals of the savannah, farm animals or sea creatures. Let your creativity flow!

For lovers of the outdoors, make the most of a walk with your kids to pick flowers that you can then use to put together an original piece. Here are two ideas for your floral activities.

● On a piece of card, apply paint with the paintbrush straight onto your flowers. Then gently lay the flower down on a piece of paper. Cover it with a second piece of paper and press gently onto the flower to transfer the paint. Now simply take away the top sheet of paper and delicately remove the flower. You can repeat this operation several times.

● Make a herbarium by sticking flowers onto a thick piece of paper and drawing around them with your kid.

Our tip for making sure that your children's works of art aren't left forgotten in a box, are properly displayed and will make them proud? Put on an exhibition of their work at home!
 

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What you'll need for this craft activity:
● A sheet of paper or thin card
● Different types of flowers
● Acrylic paint, felt-tip pens or color pencils

Here is an example of a herbarium made with flowers dipped in acrylic that can now be framed. As always, let your creativity flow!

If you are on vacation by the beach, why don't you and your kids try making a memory game with pebbles? Choose a theme, like summer for example, and paint on fish, suns, palm trees, and ice creams etc. A fun craft activity for the whole family which needs few supplies and costs next to nothing.

What you'll need for this craft activity:
● Flat and smooth pebbles
● Acrylic paint in different colors
● A little imagination!

For inspiration, here are some examples of drawings that evoke summer and that are easy to reproduce on the pebbles.

Whether you're going away this summer or staying at home, you can still have lots of family fun and fill up your photo albums with memories of time spent with your kids.

Take several sheets of colored paper cut into squares, or larger if you prefer. Select your favorite family photos, stick them onto the paper and then have fun decorating all the free space: draw with felt-tip pens or with color pencils, write a few words or add holiday souvenirs such as seashells, tickets or even a little bag of sand. When you have put together the number of pages you'd like, join them together by piercing the corner and tying them together with a piece of string or raffia.
 

Here is a craft activity that kids of every age can enjoy during the vacation. Suggest designing and making their own postcards. A landscape, an ice cream cone, a sunset - inspiration is all around you!

And if this type of activity isn't for everyone in your family, learn more about our set of coloring postcards.

What you'll need before this craft activity:
● Cardstock paper or our set of coloring postcards
● Swisscolor color pencils or Fibralo® felt-tipped pens

One of the classic images of summer is eating ice cream under the hot sun. Now rather than throw away your ice-lolly sticks you can try a fun craft activity with your children. Here are some ideas to inspire you:

● For the youngest children, make a jigsaw puzzle with the ice-lolly sticks by drawing a rainbow, flowers or anything else.

● Make bookmarks for your children's books, your novels or even your journaling notebook. You can also add a small decorative piece of paper at the end featuring a cute animal head, a flower, a heart...

● Make a frame for your holiday pictures. Once you've painted the sticks all that's left to do is frame your favorite vacation photograph, add some string and hang up your handmade design.

Here are some examples of creative bookmarks made with ice-pop sticks. As was the case with the animal handprints it can be fun to choose different themes: animals, people, flowers... anything goes!

There is no need to spend a fortune in the arts and crafts aisles of your local shop to keep your kids busy this vacation. Another popular activity is customizing earthenware pots that you can keep your plants in and that will brighten up your home. Get your paints and pastels out to decorate the pots with graphic lines or colorful flowers or whatever inspires you!

For inspiration, here is an example crafted by the artist Steffie Brocoli: three cute pots decorated and perfect for your houseplants or cacti. Go to our TikTok account and you'll find the video showing you how to decorate these pots.

What you'll need for this craft activity:
● Terra cotta flowerpots
● Acrylic paint
● Neocolor® I wax pastels

With these craft ideas your whole house will take on a vacation feel. And the good news is that these activities adapt to every season. Summer vacation, holiday season or even a rainy weekend at home.

If you have done one of these activities with your children during the summer, share your results and creations on social media with the #Carandache hashtag and tagging us @carandache.