Salaric

My little girls Pre-School are having an easter bonnet parade so we needed to make Jean a hat. I found a kit in the Pound Shop in Cheltenham and so let my husband and little girl loose with it. I was going to make one from scratch but this kit was actually quiet good though the instructions didn’t match with the contence of the kit.

The kit had a circle that had had a smaller circle cut out of it – this was also in the pack. Two 1 1/2 wide strips of yellow card with tabs along both sides, assorted pom poms (which were the wronge size and colours for the instructions), goggly eyes we didn’t use and a strip of whit card with a ridge to bend at the end and two bunny teeth drawn on. There was also a blue think strip of card and PVA white craft glue, not too mention white bunny ear shapes out of card and pink card to cut the ear middles out off. I suplimented the kit with one white large pompom, a small pink pompom and three black fluffy pipe cleaners.

My husband made the hat up with her. First off they took the yellow strips and folded down the tabs – the ones on the top facing one way the ones on the bottom facing the other.

They then put glue on top of all of the bottom tabs and squidged the hats rim on, this was a bit fiddly as the strips where in two halves so , glue had to be attatched to the ends of them as well to make them stay in place as the side of the hat. Alaric had to hold it all together for awhile until the glue was tacky enough to hold. He then added glue to the top tabs – which were folded into the centre of the hat, he then placed the yellow circle on the top. It then had to be left for a bit to dry.

The blue ribbon was also in two strips which they glued around the hat. It then had to be left for an age to dry properlly.

In the mean time they cut out the pink bits of the ears which are upside down elongated tear drops. The pink card wasn’t really big enough for what in the instruction suggested so the ears look a bit odd. They glued the pink ear inners onto the white ears and left them too dry.

We also decided that glueing the small black pompoms into two slightly larger pompoms would make better eyes than the goggly eyes so they glued the ‘pupils’ onto the ‘eyeballs’ and left the whole lot to dry.

Once the glue was dry they glued the ears on the back of the hat so that they stuck up in the air and the teeth on the front so that they hung down over the edge of the rim.

They then glued on two white large pompoms for the rabbits cheeks (the kit came with one white and one yellow pompom :/) and a small pink pompom for the nose.

Alaric then cut the pipe cleaners in half coiled them into curls and twisted the ends together to make two sets of three whiskers. He glued these onto the face next to the cheeks and glued the pompom eyes on.

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.

I went to Tech Adventure at the Trinity Arts Centre last weekend. This event brings together computer programmers, inventors, roboticists and people who generally like to make things.

Obviously I didn’t understand a lot of the technical detail of the projects that people bought along to display but I could see potential there for the arts and craft community. For a start there was a thing called a Reprap which is a 3D printer. This has huge potential and is designed so that you can basically build your own and then then get it to build ones for your friends. It built the shapes up out of plastic thread that was being fed into it. The shapes it can do are currently limited but even they are quite impressive and would have use in craft projects. Then I found out that it’s the same plastic that milk bottles are made out of so it could have huge implications for home recycling.

The man who had brought it was discussing various things such as how to build up shapes with overhangs on them and mentioned the words ‘sugar paste’. Apparently they have a nozzle that does sugar paste to build up support structures to get more intracate shapes and then they wash the sugar paste off. I then got very excited and asked if you could build things like the glass they had there out of the sugar paste – completely – he said yes!

Here are some of the things it made:

This would be fantastic for cake decorating I feel. He said the only issue with that would be that after an hour the sugar paste turns to syrup and the nozzles stop working which is something I think could definitly be worked around, though the shape you are making is perfectly fine!

A little more probing on our part found that though they had not done high melting point things like glass they thought it would be useful for ceramics which is cool 🙂 Also one of the things that really bugs me about the lost wax process in metal casting is that you spend ages making the wax object and you can only get one casting out of it. This machine alters that as you could have the object saved as a computer file and it would build as many as you wanted out of the wax!

There were so many other things there too and the crossover of people who do techy stuff and those who make/draw is phonomenally high. This I believe is because to make craft objects you need to be a sort of engineer even if you don’t realise it and to draw good pictures you need something similar. To come up with your own projects you need to be creative and in order for the technical people to do what they do they have to be creative – creativity is a layer above science and art or technology and craft, or poetry and programming.

The dichotomy between the sciences and arts does not really exist, it is an artifact of our society – good artists tend to be grounded in some sort of science, tech, or maths whether they realise it or not!

I went to a fantastic talk on this at last year’s Cheltenham Literature Festival.

I even read out some of my poetry at this and one more Wiggly Pet also got a good home. It went to the first person to tell me how many programming languages I had in the poem! I actually gave two away though as there was a little boy in a tigger suit who wanted one so desperately.

Another thing that came out of this is that there is a Maker Faire this month – 14-15 March at the Newcastle Science Fair. I can’t go but it looks interesting.

Also it is because of this that I am now considering making special funky cases for computers though as I am obsessed with paper mâché at the moment, I am having to resist the urge to do every project in that medium!

I tend to make, paint and sew seascapes for me, my husband and my little girl. The history of this is to do with my undergraduate degree, a paleobiology module and me explaining colonial organisms to my husband. The particular organism I was taken with is called Bryozoa but I got it a bit mixed up with corals. Anyway my husband and I decided we were a ‘colony’ and I started producing pictures of the colony within an ocean bottom environment.

This is the latest and it was my Valentine’s card to him this year.

I got the card blank from a set of eight card blanks and card toppers from the Pound Shop and the rest, ie the picture, is all cut out of magizines and catalogues. They are stuck on using glue sticks.

I cut the shapes out including:

• Seaweed

• A rock

• Colonial organism like a coral coming out of its tube

• Fish

• Heart

I tend to sit down and chop up a page at a time of magazines into the shapes the colours and layout that the page suggests to me. So for the shapes I eventually chose for this card I just selected from things I’d already cut out.

I wanted a very clean and stylised look.

I started gluing the shapes on, first off the seaweed and the fish hidden in them. I made sure that some of the seaweed overlapped the fish and some did not. This involved peeling up bits that had already been stuck and was essential for the balance of the picture. The rock in the middle was then stuck on.

I then placed the coral onto the rock, making sure that the bottom of the coral overlapped the rock. I then placed on the fish in the background and the blue heart – the heart was purely to show it was a card for Valentine’s day.

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.

These lovely Japanese stickers and two panels were given to my little girl by a friend. I just love the cartoony shapes and balloon writing style of the characters. There were lots of people and then pink helicopters and the like which my little girl simply adored.

She gave me the purple panel as it’s my favourite colour and she had the pink. These in themselves were little works of art as far as I’m concerned with blossom, a river and a cityscape.

We stuck on numerous stickers and then I stuck them to the fridge.

Here is the url as promised:

http://lovemomiji.com/

Warning: it’s got little animations of the stickers and I sort of got hooked and was on the site for ages 🙂

My daughter was invited to a friend from pre-school’s party. It was his fourth birthday so I thought: what sort of card would he like?

I was going to get my daughter to make him something but she was playing in the garden so I decided to make it myself.

I used:

• One piece of blue mounting card slightly bigger than A4
• 3D dungaree trousers with rattly bits in the centre panel
• Nursery building block sticker, slightly raised
• 3D red car sticker
• A black felt tip

I folded the mounting card in half and then in half again to make the card shape. I then arranged the trousers, blocks and car so they sort of zig zaged up the page.

I then took the black felt tip and in clear loopy writing wrote, “Happy Birthday James” zig zagging inbetween the 3D stickers. The card looked very unbalanced in the top right though so I decided to draw a steam train with James as the engine’s name. I then speckled the card with five point stars – each star is drawn in one fluid movement. It took me a while when I was a schoolchild to work out how to draw those stars! It’s best to do a few practices on a scrap piece of paper to get into the star drawing groove I find.

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.

I made this pom-pom holly Christmas card using:

• 3 medium red pom poms

• 3 thin dark green pipe cleaners

• 1 sheet of red card, slightly larger than A4

• scissors

• PVA white craft glue

• 1 foam three leaf holly stamp

• light green ink pad

Most of this came from The Works in Stroud.

I started by gluing the three pom poms into a triangle; these were to represent the holly berries.

I then cut about a third off of the ends of three pipe cleaners. I then bent them into the holly leaves, making sure I left enough excess to twist into a tail. 

I then turned over the berries and glued the leaves in place. This was a bit fiddly and involved having to rig up scaffolding using various boxes and rubbers I could find to stop the leaves just flopping and their ‘tails’ sticking out from the berries. I then left the whole lot to dry for several hours.

In the meantime I folded the red card in half and then in half again. I then took the foam stamp which I got as part of a set from the Pound Shop and pressed it into the light green ink. I had previously tried the dark green but it came out a sort of dark brown on the red card and just didn’t look anywhere as nice as the lighter green.

I then stamped a holly leaf triplet into each corner – I reloaded/repressed the stamp in the ink pad each time.

I then glued the pom pom and pipe cleaner holly onto the card.