Salaric

I made this castle with my two year old for her nursery’s “Prince and Princesses” week. I have split how we did it over three posts; this is the last one of the posts. In order they are:

*Making a skeleton castle *Making a tissue mâché castle *Painting a tissue mâché castle

We used a silver craft/poster paint and pots of yellow, orange and black paint we had picked up in Tesco’s. We also had a mixing pot, a water pot, one large children’s paint brush and one small children’s paint brush, plus some tissue to blot spills up! We also had a plastic mat on the floor to work on and a painting apron on the two year old. 🙂

We mixed the paint, which was mostly the silver paint with a little bit of black in it, as well as varying amounts of the yellow and orange in it.

We didn’t completely mix it up as we wanted a nice stony, mottled texture. We then painted the castle.

Obviously, with the uneven texture of the tissue castle, I had to go over it at the end, making sure all of it was covered in the paint. I also attempted to make sure the inside of the towers were painted.

Whilst I was doing this, Jean was washing the brushes out rather militantaly.

We then left it to dry.

Once it had dried I made up a 3:1 PVA glue to water mix, which I painted onto the castle to seal it. This did, however, make the paint run slightly which didn’t really matter with the texture we were hoping for. But it still makes me wonder if I should have mixed the PVA glue with the paint in the first place and reduced the amount of drying time that we had.

I made this castle with my two year old daughter for her nursery’s “Prince and Princesses” week. For ease, I have split up how we did it over three posts – this being the middle one, they are:

*Making a skeleton castle *Making a tissue mâché castle *Painting a tissue mâché castle

I started off with the above masking tape and cardboard castle and then used watered down PVA white craft glue, tissue or loo roll, a baking tray, tin foil and an oven.

Jean helped unravel and rip up the toliet paper, a task which she enjoyed greatly. This resulted in some frustration at the end when I said we’d finished making the castle. She asked to make another and I stupidly said we didn’t have any more loo roll innards etc. To make another one she then promptly unravelled the last of the toilet paper to make an ‘all gone’ that we could use to make another castle!

The PVA water mix was about 4 parts water:1 part of PVA and stirred thoroughly. We then dipped the toilet paper into the mix and literally slapped it onto the castle. I found that I had to use a square of tissue paper for each of the turrets, or as they were at the time, sticking-up lolly sticks.

Once the castle was completely covered in the PVA-soaked tissue I covered a baking tray in foil and carefully moved the castle onto it. I realised that the thickness of tissue would mean it would not dry in time for Jean to take it to nursery and I had read a book that said you could bake paper mâché in the oven. So I put the castle in the oven on 120 degrees C setting.

This, it turned out, was a bit too hot so it got turned down to 100 degrees C for a second cooking. I left it on for about 45 minutes, and the next morning I put it on again for about 2 hours at 80 degrees C. It had got slightly singed but seemed ok.

What I hadn’t planned for was that it had become glued to the tin foil, so I cut a panel out of the back of one of the boxes that Jean’s Christmas presents had come in and simply transplanted both castle and foil to the cardboard once it had cooled sufficiently. I then turned the castle upside down to neaten up the tin foil on the underside and to fasten it with brown parcel tape.

Me and my two year old made this castle for her nursery’s “Prince and Princesses” week. I have split how I did this into three posts called:

• Making the skeleton of a castle
• Making a tissue mâché castle
• Painting a tissue mâché castle

This is how I made the ‘skeleton’ or framework of the castle:

We used one small box (about 15cm across) that electronic components had been delivered in, four loo roll innards or tubes, masking tape, scissors and wooden lolly sticks.

We cut strips of masking tape and then taped the lolly sticks around the loo roll innards but with the lolly sticks slightly proud of the top of the tube, to make the turrets of the castle. The loo roll tubes were going to be the towers. Jean helped a lot with the taping.

Once all the lolly sticks were in place I wrapped the whole thing in masking tape to get rid of all the tatty ends – which, as a two year old was helping, there were a lot of.

We repeated the process with the other three loo roll innards until we had four towers ready and waiting.

I then attached the towers to the corners of the box using the masking tape – this was actually quite fiddly and they still moved a bit precariously after I had fixed them to the box.

To try and make it more secure and because at this point I hadn’t yet thought about doing the paper mâché, I covered the entire structure in masking tape as I thought it would make a better surface to paint.

I ended up with a masking tape tower.

I made this card for my cousin’s 21st birthday. I used a sheet of blue card with pink textured smudges on it that I got in a pack from Costco. The sheet was slightly larger than A4. Additionally I used yellow, green and iridescent glitter 3D paint pens, also from Costco.

First of all I folded the card in four to make it a suitable size, then using the yellow pen I wrote the equals sign and 21 to show that she was now 21. The paint pens work a bit like icing a cake, so I had to hold the nib of the pen just above the surface of the paper rather than having it touching. The 2 came out a bit too gloopy and the danger with this is that I found the surface tension of the paint makes it sort of suck paint back into itself so that the paint in thin lines gets sucked into big blobs at the end of a line.

I then added two yellow spots nearer the bottom of the card as the centres of two flowers. I then took the iridescent glitter pen and added the flowers petals, trying to make sure they didn’t touch each other, nor the yellow flower centres.

Then I used the green pen to add on the stems of the flowers. I did the leaf separately to avoid it sucking in all the paint from the stems, and I think this worked quite well.

My brother made this trojan helmet out of a cardboard box for a fancy dress party he was going to. He used one cardboard box that was left over from our house move and some gaffer tape, masking tape, wood glue, newspaper, black acrylic paint and a silver paint pen.

First of all he measured how far apart his eyes were and where his nose was in relation to them and his mouth. Then he drew them on to the cardboard box, making sure there was plenty of space for the rest of the helmet around the ‘face’ he had drawn on. Because of the shape of the helmet, he drew a line coming down from an imaginary triangular shape around the rectangular eyes – roughly at a 45 degree angle – so that when he was cutting it out he could cut through this bit and slide the cardboard over itself in a sort of pleat to allow a more 3D shape. Similar pleats had to be put in at the back of the helmet.

He cut out the facial area first and made sure it fit properly by putting it over his face and folding the cardboard appropriately. The mouth area isn’t a hole like in a normal mask; instead it finished in a sort of lip just above the mouth and has two panels descending down each side.

He cut out a rectangle for the nose with the long side of the rectangle coming down the face, but he only cut three sides of the rectangle, leaving it hinged at the top. He then formed the cardboard into a nice helmet shape. The thickness of the cardboard helped a lot with this as it was double-walled and folded in a nice, smooth way. He taped it all together and then made the sides for the nose so that it stuck out from the helmet.

The fan on top was two identical pieces of card cut into a sweeping point with a triangular insert at the front to give it a flared look. He again taped this together and taped it onto the helmet. He re-enforced the inside with a t-section of cardboard from a cereal packet, which he again taped in place.

Checking everything was securely in place he then glued newspaper over some of it to smooth out some of the joins, and painted it with the black paint.

Once the paint had dried he used the silver paint pen to add detailed adornments like android-esque lines on the face and swirls on the fan bit.

This was amazingly effective and it is actually really sturdy.

I made this pressed flower card for my friend who was having lots of stomach problems. The previous spring I had collected a few petals and leaves from various plants in our garden and pressed them in the book that had inspired the whole project – a pressed flower book I had picked up in a Red Cross book shop. I pressed the flowers by putting them between sheets of tissue paper and kitchen towel, as I like the texture this gives the finished petals. I don’t think this would work for whole flowers rather than individual petals.

Blotting paper is the best thing to use for pressing flowers, but this was one of the first projects I had tried since being a child. I used copydex glue, a fineliner and a card blank with an oval cut-out in it. I got the card blanks from The Works in Cheltenham.

I looked at the petals I had and thought that some of them would make a nice picture of a woman on a hill with long flowing hair. I was thinking wild innocence dancing on the stormy hillside in a sodden pink dress.

I started off by folding out the card so that I could get to the panel behind the oval cut-out. I stuck on the hill, which had been a large white petal, then I stuck on the hair, which had been the petal of an orange-coloured poppy.

I then stuck on the arms and upper torso of the woman – this had been a small white heart-shaped rose petal. I then stuck a pink foxglove petal over the bottom half/pointy bit that’s joined to the flower. This made the formal dress of the dancing woman and was exactly the right shade of pink.

I then stuck on a small ’rounded corners’ triangle for the woman’s face, this had been a small burnt orange fading to red colour before pressing, and now is a lovely deep red.

Once the glue was dry I folded the card back up so that the picture of the woman was trapped in the oval frame and around it at the top and bottom I wrote, “MAY THE LADY DANCE YOU BETTER…” with the fineliner.

I made this card for a friend’s birthday; as her birthday is in spring and our garden was abundant with ox-eye daisies, ordinary daisies and various flowers that I don’t know the name of (but might well have been purple and lavender daisies), I wanted to make a spring flower card.

I used a sheet of blue card with pink blurry lines running around it; I think they look like little clouds scudding across the card. I then selected a blue, lavender and white iridescent glitter pen and a 3D yellow pen.

I started off by folding the sheet of card into four to make an appropriate greeting card; I then squeezed out eight little yellow dots in roughly three columns down the card. These were to be the centres of the flowers.

I then took the glitter pen and carefully added petals to one of the yellow dots. It then became apparent that I could not fit petals on all of the dots so I initially did three flowers.

I then discovered that I had to be careful not to get the petals either too near each other or the dots, as the paint sort of fused together.

I then added another three flowers, making two columns. I felt that the two spare dots looked a bit odd so I added lots of other dots which I felt looked right.

I made this card for my friends who had just moved into their shiny new (old) house. I used a sheet of orange card, yellow card, pink card, one maroon and one gold metallic gel pen from a large pen set from WH Smiths, pritt stick and a pair of scissors.

I decided to go for highly stylised houses so cut out three vastly different sized ‘wonky’ rectangles out of the yellow card. I then cut out appropriately-sized triangles for the houses’ roofs out of the pink card.

I then arranged the houses on the orange card, which I had folded in half and then in half again to get a good card size. I actually decided to rotate the rectangles by 90 degrees as I thought it looked better – fortunately all but one roof still looked fine. I then stuck them in place.

I then used the gold metallic gel pen to draw the doors and windows on the three houses – making sure that they were scaled appropriately as I had one tiny house, one medium-sized house and one large house. I found I needed to weigh the corner of the card down whilst I did the drawing and postioning of houses on the card – the scissors worked nicely for this.

Using the maroon metallic gel pen I then added the words “NEW HOME” at two different angles above the houses to sort of represent the slope on house roofs.

In the same pen I then added “WELCOME” underneath the houses. Of course the pens produced too thin a line for what I wanted to do, so I had to carefully trace round each letter several times to get the thickness required. The colour and effect of the pens has not come out well in the photos unfortunately 🙁 .

This was my first card I made for my husband (then boyfriend) for our first Valentine’s as I had no money for a card but had a lot of card about for making posters. I was surprised to find he still had it as it has been through two house moves and a flood!

I used one sheet of black card, pale lavender card and shocking pink card; I also used pritt stick and a pair of scissors.

I folded the black card in four and then decided I was going to use the resulting blank card in ‘portrait’ orientation rather than ‘landscape’. I then cut the heart out of the lavender card. I did, however, draw it out first before doing this, hence this heart is a bit more symmetrical than a lot of my hearts! I then decided that it would look far too girly to put the heart straight onto the card (I was worried about how I could make the card a Valentine’s card without it being very frilly and feminine). I then glued the heart on the shocking pink card and freehand cut out an explosive abstract border made up of irregular zigzags.

I then stuck this onto the black card and was very happy with the effect.

I made this card for my friend’s wedding but it would make a good engagment or Valentine’s card or possibly a birthday card for a girlfriend or some such.

For this card I used a sheet of pale blue card, magenta/purple card, pale pink card, eight iridescent leaf sequins, PVA white craft glue, pritt stick glue and scissors.

I started by folding the pale blue card into four, I then cut out a heart about 7cm in height from the magenta/purple card. I stuck this onto the centre of the card using the pritt stick.

I then glued on the iridescent leaves in pairs as they make nice little hearts like this. I had to use blobs of PVA to glue them onto the card. I then had to leave it to dry lying flat on the table top. I made four of these little hearts which irregularly border the large heart in the middle of the card. It was at this point I decided something needed to be in the middle of the large heart. I did initially try another iridescent heart but decided it didn’t look good.

Instead I cut out a small pink heart from the baby pink card. I then stuck this onto the card using the pritt stick.