FAVORITE WEBSITE WEDNESDAY: Design*Sponge

What can I say?  I love love love Design*Sponge!  It's a great website devoted to home and product design and every day, it's chock full of fantastic posts featuring glorious eye candy and decor inspiration.  I'm sure you're thinking "Great.  But what does it have to do with kids?"  Yes, it may be adult-centric but quite a few of the projects and ideas featured on Design*Sponge can be tailored for your little ones.  Here are a few of my recent holiday-inspired favorites.

This great wall art feature comes from Tali at Growing Up Creative.  Cute, right?  Did you happen to notice that it's made entirely from toilet paper rolls?  Take a closer look.

Talk about a simple eco-friendly craft to do with your kids!  Just cut the cardboard tubes into small strips.

Assemble them into the shape you want to create:

 Then add some glue and secure with clothes pins until the glue dries.

After that, your kids can paint their new creation, decorate it with glitter or just hang it as is.

The sky's the limit when it comes to what you can create with this project!  You can make ornaments for the Christmas tree, big flowers for the wall (how cute would they be as birthday party decorations?) or if you get really creative, you could even make feathers for a turkey in honor of Thanksgiving.  Want the step-by-step instructions?  Find them at Design*Sponge.

Here's another fabulous inexpensive craft that's perfect for the holidays - a Pipe Cleaner Garland.

And boy is this easy!  All you need are a bunch of pipe cleaners and a pair of scissors.

Take the pipe cleaners, fold them in half and twist the ends together.  Shape each one so it looks like a petal and then attach them to each other.  Once you have each flower created, you can connect them to create a screen or a garland or keep them separate to hang as decorations and ornaments.  You can find the full how-to here.

Last but not least is this super simple idea from designer David Stark.

How cute are those twine snowmen?  To make some of your own, just take three varying sized balls of twine, stick 'em together and decorate with buttons or anything else you like.

To make other fun elements like these stars, hats or words:

You just take some wire and wrap the twine around it:

Then mold it into the shape you want.  Simple, right?  For more information and inspiration for this project, check out the full post here.

Trust me, there are tons more great ideas where those came from.  Now can you see why Design*Sponge is one of my favorite sites?  Yeah, I thought so.


Images: Design*Sponge & Growing Up Creative