Salaric

This is not one of my greatest cards ever but I thought I’d share it with you anyway – I made it for my parents 30th Wedding Anniversary. The theme was Ruby so I picked out reds or as close as I could. The card blank came from a kit I picked up in the Pound Shop.

I used:

One white, square card blank
Metallic paint pens
A small square of red card
3D white fabric heart
Purple crystal/gem stickers (I didn’t have any red)

I started off by sticking the red square in the upper right hand corner of the card, leaving a nice boarder of white.

I then stuck on the heart, in the corner of the red square.

I then added the writing in with the paint pen which unfortunatly was a bit glooper than I was expecting. I then constructed letters out of the gems for the last part.

My little girl got this Bindeez kit for christmas, they are similar to hama beads except that they are little coloured balls that sit in depressions on the formers instead of beads sitting on pegs and they dissolve in water so no hot iron is needed. This made them much more accessable to younger children like my daughter as she could build the picture up (using the little gun/pencil thing so dexterity was low priority – meaning little toddles could do it with out sending the beads everywhere!). She then used the water spray to spray them and we waited for them to set!

She went on to make a range of things with them, including a coaster for Daddy to put his drinks on at his desk!

After Christmas and birthdays and the like my husbands family expect Thankyou Cards – this was a new one on me as in my family you just say thanks to each other. None the less I struck on a good way of making thankyou notes and occupying a small child at the same time.

First off I got some sugar paper/mounting card and some poster paints and just got Jean to paint on one side of the card – I went for red and green card as these where Christmas thankyous. This worked best as a hand squishing and swerling paint excersise so was extrememly messy.

Once dry I cut out the thankyous we’d written on plain white paper – they could have been printed but I like hand writing notes. I then cut them out and using little loops of cellotape stuck them to the card on the none decorated side. I then used a paper gliotine to cut out the card as a boarder to the letters. This was suprisingly effective – especially as I made sure they would all fit into the various sizes of envalopes we have!

I think this would have worked better with double sided tape and perhapse the more uniform sizing of printing the letters.

I took some pale lilic A4 mounting card and folded it in four to make the ‘card blank’. I then used a snowflake stamp and light blue ink pad to print the snowflakes on the bottom of the card in a diagonal. I did several off these – it makes a nice start to a card that you can then make specific for each person with glitter or metallic gel pens.

This snowman bag was made by my little girl when she was I think one and it was done at her nursery – its one long bit of thickish paper, with a very fiberous feel too it in pink. They then with Jean’s help stenciled a snow man in white – Jean obviously added a purple streak!

Then the sheet was folded in half and the sides taped to make a bag. Metalic pink parcel ribbon was then stapled on for handles – this contianed all the presants she had made Mummy and Daddy.

It’s a lovely simple idea and perfect for younger children!

I made this border by folding a piece of slightly bigger than A4 card in four to make the greetings card.

I then took a foam holly stamp foam stamp from a set I found in the pound shop and pressed it into an ink pad of the more yellowy green I have.

Because of the red of the card I needed to make sure the stamp was well covered in ink and then only stamp on holly leaf at a time – this was to get a more solid green and not dingy looking leaf.

I created the border pattern on quiet a few cards as it then allowed me to personalise the cards with glitter pens and the like for each person who was going to receive one!

Glittery Christmas Tree Vase

For this vase I used one glass tumbler (Tesco’s value glasses survive baking. I always do a test run to check, before I spend ages decorating a glass), a pen knife, rolling board (marble or glass is best but I use an old chopping board with greaseproof paper over it), a hi-ball glass (this is instead of a glass rolling pin as polymer clays, of which fimo is one, melt certain plastics and get stuck in the grain of wooden rolling pins), one metal Christmas tree cookie cutter (I have specific cutters for the polymer clay work as it is not advisable to re-use for food), one baking tray and one oven.

The fimo colours I used were all fimo soft:

Dark green, light green, green glitter, yellow glitter and red glitter.

I started off with the Christmas tree for which I used the dark and light green. I started by cutting the dark green into small chunks and then squishing them back together again to get a nice malleable ball of fimo. I did the same for the light green. I then rolled them into sausages so that I had one light green sausage and one dark green.

I then placed the two sausages next to each other and rolled them into one big sausage, one half light green and one half dark green. I then folded it in half and rolled it again. I folded the sausage in half once more and rolled it between my hands until it was a smooth sausage, about 7mm in diameter.

I then cut slices off the sausage, 2-3mm thick, which I arranged next to each other on the chopping board. With my fingers I then pushed the edges of the discs together to ‘fuse’ the gaps. I then used the hi-ball glass (a tall smooth-sided glass) as a rolling pin. You have to turn the fimo sheet over after every few rolls or it sticks and ruins the pattern. I rolled from different directions to try and get an even thickness of fimo sheet. This also helps stop distortion of the pattern, giving a nice mosaic look. Once the sheet was between 1-0.5mm thick, I cut the Christmas tree out using the cookie cutter. I then gently lifted the shape and softly pressed it onto the glass tumbler. You have to be careful not to stretch the shape or squish it out of shape at this point. I rolled over the shape with the hi-ball glass to try and get rid of fingerprints.

I then baked the glass at 130 degrees C for half an hour (30 minutes) and left it to cool. This is so that I didn’t distort the Christmas tree shape whilst adding the background.

For the background I rolled together balls of red glitter, green glitter and yellow glitter. Once it was one big smooth ball I rolled it into a sausage and then folded it once and rolled it into a smooth sausage, about 1.5cm in diameter. I then cut this into discs about 2mm thick. Then I took each disc and squidged it onto the glass; this merged some of the colours and gave a very different effect to the way I did the tree.

For the top of the vase I pushed the fimo right over the rim and into the interior of the vase. Once I had completely covered the vase I again ran over it with the hi-ball glass into order to smooth it and eliminate the fingerprints (you can actually sand polymer clays once they’ve been baked but I have never tried this myself yet). I then scraped around the inside of the vase with a knife blade in order to remove the excess fimo. I sign my vases and things on the bottom, using a knife or sculpting tool. Once that was done I baked it for a second time at 130 degrees C for half and hour and let it cool.

For Christmas my aunt helps santa send out letters to the children. She says it always seems sad that we expect the children to write to santa but he never writes back – so she went and badgered him and as she has secretarial training he aagreed to let her help.

The letters can be done using a standard colour printer and the sign needs a laminating machine – but it does make it water proof so it can go outside!

The envelope is a nice touch too 🙂

Last year my little girl came home with this ‘letter to Santa’ they gave them all magazines and catalogues to cut the things out they wanted for Christmas and then they glued them to the card. This is brilliant as at three they really are too little to write stuff themselves.

The down side however was that Jean announced she was getting a puppy for Christmas – she didn’t get one of course – well I think there was little toy one in her stocking but not a real eating the furniture puppy!

I am keeping an art journal – possibly visual poetry journal with the idea of submitting it to Escape Into Life. Here are the pictures I have done so far.