Salaric

Me and my little girl made these easter eggs for two purposes – her ones have been writen on the back of and sent out as invites to the easter egg hunt and my ones have been stuck up around the house as decorations. They could also be used to stick on the front of cards to make festive easter cards.

First of all I drew an egg shape – this can be done by drawing two circles next to each other – one has to be smaller than the other – I then joined the two circles with two straight lines. I then cut out around the egg shape and gave it two my dad.

Dad then used it as a template, drew round it on different coloured card and cut them out for us.

I then gave them to Jean one at a time, poured some PVA white craft glue into a pot and gave it too her with a paint brush. I then gave her shapes I had punched out of card and scrap paper – mostly rabbits and ducks, a hug tub of glitter confetti and some glitter 3D paint pens.

Mainly Jean painted her eggs with glue.

Sprinkeled the glitter onto them.

Shock excess glitter off onto another sheet of paper so that it could be re-used.

And then left them to dry. She also added the glitter glues and 3D paints but squidged them all with her finger and then added more glitter from the shaker.

A few rabbits and ducks were stuck on but not many.

I personally experimented with drawing shapes with the PVA and then sprinckling them with the glitter – I did a heart, thick horizontal strips, think horizontal strips, a flower, a cross, spots that look like a paw print, a zig zag shell crack and then used the glitter pens to draw an orange glitter concentric spiral, a flower, and a blue irridescant wiggle.

This is a very simple project, Jean enjoyed it and I think the results are quiet nice.

Dad’s been moping about his Welsh ancestory lately so I thought I’d better cheer him up. I decided we would celebrate St David’s day on the 1st of March as he is the patron Saint of Wales. The symbols of Wales are daffodils and leeks due to some historical battle and I’d picked up a foam kit in the Pound Shop in Gloucestershire. This kit makes daffodils in a vase.

I started by constructing the blue vase; this came as six foam shapes but was actually very tricky to push together as some of the shapes where just slightly misaligned. Eventually I got there and it is a simple and pleasing shape.

The kit comes with foam heart sitckers in two sizes which I then stuck onto the sides of the vase in a horizontal line.

Then came the making of the flowers; this was actually incredibly easy.

First off all I found there were three different foam shapes that made up the flowers, plus a leaf shape. The outer petals, a middle piece that was like a serrated disc, and a long rectangle that had a hole in one end and a rounded off corner at the other.

I pushed the outer petals onto the green fluffy pipe cleaner.

I then slipped on the middle foam ‘disk’ and pushed the pipe cleaner through the hole in one of the long rectangles of foam. I pushed enough pipe cleaner through so that I could bend it over and twist the pipe cleaner to itself underneath the foam shape.

I then rolled the foam rectangle around the twisted pipe cleaner centre forming the ‘trumpet’ part of the daffodil.

I then moved the foam disk up the pipe cleaner and slid it over the bottom of the rolled up tube of foam – this holds the ‘trumpet’ of the daffodil in place.

I then moved the outer petals up so that they came up over where the pipe cleaner twists onto itself and so that it was flat against the back of the other two parts of the flower. The double thickness of pipe cleaner helps it all to stay in place.

I then threaded on the foam leaves. These had two holes in them to help the leaves sit nicely on the pipe cleaner, however during the first attempt I made at this I put the leaf on upside down :/

To finish the flowers I bent the pipe cleaner so that the head of the flower part was at a right angle to the stem.

I made all of the flowers with different colour combinations as there was orange, white and yellow foam flower shapes. I then placed the whole lot in the vase and presented it to my dad 🙂 This was easy to do and I’m going to get my scouts to make daffodils in a similar way.

Me and my daughter made these heart decorations for Valentine’s day. I made a template by drawing round a heart shaped token Jean had made at pre-school but for our Valentine’s meal my husband made a second template by simply folding a piece of paper in half and cutting a curve into it. When unfolded it was a symmetrical heart whereas my template was asymmetrical.

My dad then draw about 16 hearts and cut them out of red mounting card. This is slightly bigger than A4 and he found with careful placement he could get four hearts out of each sheet.

I then set things up so that we had PVA white craft glue, glitter confetti, sweet wrappers from the christmas Quality Street Chocolates, glitter pens, foam heart stickers from a Pound Shop Foam Rose making kit and tissue paper in various colours.

Jean painted the hearts with glue and then sprinkled glitter onto them. To save glitter we did this on a sheet of paper and then when we did the next heart that was on a different sheet of paper so that we could sprinkle the previously caught glitter onto it. We also shook each glittered heart to make sure that only well attached glitter remained.

Jean also used glitter pens and her fingers to decorate some of the hearts. She glued sweet wrappers on others and pieces of screwed up pink tissue paper. On one heart she only stuck on the foam hearts which looked quite nice.

I myself made a heart that was completely covered in little balls of screwed up pink tissue paper. This was quiet effective and gave the heart a sort of 3D furry texture.

I then put sticky pads on the back of each heart and placed them around our bookshelves.

My three year old got this Dress up Doll Fairies and Princesses from a party she went to.

I think it is a great piece of paper engineering and it is full of different outfits for the fairies and princesses to wear.

First off you push out the dolls – who unfortunately have the large swollen heads that dolls seem to suffer with these days. Bits to construct the stand pop out too. It is however easy to rip the tags off bits of the stand at this point so I think an adult is really needed, even with older children.

Constructing the stand was a bit fiddly and didn’t really come out as gracefully as I’d hoped.

The doll ingeniously slots into the stand though this does invovle slots in painful looking places such as the top of the head!

As Jean points out they must be cold when you first put them on the stand as they are in their underwear! Jean choose outfits for them which ended up being a bit of a mismatch rather than the nice complete outfits they had in the book – such as strawberry fairies and fiery princesses – they even have mermaid tails!

All four dolls are now made with only one being held together with sellotape. Jean adores them and will spend ages choosing costumes for them. They are not a long lived thing methinks, but fun and the outfits are beautifully designed. There are even versions you can colour in and decorate yourself.

The only other issue I had was that the princesses have crossed legs whilst the fairies do not meaning that the tights and shoes cannot be swapped between them.

I am now on the lookout for more of these books though.

I got this big box of Christmas Craft from The Works discount bookshop in Stroud. It cost me £3.99, which was reduced from about £7. It was full of coloured pom poms of various sizes, pipe cleaners in lots of colours including metallic ones, foam shapes, glitter pens, green and red lolly sticks, and ‘fashion cord’, PVA glue, plus some goggly eyes (these had red and green irises which was a bit weird).

I made some examples of this that you could make out of the pack and then handed over about one and a half big craft boxes minus the glitter pens to my Scout troop to play with. The glitter pens do not dry quickly enough to be used in a Scout troop. They also had the leftovers of the Big Spooky Craft Box from Halloween.

Here are what they produced! Apologies for the poor quality of the photos, I forgot the camera so had to rely on my phone to take the pictures with.

Christmas mobile:

He bent a star out of a silver metallic pipe cleaner, twisted a fluffy red and a fluffy white pipe cleaner together and bent it into a candy cane. For the other two were a foam cut-out Christmas tree and a yellow and gold pom pom. He tied each of these shapes to the lolly stick cross using some of the fashion cord, which was transparent plastic with sliver specks in it. I made the lolly stick cross for him out of two lolly sticks and pipe cleaners. I twisted the pipe cleaners around the middle of the two lolly sticks where I had overlapped them.

Three tiered snowman:

One of them just stuck three pom poms together in a row, starting with a large red pom pom for the base of the snowman, then a medium white pom pom and for the head a small white pom pom. He wrapped pipe cleaners around the joins to make it look neater and stuck on some goggly eyes. He then decided he wanted to make a halo for it which he did by bending one of the metallic gold pipe cleaners into a loop. The excess pipe cleaner he used to make it ‘hover’ about the snowman’s head.

Christmas tree in crisis:

Being impatient for the PVA glue to dry and seeing that I had ‘tied’ my green pom poms onto the lolly stick with pipe cleaner tinsel, one of the Scouts decided to do the same. He liked the effect so much though that he decided that the tree should just be a decoration made out of interlocking pipe cleaners giving it a surreal 70’s sci-fi egg look.

Candy canes:

One of the girls twisted red and white fluffy pipe cleaners together to get the candy cane effect and then cut the resulting twist into four. She then shaped them into little hooks. She really enjoyed doing this and so decided she would make some out of other colours as well. We had some left over stripy pipe cleaners from Halloween and she chose these to twist together.

Pipe cleaner Christmas tree:

One of the girls twisted a pipe cleaner into a Christmas tree shape and then decorated it with more pipe cleaners – generally the metallic type – as tinsel.

Surreal mobile:

One of the boys made this surreal mobile by twisting a red and a green fluffy pipe cleaner together to produce a twist effect; he then looped this to make a circle. Then he made a lolly stick cross in the way I had shown them to and weaved the circle onto this. This gave a fantastically strong frame to work with and was very neatly done. He then made bizarre but cute little creatures from the pom poms, foam shapes and goggly eyes. He then used more pipe cleaners to attach the little creatures to the mobile. It wasn’t very Christmassy but it was really effective.

Red Christmas tree monster:

This started off as a red Christmas tree because he couldn’t find three green pom poms but soon mutated into a monster. Like the Christmas trees he stuck three pom poms onto each other, large at the bottom, then medium and then a small sparkly red pom pom on the top. He used the lolly stick as a base for the moster, stuck on the yellow foam holly leaves as wings and then stuck on two goggly eyes, one green and one red, and just to make it more monster-esque, one eye is below the other rather than them being next to each other. He also used a pipe cleaner as a sort of belt for the monster.

Spiral pet:

This was again incredibly simple but very cute, if not very festive. One of the girls twisted a fluffy red and green striped pipe cleaner into a flat spiral (so that it was two dimensional and didn’t go up into a cone shape. She then just simply stuck two goggly eyes into it – again one red and one green to match the stripes I assume.

Red spider/octopus:

One of the girls made this by just sticking two red pom poms together, one slightly larger than the other, and then twisting a red fluffy pipe cleaner and a green fluffy pipe cleaner around its body (the slightly larger pom pom) as legs. She then stuck the googly eyes onto it, again one red and one green.

Pipe cleaner reindeer:

This is a little pipe cleaner reindeer. I unfortunately thought it was a dog which she fortunately took in good grace! She twisted the body shape out of a gold pipe cleaner. She actually cut it into three pieces to get the body and ears which were little folded loops and the the two sets of legs which were just bent into two sides of a triangle. She then stuck on a small sparkly red pom pom for the face and a tiny white pom pom for the tail. She then added on the goggly eyes.

Spiral decoration:

One of the boys made a set of these spiral decorations. He twisted two pipe cleaners of contrasting colour together, this was a much looser twist than those used for the candy canes. He then bent the result into a loose spiralling curl with a loop at the top for attaching string so that it can be hung up.

Eyes in the back of my head:

I unfortunately didn’t get a picture of this one but wished I had. One of the boys got a black pipe cleaner and then pom poms of varying sizes in white and red and cut holes through them so that he could thread them like beads onto the pipe cleaner. He managed all but the very smallest pom pom with the safety children’s scissors, the last one had to be done very carefully with the small scissors on my pen knife. He then positioned them along the pipe cleaner, the ends of which he bent so that they would loop over his ears like glasses. He then stuck a goggly eye on each pom pom and put it on so that the ‘eyeballs’ were staring out of the back of his head. It was so clever! I couldn’t stop laughing – again not very festive but a good laugh.

To make this doily angel I used one paper doily (I got a packet of 74 from the £1 shop), one large white pom pom, one silver metallic pipe cleaner, two medium goggly eyes, one white fluffy pipe cleaner, one piece of red foam sheet, yellow felt, sellotape, scissors and PVA craft glue.

I cut the doily in half and with one half made a cone, which I fixed with sellotape low down so that there was an opening at the top. This made the body of the angel. I then used sellotape to fix the other half of the doily on as wings. This was a bit of a mistake as I should have waited until after I had attached the halo etc. Double-sided tape would be ideal for this sort of thing but as I never have any what I do is I make a loop out of sellotape with the sticky part facing outwards – this works really well for me.

For the angel’s head I took a large white pom pom and cut a slit into it using the scissors, then I squidged some PVA glue into it and pushed the white fluffy pipe cleaner into the glue filled hole. What you should do here is wait for the glue to dry before carrying on, but I cut a mouth from some red foam sheeting I had and then glued it and the eyes onto the white pom pom.

I then cut out some hair from the yellow felt; this was a bit tricky and I found that adding a fringe meant the hair fitted the globe shape of the head much better. I also had to fold and glue a ‘pleat’ or flap at the back of the hair in order to make it fit. I then glued this with some difficulty onto the head. I had to use clothes pegs as ‘clamps’ to hold the hair in place whilst it dried. I think that I would have been better off making the hair out of wool or string in hindsight.

I then took the silver pipe cleaner and bent it into a hoop, making sure I had about 2cm worth of spare one end, and the rest of the pipe cleaner spare at the other end so that I could twist the two ends together. I then used the long tail of pipe cleaner coming from the hoop to attach the halo to the white pipe cleaner by twisting it around. This was not very elegant but as I’d already stuck the wings on there wasn’t a lot I could do. I think it would have looked a lot better if I’d been able to attach the halo under where the wings attached at the back.

I then slid the head on a pipe cleaner into the hole at the top of the angel’s body, where I discovered the head was too heavy and kept flopping forward. To solve this, I stuck the white pipe cleaner to the front of the angel’s ‘dress’ (on the inside of course!).

I think the lacy bit around the edge of the doily worked really well for the wings and smock; I also think that this technique could be used to make choir boys and peace doves. I’m sure there are a miriad of other things I could make with them as well.

If I had had a pink or beige pom pom I would have probably used that instead of the white pom pom, as it was just too ghostly-looking for me to be entirely happy with, but I think it’s just get-away-with-able because it’s an angel and not a choir boy.

These candy canes were really easy to make and I think quite effective.

I used one red fluffy pipe cleaner and one white fluffy pipe cleaner.

I twisted them together to get the classical red and white striped look of a candy cane.

I then cut the resulting twist into four and bent them into little hooks.

I made this pom pom Father Christmas in an effort to show my scouts what Christmassy things they could make with various craft bits and pieces.

I used: one large red pom pom, one slightly smaller pom pom, two small black pom poms, two small white pom poms, a tiny white pom pom and a medium white pom pom, a thick black pipe cleaner, medium thickness white pipe cleaner, one thin red pipe cleaner, a red metallic sparkly pipe cleaner and two self adhesive googly eyes. I also used PVA craft glue and a pair of scissors (as I chop the pipe cleaners with them, the scissors need to be sturdy and not be good dress-making scissors, as it will blunt them).

(in case you where wondering about the hand in amoungst the santa bits – that would be my two year old ‘helping’)

For his body I stuck the large red pom pom and the slightly smaller red pom pom together> I then stuck the medium white pom pom onto the slightly smaller red one as his head. I then made the mistake of gluing his arms on around the waistline (ie where the large red pompom and the slightly smaller one met).

I stuck the two goggly eyes onto the face and then cut a small 5mm length of the thin red pipe cleaner and curved it into a smile shape and stuck that onto Santa’s face. I left the whole lot to dry for a while. I then decided that he needed a black belt, so I cut a 10cm length of the thick black pipe cleaner and stuck it on around the join between the two red pompoms. This was when I discovered it had been a mistake to glue to hands on, as the belt needed to go underneath them. I had to thread it through and as a result, I don’t feel it was as neat as it could have been. That done, I thought that he was still missing something vital so cut a short piece of white pipe cleaner (approximatly 2.5cm) and stuck that down the centre of his chest as fur trimming of his coat.

For Santa’s hat I cut a third off a red sparkly pipe cleaner and twisted it into a conical spiral (a spiral that gets smaller as it goes up). I then cut a small hole in the tiny white pom pom, which I filled with PVA glue and stuck the end of the pipe cleaner in. I then left it to dry for a while.

I then glued the hat on Santa’s head. He looked almost right but he needed boots, so I glued on the two small black pom poms as feet.

I think this would have worked better with a larger range of pom poms, such as pink ones for the face and hands, meaning that I could have done white trimming on the hat and ‘sleeves’ of the coat.

Pom Pom Frankenstiens Monster on a stick:

Green PomPom

Lolly Stick

Black Crepe Paper

Googly Eyes

Glitter Glue

White Paper or Foam off cuts

Pipe Cleaner

Scissors

PVA Glue

Cut a small slit in the pompom – if it is a home made yarn/wool pompom you will not have to cut into it.

Fill the slit with a dab of PVA glue and push the lolly stick into it, hold the pompom onto the stick (with home made pompoms you may need to use a peg to hold it in place).

This is your base, now glue on the goggly eyes, cut a piece of paper or foam off cut to be the mouth and stick that on. Use glitter glue to add hair and scars.

Leave to dry.

Wrap the black crepe paper around the stick at the top and twist a pipe cleaner around the “neck” just under the pompom head to keep it in place – this is the Monsters cloak.

It can be used as a stand alone decoration or as a stick puppet with other monstrous pompom pals of your own creation.

I made this witch as an example of what sort of halloweeny things the scouts could make with pom poms, pipe cleaners and lolly sticks. All of the things used for the witch came from a Big Box of Spooky Crafts that I got from a shop called the Works last year. For the witch I used:

• One medium-sized green pom pom

• One sheet of black crepe paper

• One green metallic pipe cleaner

• One purple and black stripy pipe cleaner

• One purple glitter paint pen

• One medium goggly eye

• One small goggly eye

• One thin orange pipe cleaner

• One yellow lolly stick

• One natural wood lolly stick

• One thin red pipe cleaner

• A pair of scissors

• White PVA craft glue

• Sellotape

First off, I took the natural unstained lolly stick, which was for the body of the witch, and wrapped the purple and black stripy pipe cleaner around it about a third of the way down from the top. I then twisted the pipe cleaner around the lolly stick to fix it in place and I bent the two equal lengths of pipe cleaner into legs by putting them an ‘almost’ right angle where the knees would be.

I then added arms in a similar fashion by attaching the green metallic pipe cleaner about 1cm from the top of the lolly stick. I didn’t bend this one, but made sure that the arms were sticking out of the ‘side’ of the lolly stick body, whereas the legs were sticking out of the ‘front’ of the body.

I now basically had a ‘stick figure’ which needed to be dressed. I thought it would make more sense to put on the witch’s clothing before her head as the head would be too big for things to go on nicely over it.

I had a rectangle of black crepe paper which I cut in half; I then folded one half of it in half and cut a slit along the fold in the middle for the the ‘neck’ to go through. I then slid it over the lolly stick and made sure the fold lay over the pipe cleaner arms.

This, however, didn’t really work that well so I poked the palms through the paper so that it looked like she had little green hand poking out of her dress sleeves. This held the dress in place a lot better than before.

I then added the witch’s head by taking the green pom pom and cutting a slit in the bottom of it, squirting some PVA glue into it and putting on the top of the lolly stick. I then left it to dry for a while.

For the witch’s face I used two mismatched goggly eyes – I thought this would make her look more scary and demented. The eyes were self-adhesive, which was good as it made things a lot easier: all I had to do was peel the back of of each eye and stick it on where I wanted. For the mouth I cut off a 2cm long section of the thin red pipe cleaner and bent it in the middle so that it made a nice open angle, and glued it in place with the PVA.

I then cut out a semi-circle out of the remaining crepe paper and wrapped it around to make a pointy hat, gluing it one edge of the hat to the other using the craft glue. This was a bit messier than I would have liked. I then added hair using a purple glitter paint pen and basically drew on the hair and stuffed the hat on top of it. It then had to be left to dry for ages as the glitter pen took a long time to dry, which is one of the reasons I tend not to give them to the scouts for craft projects.

Whilst the witch was drying I made a broomstick for her. I did this by cutting the thin orange pipe cleaner into sections 3-4cm long and gluing them on the end of the yellow pipe cleaner. I was careful with the placement of the ‘bristles’ so that they fanned slightly. I then used a spare section of pipe cleaner to wrap around the end of the bristles that were on the ‘broomstick’, ie the yellow pipe cleaner. This made it look a lot neater and broom-like in my opinion.

Once the witch was dry I bent one arm so that her ‘hand’ was hooked under one end of the broom. I then sellotaped the end of the witch’s body lolly stick to the centre of the broomstick lolly stick, which meant the witch looked like she was siting on the broomstick nicely. I then bent the remaining arm so that she looked like she was waving.