Prayer Mat Crafts - 30 Days of Ramadan Crafts

Day 21 - Prayer Mat Crafts 

I have included 3 different Prayer Mat Crafts in this post, depending on skill. These include crafts that all children can be involved with, both my children have attempted the worksheet crafts and my 11 year old also made a Felt Prayer Mat.

• Felt Prayer Mat (Sewing)
• Designed Prayer Mat Colouring in Worksheet
• Blank Prayer Mat Worksheet (Design the Mat yourself)

Felt Prayer Mat - This was hand sewn but you could also use craft glue and just glue the parts together for those not wanting to sew! We also made a Felt Muslima Doll as part of this project. See photographs below.

These are the pieces of Felt needed to make the Prayer Mat.

This photograph shows the whole completed project of making the Felt Prayer Mat and Muslima Doll. Here is the link to the original full tutorial: felt-muslim-doll-and-prayer-mat-tutorial

I have also personally designed a prayer mat that can be coloured in, if you wish to download this free worksheet, here is the Free link: prayermat.pdf

Here is the blank/empty prayer mat worksheet which enables children to make their own designs. Here is a free download link for this worksheet: prayermatblank.pdf

Here is a photograph of my 11 year old daughter having fun colouring in one of the Prayer Mat worksheets.

Don't Forget that if you have made any of the Ramadan Crafts that I have blogged about, then please send in a photograph and I will publish this on my blog and my Facebook Page! You can send this via email (karimascrafts@gmail.com) or post on my Facebook Page Karimas-Crafts directly.

Ramadan Food Crafts - 30 Days of Ramadan Crafts

Day 20 - Ramadan Food Crafts

 

My children love anything to do with crafts and also cooking - so they really enjoy being able to do both in the same project! I have shared with you some of the food crafts that I have done with my children to hopefully help give you some inspiration as to what options are available for children to do.

 

 

These cookies are a family favourite which my daughters' love being able to make. I have previously written a post sharing this recipe. If you want to know how we made these here is the link to the original post: algerian-cookies-recipe These are also a brilliant idea to give as a gift to friends and family!

 

 

This Ramadan we have been eating plenty of Watermelon as it has been so hot, the children love using the cookie cutters to make shapes with the cut watermelon - The photo shows some Moons and Star shapes they have made. These would be great to serve on a plate and give out to children!

 

 

My daughters' both helped to make and design this cake which I was really impressed with! They cooked 2 cakes, one in a square shaped mould and one in a round shaped mould and placed the round one on top of the square one. They chose the colour of the icing and decorated the cake with their own designs using marzipan!  We used the Madeira Cake Recipe for the cake, but any cake recipe would do. If you are interested in the recipe here is the link to the post I previously blogged about sharing the recipe: madeira-cake-recipe

 

 

My 11 year old designed the Muslim and Muslima characters for the cake using coloured Marzipan. We buy the ready made marzipan and we add food colourings to it to make lots of different colours and shades.

 

 

My 6 year old daughter designed this Mosque which we also added to the cake. She really enjoyed designing using marzipan. She also made a lovely butterfly and flower which was added to the bottom of the cake.

 

 

Here are all the cakes that both my daughters made and designed. The wanted each one to be unique so there is a great variety of designs. We used the same recipe as the large cake for these cakes but obviously they are in the oven for a shorter length of time! Recipe: madeira-cake-recipe

 

I hope all of the photos above have given you an idea of what children are capable of doing either by themselves or with a little help! As you may have noticed I like my children to make their own designs and try not to interfere to make them look neater - even though as a perfectionist I am tempted!  It is good to just let the children be as creative as they wish.

 

Don't Forget that if you have made any of the Ramadan Crafts that I have blogged about, then please send in a photograph and I will publish this on my blog and my Facebook Page! You can send this via email (karimascrafts@gmail.com) or post on my Facebook Page Karimas-Crafts directly.

 

Mosque Collage - 30 Days of Ramadan Crafts

Day 19 - Mosque Collage Designs 

My daughters' decided to make Mosque Collages using Foam craft pieces for one collage and coloured paper for another collage. They both followed a similar design that my daughter had hand drew and that she had labelled with numbers.

Below is a Tutorial on how they made these.

 This is the Foam Collage designed by my 11 year old daughter.

Requirements:

• A4 Paper for background
• Coloured Paper or Foam for Mosque collage pieces
• Pen/ Scissors
• Glue

 This is the collage designed by my 6 year old daughter.

Instructions:

Hand draw a design that you are happy with. (You can download my daughters draft for free but note that this is not perfectly matching!).

Then trace over the template to make a copy (make sure you are over generous as some pieces will overlay and you don't want any gaps. It is easier to trim down than be too short!.

Then cut out all the pieces making sure to number them.

Once you have cut them all out, you can use these templates to make your design - either using coloured paper or coloured foam.

Once all cut out you place all the pieces together to make sure they are all fitting snuggly.

Have an A4 piece of paper as a background for the collage - design this as you wish.

Glue all the Mosque pieces onto the background - making sure that they overlap in the correct places to make it look good.

Here is the link to the free download of the Mosque template: mosquecollage.pdf

Don't Forget that if you have made any of the Ramadan Crafts that I have blogged about, then please send in a photograph and I will publish this on my blog and my Facebook Page! You can send this via email (karimascrafts@gmail.com) or post on my Facebook Page Karimas-Crafts directly.

  

5 Pillars of Islam Crafts - 30 Days of Ramadan Crafts

Day 18 - 5 Pillars of Islam Crafts

I have three different crafts for this subject. One is a 3D structure, one is a painting project and the other is Colouring in worksheet. The first one is quite a common one being shared around the internet that the children enjoyed being involved with. Great Upcycling project using up those cardboard tubes! I have a Tutorial for this below:

Craft 1 - 3D Craft 

Requirements:

• 6 Cardboard Tubes (5 the same size and one slightly longer)
• Paint/brushes and/or permanent Markers

 Instructions:

Paint all the 6 Tubes a colour of your choice (we chose purple) and allow to dry.

Handwrite the names of the 5 Pillars onto the tubes and then go over this with black paint. (You could use Permanent Markers instead.

Place the cardboard tubes into the shape of the photograph (you could glue them together - but we just left them loose!).

 Craft 2 - Handprint Painting

 Requirements:

• Paper
• Paint/brushes
• Coloured pens

Instructions:

Place Paint onto your hand and then leave a handprint on a plain piece of Paper.

Once Paint has dried write out the 5 Pillars of Islam over each Finger/thumb.

Write Out the Title on the top of the Page (5 Pillars of Islam)

Optional - You could place this into a Frame to make it look nice or do this straight onto a canvas frame.

Craft 3 - Colouring in Worksheet

Below is a picture of a worksheet that I designed recently for children to colour in. Here is a link for you to download this for free: 5pillars.pdf 

Don't Forget that if you have made any of the Ramadan Crafts that I have blogged about, then please send in a photograph and I will publish this on my blog and my Facebook Page! You can send this via email (karimascrafts@gmail.com) or post on my Facebook Page Karimas-Crafts directly.

Guest Post - Fabulosity Studio

 

I was asked by my wonderful and thrifty blogger friend to do a guest blog post for her seriously crafty Blog, so I jumped on this exciting opportunity. I am new to the blogging world so this is exhilarating for me.

 

It’s the Holy month of Ramadan! Since this is the month of blessings and festivities, it would be fitting to create a blog post related to it. This month, I have a tight leash on my households' eating habits. it’s easier since my kids are only 3 and a half but I have a very demanding foodie husband who when fasting, thinks of new dishes for me to try, not bothering to wonder that I would be the one making it or how much that impacts his waist line. It goes like this at 6 in the evening when he finishes watching a rather feisty cooking show on TV.

 

"When are we going to have a proper Iftari? You have never made kachoris, have you? You really should think of something new, all this regular stuff isn’t doing me any good. “

 

Rest assured, I make enough food for Iftari to feed a small army, yet regular food isn’t good enough sometimes for Masterchef watching husbands. *eye rolling*

 

We have such a short time between Iftari and Sehri to eat that I think it’s useless to make so much food. Overeating leads to weight gain, and I really think it’s a grandmother’s trick to make the children eat more food that you actually lose weight during the fasting month. It’s just plain wrong, I tell you.

So the Iftari in my house is fruit chaat and for dinner, we have chapatti and curries or boiled basmati rice with daal. Speaking of some much desi food reminds me that I have to share this little tit-bit. When we are sautéing onions which is compulsory in almost all Pakistani dishes, first heat the pan, don't pour oil, just toss in the sliced onions and sauté them dry. They don’t stick to the pan and when they are starting to get a bit brown and a bit soft, add a tablespoon or two of oil which will be all the oil you will need. It’s much more economical as well.

 

So I got to thinking about Eid and how we are again going to indulge in mithais, baklavas, kheer, sheer korma, and chocolates as well, but then I thought about people who can't eat them like my father-in-law who is diabetic, and maybe those who are on a strict diet as well, so I made a very healthy truffle box all suited for people like them and people like me who are a bit health conscious.

 

Here it goes, hope you will like it (fingers crossed), you can give these as gifts on Eid. 

 

Ingredients:

• Medjoul Dates 90 grams 
• Medjoul Dates with the stone removed 3 to 6 
• Almonds 35 grams 
• Almonds 25 grams for the stuffed dates
• Walnuts 35 grams 
• Walnuts 10 grams 
• 10 grams desicated coconut
• 10 grams of sesame seeds 
• one square of dark chocolate (optioinal , I used lindtt's 85% dark chocolate)
• one teaspoon of castor sugar, (optional) 
• some more walnuts for decoration
• Truffle boxes, I bought mine from Here
• Ribbons
• Filling ( mine is from the glossy boxes I got, I just thought they are so pretty why throw them away ) 

The biggest requirement is a mini chopper. You can use a food processor as well.

 Method: 

1 First blitz the walnuts and almonds in the chopper and then set them aside in a bowl, then blitz all the dates as well after removing the stones.

2 Add the coconut as well and then mix all the ingredients well. It gets very sticky.

3 Make balls and set them aside when a little bit of mixture remains add in the sesame seeds and chop the chocolate with a knife and mix in and then make balls of this mixture as well.

4 In the chopper chop some more almonds and walnuts add a teaspoon of castor sugar.

5 Mix in a few drops of water or rose water , I only had water.

6 Then fill in the dates with the mixture and add the walnut on top.

The Finished product looks like that and yes that is an egg tray and refrigerate them for about 15 to 20 minutes so it sets.

 Time to get the truffle boxes out.

Line the boxes with tissue paper and box your date balls and the stuffed balls. I could just get five of them in the box.

And your Eid truffle boxes are ready to hand out to your friends and relatives.

Ramadhan Mubarak all,

Stay Fabulous.

Love and Peace All

Sheen x

http://fabulositystudio.blogspot.co.uk/

Henna Crafts - 30 Days of Ramadan Crafts

Day 17 - Henna Crafts

 

My girls love having Henna done on them. Its not very often they get the opportunity to have it done professionally so we have started doing this ourselves using self adhesive stickers and the tubes of henna. I haven't found these stickers locally but I know you can buy them on Ebay.

 

Another alternative is to make your own sticker designs from normal stickers! The photo below shows an example of this. It is always easier to have someone do this to you but you can still try to do this to yourself. My eldest daughter does her own designs on herself using stickers and she also experiments with freehand designs too!

 

We always keep the sticker sheet remains as we can use these for templates when doing any design work! We have so many heart/flower shape sticker templates now! We now use the sticker templates when doing Henna designs. The photograph above shows how we utilised the template of a flower and also a smaller flower sticker to make a lovely flower henna Design.

 

The photograph below shows how we use the bought specially made Henna Stickers. These can normally be used a couple of times before their stickiness goes!

 

 

 

Another Henna Craft that doesn't involve actual Henna is to design your own Henna Design on a blank hand template. Below is a photo and a link to the free download of the blank hand template that I designed so you can draw your own henna designs.hennahand.pdf

 

 

Below are some photographs of designs my children have made using the Paper Templates. They can draw their designs on the paper as part of a craft session or they could use these as an example of a design they actually want to do on their own hands. 

 

Below is a photograph of some Henna work we have also done on Feet!

 

Helpful Hints:

Children might actually have more fun drawing around their own hands to make some templates for the Henna Designs. 

 

Don't Forget that if you have made any of the Ramadan Crafts that I have blogged about, then please send in a photograph and I will publish this on my blog and my Facebook Page! You can send this via email (karimascrafts@gmail.com) or post on my Facebook Page Karimas-Crafts directly

 

Crescent Moon and Star Wall Art - 30 Days of Ramadan Crafts

Day 16 - Crescent Moon and Stars Wall Art

My daughters' have this on their bedroom wall and they love it! I was inspired to do this with my girls after seeing a Crescent Moon Vinyl Wall Art Design and thought we could make one of those ourselves!

Requirements:

• Yellow Paper/Card or Printed Yellow stars.
• Blu-tac
• Scissors
• Optional - Backing Paper.

Instructions:

• On the computer using Powerpoint / Microsoft Word or maybe others you need to fill a page with star shapes of various sizes. Or alternatively hand draw or use stencils to make the star shapes.
• Once you have your printed/hand drawn stars ( I used at least 3 A4 Sheets full of stars!) you then need to cut them out. This is a little bit time consuming but with extra hands you can get this done quicker!
• Now you need to add blu-tac to the back of each star so that they can stick on the wall.
• You then need to stick them onto the wall trying to make a crescent shape. You will find that you have to keep moving them about until you get about the right shape!

Helpful Hints:

It might be useful to try and do a dummy run of the shape on the floor first to see if you need to print off any more stars or different sized stars! I found I had to cut out some really extra small stars to fill in the gaps to make the shape more like a crescent!

Don't Forget that if you have made any of the Ramadan Crafts that I have blogged about, then please send in a photograph and I will publish this on my blog and my Facebook Page! You can send this via email karimascrafts@gmail.com or post on my Facebook Page Karimas-Crafts directly.