Salaric

At our Scout’s Centenary camp I found myself in the craft tent. The ladies next to me had made up some Centenary Cards for the kids to make; these were simple and effective!

They had the cards and envelopes already and then they had cut silver squares that would fit neatly on the card, making a diamond. They had also printed lots of little Scouting Centenary motifs which they got the children to colour in and stick on in the centre of the silver diamond. There were also metallic numbers to make up 100 and other sundres for decorative purposes.

They also had edging and other coloured rectangles of card and foil which created some really nice designs!

Here’s a picture of their equipment!

I would say you need a proper paper guillotine for this sort of project as you need to cut a lot of nice neat rectangles and squares!

Equipment:

*White ceramic tiles

*Candle and matches

*Toothpicks

*Sealant/hairspray

*Masking tape

As it is the Scouting Centenary this year there have been lots of commemorative events, one of which was the Centenary Camp at our District’s camp. I found myself in the craft tent there and I was to do tile engraving, though it was stretching the term engraving slightly I felt!

I had never done this before and had a bag full of equipment and some vague instructions so I arrived two hours before the kids were due, in order to have a go and work out the best way of doing it!

My first issue was that I had tea lights and normal tall candles without any candlesticks, so I ended up using the tea lights as candlesticks for the larger candles after a brief aborted attempt at smoking the tiles on tea lights!

The idea of this craft activity was that you black out the tile over the candle and then use a toothpick to draw a picture or pattern, then you spray it with a sealant – in this case hair lacquer.

I was obviously a little concerned about burnt fingers, which was my main reason for experimenting, but other pitfalls soon became apparent.

You have to get the tile touching the flame so that soot actually gets deposited onto the tile, making it black, but if you go too close, wax is precipitated onto the tile, making drawing hard and giving affected areas a shiny, almost brown, look. I used a cloth to wipe affected areas and put them back over the candle.

I found holding the tile at a 40 degree angle over the candle flame was effective in getting a lot of soot deposited onto the tiles. Also angling the thing towards you so that you can see how things are going helped a lot, but it did mean lowering your line of sight slightly for most people.

My first attempt was very blotchy with lots of wax on it and smeary fingerprints all round the edge but I drew on it anyway to see how well that worked and whether the hairspray would actually seal the picture.

The main issue the children and I had with this was trying not to rest your hand on the tile whilst drawing on it – we all had to re-smoke the resulting white patch were we had wiped the soot off!

Also I found that you had to be ‘light’ handed with the toothpick otherwise it would jump and skid on the tile, ruining the picture or writing you were attempting!

I was only allowed to do this craft with the older children, ie Scouts and Explorer Scouts. Even so, I was concerned about the burnt fingers and after trying to black out a second tile found that though I was no longer making it blotchy or getting wax on it, I just could not make the edges neat, as you have to hold the tile!

I then hit upon the idea of making a border of some sort and because I have been painting lots recently I wondered on the idea of using masking tape around the edge of the tile – this would hopefully create a nice neat border and prevent the children from burning their fingers.

I stole some masking tape from the Junk Art stall and proceed to experiment – my main concern had been that the tape would catch fire or it just wouldn’t work as a neat border. However it worked better than I had expected, though obviously I then had to stress that you needed to move the tile about, otherwise the masking tape would catch fire, which did happen a couple of times resulting in a brown sticky patch on the tile – this took some wiping off!

Blacking out the tile over the candle.

Smoked out tile ready to engrave!

One of the Explorer’s tiles – he decided to have a go without a border.

Masking tape as a border.

Here are some of the kids’ finished tiles!

My first attempt Second attempt

The only thing I found abit iffy about this project is that you had to spray the tiles several times with the hairspray and still it is only just touch safe. Anything touching it will scrape the picture off it! I’m wondering if better quality spray would be a better idea or perhaps actually using proper sealant.

Equipment used:

*Picture sheets

*Clothes pegs

*Double sided sticky tape

*Safety scissors

*Coloured pens etc… for decorating

As some people may know it is Scouting’s centenary this year and we have just had our District’s Centenary Camp celebration – I ended up in the craft tent!

These welly pets were very popular, even with the older children, some of whom were the higher end of the teenage spectrum!

The one in the photo is a beaver welly pet but we had wolf cubs as well. The Scouts and Explorer Scouts kept asking where their version was but we hadn’t anticipated interest from the older age ranges so we had none. What we did do was to get them to design their own ones instead.

What you do is put two pictures (in this case the beaver) next to each other on the computer, make sure that the images are mirror images of each other – most graphics and drawing programmes have an easily accessable function for this, along with rotate and flip!

You then print them.

At the camp, the lady running this stall initially had been given folders of lots of sheets with beavers or wolves on – we gave them to the children who coloured them in with felt-tip pens, wax crayons and colouring pencils. Then because there were a lot of kids, the adults cut the shapes out. However, when I did this in an actual beaver meeting, it was possible to supervise the children with safety scissors.

We also put strips of double sided sticky tape on the clothes pegs, on both sides of the peg, and then we attatched the cut-out beavers to it.

The kids absolutely adored this project – the specified use for these beaver pegs is to keep your wellington boots together but some of the children opted to only stick one picture onto the peg so they could use it as a clip!

Our one year old brought this home from nursery – they literally took a pre-made photo frame and got her to paint it in PVA and then sprinkle little metallic plastic shapes (the type used in table confetti) on it.

This is quite effective – even if she did get a few shapes on the plastic film that covers the photograph!

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.

As part of the Scouts’ Centenary celebration, the Beavers made a centenary tree together. First of all we got some large pieces of green sugar paper (A3 sort of size) and blu-tacked them to the wall to be the trunk of the tree.

We then got the children to draw around their hands on some ordinary white paper. They then cut the hand shapes out carefully using those little safety scissors with some assistance. They then wrote the names of family members down the fingers of the hands and decorated them with glitter, felt-tip pens and stickers.  We then stuck the hands onto the tree trunk as leaves.

The kids loved this one, though I think that because our colony is very small there were not really enough leaves!

Our one year old presented us with this, or rather the nursery staff did when we picked her up. 🙂

It’s a simple idea; they’ve cut out two sugar paper (mounting paper – thick, not sure if it counts as card or not) by folding the pieces of paper in half to get nice symmetrical hearts, one larger than the other.

Using poster paints, Jean then decorated the outer pink heart with her little fingerprints in a concentric pattern in blue, yellow and red paint.

They then stuck the smaller yellow heart in the middle with the valentine’s message neatly written on it.

Being her parents we thought it was the best thing ever and it’s gone straight up on the wall. 🙂

I ended up having to work out a craft project for our Cubs for Chinese New Year. However, I could not find anything on how to make the lanterns I had initially envisioned them making – so I cast my mind back in time.

I have a vague memory of doing a play called something like ‘Ching Ching and the Dragon’ in junior school. We made dragons for the puppet show in the play. I vaguely remembered a technique for folding paper so started experimenting.

My first attempt I decided was good enough.

I cut some strips of coloured card about 1.5cm in width; the pieces of card I had, however, were A3 size and too big for the paper guillotine, so I had to chop a bit from the bottom first.

I chose what I consider to be dragon colours, so they were red, green, yellow and blue. For my prototype, I chose blue and yellow, and placing the ends of the card strips one over the other at a 90 degree angle, I then folded one piece over the other. You fold the coloured card alternately going around the ‘square’ so blue, yellow, blue, yellow and so on.

Because the card strips I had weren’t quite long enough, I had to overlap the ends of the card strips with a second strip of the same colours, so in some places there is a double thickness of cardboard.

The head and tail were a bit tricky; I sort of imagined very square features so that I could work out a sort of box that could be stuck on. I also added lots of curves as I think they look a bit like flames and very dragony.

I drew the rough outlines and then scored along the bits that would need folding (this makes folding easier and gets a nice neat line). I folded the head and tail into shape and then stuck them onto the body using sellotape (I made a loop of sellotape with the sticky side out, but double-sided tape would be better.) I then cut out some fins for the tail and stuck them on with the sellotape.

This done, I took two plastic drinking straws and cut the bendy ends off. I then stuck these to the body of the dragon inside the ‘pleats’ with sellotape. This all worked a lot better then I had expected!

I then drew out the designs for the head and tail, including fins, in fine-liner pen, including dotted lines for where the children would need to fold the cardboard. I then scanned them and tidied up the digital image a bit (ie correcting the mistake of a solid line that was supposed to a dashed line for folding), using a programme called the Gimp. I put two copies of it on to an A4 sheet and printed them onto brightly coloured paper (we had run out of card).

I also did a ‘proper’ set of easily understood instructions for the kids – the kids did really well with this. Here is one of their dragons: 🙂

This project got nicked by an art teatcher for her secondary school kids so I was quiet chuffed. 🙂 I still have my digital copy of the head and tail.

Here are the instructions:

Needed:

3 strips of one coloured card

3 strips of a different coloured card

1 dragon sheet with shape out lines on

Scissors

Sellotape

Pens and things for decorating

2 drinking straws

Method

Take two strips of card, preferably different colours, place the ends of the strips together so that they overlap and make a right angle. Fold the bottom colour over the top of the top colour – alternate.

So it should be blue, red, blue, red. You should end up with a squared shape of folded card. When you are near the end of the first two strips, lay the next two over the top and continue folding as before – make sure there is lots of overlap. Once you get to the end of these strips, do the same with the next two.

You now have the dragon’s body. You may have to cut excess card off the finishing end. Double-sided sellotape or single-sided sellotape looped back on itself should be used to secure the very ends of the body to prevent unravelling.

Cut out the dragon’s head and draw eyes and nostrils on it. Fold along the dashed lines and sellotape the tabs on the jaw to the sides of the head. Using double-sided tape, attach to one end of the body.

Cut out the tail and back fin. Again, fold along the dashed lines. Stick the fins on the tail and, using the sellotape, stick the tail on the other end of the body.

Take two drinking straws and cut off the tops just before the bendy bit. Attach these to the underside of the body, one under the head and one under the tail.

I’m posting these becuase a) I’m a proud parent and b) I think some of the ideas are cool and plan to nick them for the Beavers and Cubs next year!

My baby is called Jean and is almost 16 months, so I think that she was heavily helped with these projects!

Photo rotation and spelling correction soon to follow!

This is shiny green card with Jean’s footprint as the reindeer’s face, which then has a red, glittery bobble on, stuck on as the nose, and two goggly eyes. The antlers are Jean’s handprints in gold metallic paint (I assume non-toxic!) attached with metallic, green pipe cleaners and liberal use of sellotape!

This appears to be two foam sheets cut into a bauble shape and stuck together around the green ribbon. They then stuck lots of glitter and smaller Christmas foam shapes on it – on one side an artist’s use of milk bottle tops has been made!

This is a snowman card shape with a hole punched hole and a bit of cotton that she has splashed some white and green paint on to. I think the green was an accident but you never know!

Snowflake shape cut from paper – then covered in glue and glitter.

Card bauble shape covered in glue then glitter.

Not entirely sure this Jean Angel doesn’t freak me out! It’s a cone of orange card (you make these generally by cutting out a circle and cutting a radial line, ie a cut that if a line was drawn would be the radius). Then you can slide one bit of the circle under another bit of it – fix with glue, tape or staple and you have a cone. The wings are again handprints in gold paint that are stuck on, and then a little photo of her face has been cut out to be the head. It’s sort of cut and sort of freaky – it would scare me but as I am her mother I have to think it’s sweet!

I thought up this project for the Cub pack my husband runs!

Corrected spelling soon to follow!

Needed:

1) At least one loo roll innard (you know the cardboard tube bit) per child, uncrushed or falling to bits etc…

2) Some A4 sheets of coloured paper – we used paper that was closer to sugar paper (the stuff schools use for mounting artwork and poems!) than printing or drawing paper. Again you will need at least one sheet per child.

3) Christmas stickers, ie the type for labelling presents – we got a big sheet of these from our local pound shop!

4) PVA glue

5) Paint brushes/glue applicators

6) Old yoghurt pots or equivalent for the glue – we use empty mini trifle pots

7) Ribbon or coloured cord – we used metallic parcel string from Tesco’s that I bought years ago

8) Scissors – preferably crinkle cut or the like

9) Sellotape

10) Decorations – we got some Christmas table sprinkles which included nice metallic Christmas trees and snowflakes, and I used some of the paper shapes I had punched myself!

11) Cracker pulls (not sure what the correct term is – these can be tricky to get when it’s not December but I will try and list a supplier at some point for you all). We didn’t use these as I didnt have time to go to the shops – some parents can also be a bit iffy about their little darlings being near explosives etc…. The kids made the crackers as a present/decoration instead of as functioning cracker.

For inside the cracker:

We made some bead bracelets with them but we were planning to print some jokes, and if there had been time we would have got them to make hats etc… The scope is endless!

Step 1:

Get things ready – we poured the glue into its pots and had a conveyor belt type system for the kids with separate tables for bracelet-making and paper cutting and gluing etc…

Cut a template piece of ribbon or cord – make sure that it will be long enough for little fingers to be able to tie a bow in!

Step 2:

Get the child to choose which colour they want – then to cut some sort of fancy border on the short sides of the paper, ie if it was in portrait then the top and bottom of the sheet of paper should be cut. We did wavy, zigzag or they can just use crinkle cut scissors!

Step 3:

Lay the loo roll on the sheet of paper with the long axis aligned to the long axis of the paper, ie lay the paper lengthways/landscape with the loo roll running lengthways on it. Cut a piece of sellotape and wrap it back on itself, making a sticky loop. Alternatively, just buy some double-sided tape.

Roll the loo roll innard up in the paper sheet and secure the sheet with the tape. You do this by putting the tape loop onto the underside of the bit of the paper that ends up on top.

You should now (if you can follow my dodgy instructions!) have a loo roll innard inside of a larger tube made of the coloured paper.

Step 4:

Put a Christmas sticker on the join and make sure the loo roll innard is in the centre of the cracker. If you are putting a snapper in, this is when to do it! Cut two lengths of ribbon, then gather the overhanging paper at one end of the loo roll innard and tie ribbon or cord around it. You can now put the goodies such as jokes etc… in the cracker!

Step 5:

Gather the remaining end up and tie ribbon or cord around it.

Step 6:

Release the children with the glue and glitter and other decorations! Make sure you leave adequate time for the glue to dry before they have to take them anywhere!

I realise that this is not the clearest set of instructions ever – but I will at some point in the future get around to creating a set of laminated instruction cards (hopefully before next year!).