Salaric

On Space Camp with the Cubs we made aliens out of New Clay, lolly sticks, goggly eyes and pipe cleaner (renamed as modelling straws or something) and anything else we had lying about.

The kids were pretty much let loose with the stuff, which they squidged into a myriad of shapes. Numbers of goggly eyes varied drastically and the pipe cleaners made great tenticles or hair!

Their creations, some of which were very imaginative, were left to air dry on a table for the rest of the weekend.

Of course the extraterrestrials needed some sort of transport, so we got the children to make spaceships out of bits of rubbish. There were old tins – with no sharp edges of course – bits of netting bags, cardboard and plastic cones from the middle of the wool cones for knitting machines, odd cut offs of wire and battery casings.

With some aluminium foil and a lot of PVA glue and brown parcel tape, they fashioned their vehicles. The variety of designs was amazing, some functional and others more ‘alien’ to our earthling eyes. 🙂

These were both fun projects suitable for the range of abilities we had present.

I made this monitor decoration for my mum. I used strange almost fluorescent-coloured polymer clay, specifically fimo soft. I used blue for the base, pink for the flower and yellow for the middle. Also needed was a green matchstick for the stem and a sticky pad to turn it into a monitor decoration!

I shaped the blue fimo into a cone with the top slightly flattened, about 1.5cm in diameter at the base. The pink fimo I rolled into a sphere and then flattened it into a rough rose petal shape. The yellow fimo I rolled into a short fat sausage shape with very rounded ends.

I then wrapped the yellow sausage in the pink petal shape to create a flower that looked a bit like a lily.

I then pushed the green matchstick into the bottom of the flower and rolled the area to push the fimo in firmly and neatly around the stick.

I then punched the other end of the matchstick into the blue cone.

I then baked it in a pre-heated over at 130 degrees C for 1/2 hr (30 minutes). Once it had cooled, I pulled the stick out of the blue cone base and then added a bit of glue (UHU) on the stick and poked it back in the whole. This is necessary as the stick would eventually work itself loose, otherwise if it puts up a fight don’t worry about it!

Once the glue had dried I put a little two-sided sticky pad on the bottom so that it can be stuck to the computer monitor!

Hopefully this blog will act as a repository for all the art and craft and any other crazy projects we get up to. I hope too that the documented projects which will also have photos attached will be a good resource for other people.

I am still learning mainly new techniques and styles; my favourites though are probably my polymer clay projects and our metalwork projects. I probably paint more than anything at the moment but promise not to bore you all too much with that!

By training I am a scientist and not an artist and I feel this definitely comes through in my work – hopefully in a good way!

I have found myself at several points in my life organising craft activities for children or adolescents. I am currently in one of these positions with our local Beavers, Cubs and Scouts, so there will probably be lots of childrens’ projects on here too. This section I feel will only grow as I have a small baby/toddler who already scribbles with crayons and will no doubt be a continual source of inspiration!

I will also cross link to my mother’s sewing blog from time to time and maybe a few other sites to build this blog into a valuable resource for anyone interested in art and handicrafts.

Ps my spelling etc… isn’t too crash hot but I feel that the site should have a high standard so please let me know of anything too glaring. 🙂