Salaric

I had my second and final week of running Centre Arts in Cheltenham – and boy did we pack alot of stuff in! We had crotchet, knitting, weaving in the circle, mini pompom making, a fantastic turn out for my story tree, weaving paper to make bags and baskets, creating cards, bookmarks and hanging plant pots. We learnt two different types of stitch in bead work and my cake baking improved drastically with feedback on what worked and what didn’t 🙂

These ones even got mistaken for being an art display!

Recipes and decoration how to for the cakes is here.

Here are some pics of what we got up to 🙂

And of course more cake pics.

My little girls loved it all too and proved time and again that kids really can make a noise with anything!

I made this card for mine and my husbands 5th wedding anniversary. I used a card blank from The Works and selected three hearts from a collection of paper shapes cut in different papers. I went for the sort of black, blue, purple feel as they are his favourite colours. I attached these with sticky pads. I also had some wedding stickers which come out as silver out lines which I used one the out side and inside. These stickers are good as you can get writing and things – though peeling them off of the sheet without stretching them can be an issue – they also don’t always say everything you want so I had to write in some of it using a black fine liner pen.

I then composed a poem which I carefully wrote out on the inside of the poem – about our last five years together. I really wish I knew how to do calligraphy but I don’t so it was again just written with my fine liner.

The making of Visual Poetry (VisPo) or Concrete Poetry as it is also know is a contentious subject but it is a fun activity and I like making cards out of it to send to people.

Here is a picture of my friend cutting up magizines in a coffee shop to stick onto card and things to construct his poem. I took along, card, card blanks, pritt stick, foam letters, letter stickers, magazines and scissors.

This also works well as a childrens’ workshop. You can cut out images and words or just letters to make up the words etc… It has endless scope.

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.

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.