beautiful backpack butterflies

One of the things we love to do as a Back-to-School tradition is to find some cool way of blinging out the kids’ backpacks.

Especially before the big Kindergarten year, I feel like sending kids’ off to school with a little somethin’ special on their backpacks is fun, special, and comforting.

When Maddy went off to the wilds of Kindergarten, we made super-cute Happy First-Day Flowers.  Felt flower pins for her first-day backpack bling.

When the O-Man went off to Kindergarten, we rocked out some customized Shrinky-Dinks for his backpack bling.

And now this year, before Cora heads off to the wonderful world of elementary school, we did some serious blinging.  Because, well. . . my girl loves her some sparkle, jewels, and shine.

With the help of a birthday craft kit from one of her very best buddies, we spent last evening making some butterflies. It wasn’t difficult in the least–it was a quick, fun way of spending time with the girls while Owen was at soccer–we chatted, laughed, and got a little glitter-gluey.

Here’s the skinny. . .

• Beautiful Backpack Butterflies: It was a simple Rose Art Craft set (feel free to check it out below and hook a mama up with her Amazon Affiliate links, thank you!).

I do think it was the first time we used a set like this, and I was impressed–it was really so cute. So simple but totally fun for the girls.

 Maddy works on symmetry in her butterfly wings. . .

. . . and we tried our best!

The butterflies were already assembled so all the girls had to do was to add some glittery sparkle and sequins to the wings!  There were three butterflies in the kit, a blue, yellow, and green one, and Cora generously gave Maddy the blue one to design.  Cora designed the green and yellow with a little help from me.

We chatted a little about symmetry–nothing crazy but just about part of what makes butterflies so beautiful is that their wings are the same on both sides.  We talked about how to create symmetry and that it’s not always easy.

Butterflies are glitter-gluey. . .

. . . and ready to get a little bling!

It was fun!

After a while, when the butterflies were super-sparkly and fancy, we let them dry.

And then we tried them out on Cora’s brand-new backpack!

Soooo beautiful. So faaaaa-ncy!

Talk about super-cute backpack butterflies!

And that’s it–a fun, simple back-to-school activity that can be used just about any time of the year!

Huuuge thanks to Cora’s little buddy for gifting her this set for her big #5 birthday, and huuuuge thanks to Land’s End for gifting me this awesome backpack for Cora’s Kindergarten year! I received the backpack and several other Land’s End goodies I look forward to sharing at a Land’s End Back-to-School event during BlogHer in NYC.  This is an unsponsored post; I was not asked to write about these items, but I chose to because they’re just that awesome. Affiliate links are included below:

Want to grab a few little art sets for your own kiddos’ backpack? Add a little bling to their new school year? Check ’em out: