Making new things from old things - that's what Guidings about isn't it?

A few months ago we had a mass clear out of our store cupboard. It's only an average sized thing, double door, floor to ceiling jobby, but it took us 4 hours to take it all out, tidy up and put back in!!
Whilst surrounded by all our treasures we came across 6 big containers of powder paints. As we already have an ample supply of acrylic and poster paints we decided we no longer needed these, and they were taking up way too much room. So we put our heads together and came up with the idea of using the powder paint to colour sand and fill up glass bottles. Even better, we incorporated this to be a Mothers Day craft.

So at the sleepover the last weekend we got the older Guides involved and asked them to prep the sand for us, getting nice and messy mixing it with the powder paint. The sand has to be completely dry before putting it in the bottles, which was why we did this in advance, however Chief Leader did spend her week putting the sand through the microwave and the oven in desperation to get it to dry out in time. I never knew you could microwave sand!!

Last night we had our weekly meeting, and the girls seemed really excited about the sand bottles, it was something completely different, not anything we'd done at guides before so it was great to try something new.
We had the sand laid out in trays on two tables, and four girls at a time coming up to fill up their bottles and create a great little gift for Mothers Day.

The final results were great, they looked really nice and most importantly the girls were really happy with them. To add the finishing touch they tied a piece of curling ribbon around the top and added a butterfly tag.

During the evening, they also got the chance to colour in some Mothers Day cards aaaand we had three promises to make as well as put all the equipment back in the cupboard from the weekend! It certainly was a busy evening!!