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Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Bottle Cap Swaps!

 
Good day mates!  Well, today is Fat Tuesday, but I am miles away from the revelry this year, so I thought I might take this evening to show you what else we've been getting ready for besides Lent!
 
February 22nd is World Thinking Day for Girl Scouts and Girl Guides and each year our service unit hosts an "Around the World" event, complete with displays of food, currency, clothing, customs and of course, SWAPS!  No Girl Scout event would would be complete without these Special Whatchamacallits Affectionately Pinned Somewhere!!  And this year our Brownies chose to learn about Australia!
 
 
As a leader of first year Brownies (That's 7 and 8-year-olds to you), the challenge is keeping the SWAPS simple enough for the girls to actually do themselves, because let's face it, about 85% or more of the SWAP ideas out there eventually involve hot glue.  And though we've tried all sorts of alternatives, nothing works like hot glue to get beads and felt and pom poms and foam shapes and pipe cleaners and really anything to come together into something wonderful to Share With A Pal.

And frankly, my fingertips have just recovered from the candycanes and lollipops at Christmastime!

So, my clever co-leader and I decided to forgo the origami kangaroos and pom-pom koala bears for our Australia-inspired swaps and went with a simple bottle cap craft instead.  Especially since about 150-200 traveling girl scouts will visit our country on Thinking Day and each of them will want a SWAP!

The most expensive part of this SWAP was the bottle caps, which we bought in packages of 50 from Michaels.  Otherwise, we simply printed out some small, round art on solid sheets of sticker paper and let the girls punch, peel and stick!

 
Some worked solo while others preferred an assembly-line technique but both styles got the job done.  The bottlecaps came with a pre-punched hole in the rim, which also made adding a safety pin a snap!  We put our Smiling Bear stickers on the inside and a GS Thinking Day sticker on the back, complete with the year and our troop number!  I made these in Power Point using my tried and true 'Ghetto Graphics' technique, but if you want more info on how to make these yourself, leave me a note in the comments and I will try to help you out!
 
 
Incidentally, if you have a chance to check out www.smilingbear.com, I highly recommend it.  The goal of Smiling Bear is to make the world a better place by getting people to smile more!  Sounds a lot like a girl scout (or 'guide' as they say in Oz) to me!!  Their website has tons of cool information, photos, merchandise, FREE downloads and it's very own blog too!  We have fallen in love with Smiling Bear and I know you will too!
 
 
Cheerio mates!
 

4 comments:

  1. I love these! They were already pinned to the Girl Scout Hang Out, but I just pinned them to my own GS board! Thanks for sharing this at my Pin Me Linky Party.

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  2. The Girl Scout Hangout is such a great idea! Thanks for including me! Can't wait to see all the great ideas collected! Happy World Thinking Day!

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  3. Hi, I was wandering if you could tell me where you got the adorable pictures for the center of the bottle caps? We picked Australia and we would love to do these :) and how did you purchase the paper to make them stickers? Thank you so much :)

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  4. These are adorable! Can you tell me what the Ghetto Graphics technique is? Also, how did the girls cut each sticker out? You mentioned that they punched them out. Can you clarify? Thanks so much!!

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