Dino Love {A Lesson in Dinosaurs}

Sometimes I scrapbook Tanner's art instead of photos.  Tanner has been spending time on http://www.pbskidsgo.org/ with Dino Dan and  he has learned quite a bit!!  He drew me these two special pictures.

I had previously designed a Dino Love page and had not cut it out (yes, I do this often!!) and thought I could make it work for these pictures.  You can see the 4x6 rectangles I used to represent the photos.  I used Life Is A Beach for the title and Dinosaur Tracks for the dinosaurs and trees.

I took my design and copied and pasted the pieces into new layers and grouped them by colors.

I found these patterned papers in a new Me & My Big Ideas paper pad called Boy Oh Boy that I found at Michaels.

The trees did not have layers, so I cut them out in green and brown and made my own.

The dinosaurs are cut out of a green metallic polka dot paper.  I did not want the dinosaurs to look exactly the same color, so I grabbed my ink pads.  I made the triceratops mostly brown, the long neck mostly green and the T-Rex a combination of the two.

I inked the trees brown.

I inked the mountains green and brown.  The inks give it depth.

I matted the pictures in kraft brown and adhered the mountains to the back.

I added in the accent pieces and the most important piece.....

The lesson about the Brachiosaurus from Dino Dan!!!

Tanner made me several pictures of Brachiosauruses passing gass, these were the top 2!

This is one of the many joys of raising boys!! 

Thank you for stopping by today!

Dinosaur Match Game

Next week is Dinosaur Week at Tanner's preschool.  I made a Dinosaur Matching Game for his teacher.

I made a little box to hold the game pieces as well.

I used the Tag Feature from the Dinosaur Tracks cartridge. I picked 15 different dinosaurs and sized the tags at 2.0 inches high.  Tanner and I debated on which colors to use.  According to Dino Dan (on PBS) some dinosaurs are purple!!  I wanted them to be all the same color as this is a PreK class and these kids are sharp as a whip!

I cut out 2 sets of the tags in brown paper.

Some of the circles did not look perfectly round to my naked eye, so to be safe I grouped and copied the set of tags onto Layer 2.  Then I used Hide Contour to hide the inside cuts of each tag, leaving the circle.

I then cut the circles in green.  I ran the dinosaur tags through my Xyron and stuck them on the circles.

Here is what they look like.

Then, I went to Tags, Bags, Boxes and More and cut out this box.  I needed the box to be about 1" thick, so that is how I determined the size.  I made it 5 inches tall.  I cut this out of watercolor paper with a multi cut of 3.

I took a T-Rex tag and cut it to fit the front of the box.  I used Nate's ABC's for the font.

I laminated them with my 9" Xryon and cut them out.  I let my daycare kids test run the game.  I split the game into two so 4 could play at once.

This has been such a big hit that I am making another set for my daycare and my friend's preschool class as well.

Thanks for stopping by!

Dig ~ Frosted Designs Sketch

Here is my take on this week's Sketch Along Tuesday over at Frosted Designs.

I used Dinosaur Tracks for the first time!!  I made a banner for the title.  I cut the letter tiles at 1.08 inches tall and strung them together with bakers twine.

I cut out the fossils of a three dinosaurs and inked the edges.

I welded the digging tools together using the tag feature at 1" tall.  I used my Xyron to stick the mesh down, then I added staples for the texture.

I used some strips of paper from my Tim Holtz stack for the background and the journaling.

I inked around the edge of the paper to dirty it up a bit.  This photo was taken in Disney at the Animal Kingdom.  Tanner got a little confused and was digging for dinosaur bones with his belly!