Salaric

I found a big pack of 3D paint pens in Costco for about £7 so I have been having a lot of fun with them, seeing what effects you can get and exactly how they dry. In the pack there are 40-plus different pens, ranging from three types of glitter, metallic to neon! They are also washable so useful for children’s art projects.

The paint dries raised, hence them being called 3D paints.

I made this fireworks card as an early experiment.

First of all I got a piece of black card with little bits of silver glinting off it – again this was a Costco purchase and was an extra in a card activity pack I bought there. It is actually meant to be mounting card and so is therefore slightly larger than A4. To start with, I folded it in half along the long side of the sheet to make a nice ‘card’ shape.

I then picked a nice pastel brown colour for the wood at the base of the bonfire. You have to unscrew the nozzle of these pens and remove a little blue plastic plug; you then replace the nozzle. To draw with them you squeeze the tube and the paint comes out like runny icing. I drew the shapes of the logs – when I initially drew them they were a lot more defined – but the paint flowed together again, giving everything a slightly more chunky and organic look.

I waited for the brown to dry a bit before selecting a pastel orange for the flames of the bonfire; the brown had dried a lot darker than I had expected from the initial colour of the pen, but I thought it still looked ok.

I drew the shape of the fire with a few little offshoots and then began to fill the outline in – I only needed to draw a series of lines in the fire shape, getting smaller as the paint flowed and merged together to give a uniform appearance.

I then left it to dry.

To my horror I realised that the brown hadn’t dried a lot darker but that the paint was drying transparently and the paper, of course, was black. The same was happening to the orange, with the result that instead of a nice vibrant fire I had a big shiny patch that looked black!

However, I decided to continue as I reasoned that it was salvageable. I decided to add fireworks in the sky using the glitter pens, whilst I waited for the fire to completely dry.

I left the glitter to dry and discovered that it doesn’t dry raised, unfortunately. But I then used red, orange and yellow glitter for the fire utilising the already-transparent paint as a guide! This worked really well.

I would, however, say that the paint takes far too long to dry, rendering the pens useless for groups like Guides and Scouts, but probably fine for places where you can leave the projects to dry overnight etc…

I made Boris the blue and yellow spider back when I was a young leader at my Guide Troop. I was given lots of fuzzy pom-pom type balls in various colours and sizes, several sheets of coloured felt, some pre-cut felt shapes, scissors, and lots and lots of sticky glue – PVA or white craft glue. Then they left me to it with about ten girls.

I chose a pre-cut piece of yellow felt that I thought was a suitable shape for the legs, and then glued a 5 cm blue fluffy ball onto it as Boris’s body. I found a 5 mm beige ball which I stuck on for the nose, and then drew some eyes in pencil on some paper that I cut out and glued on. I also had to make eyes for all the guides!

I also cut out a curved piece of yellow felt for a mouth and stuck that on – this was lots of fun and very easy to do. Boris is over ten years old now, hence he looks a bit battered, especially as he came to university with me as a homework aid!

The only thing I would do differently is that I would also get lots of goggly eyes to stick on, as that would be so much easier than having to draw them and cut the tiny fiddly shapes out.

Boris is always a favourite at halloween parties too. 🙂 I feel that it would be a good craft activity to do with children for halloween, as the technique could be used to make cats, bats and pumpkins!

For all of those who know me and would shoot me if this wasn’t on here!

I make little contemporary figurines called Wiggly Pets; they have their own website but it needs a bit of work on it. I will be posting the link as soon as it is ready. They will also shortly be appearing in their own comic strip on an e-zine but more on that later (ie when I know all the fine details). I have sold a few of these little creatures and they are present now in over six countries!

They are made of polymer clay – mainly FIMO soft, which comes in many colours and textures. Next time I nurse the wiggly woos (baby wiggly pets) to maturity I will take photos of them hatching and the different developmental stages.

But until such times are upon us I feel that the wiggly pets would like you all to know about their new community blog which can be found at http://www.wigglypets.co.uk/. They have lots of adventures and wanted to share them with everybody, I’ve taken most of the photos too, which hopefully will soon be available as postcards for people to purchase.

I made this plinth out of fimo (polymer clay) for one of our nice largish glass marbles. I was aiming for a nice marbled effect, plus I wanted it to look strangely organic and mineral-like at the same time.

I chose black fimo and metallic silver fimo in about equal amounts. I mixed the two colours together, making sure I folded the colours together as well as just squidging the resulting blob. This resulted in a nice marbled texture.

I then rolled the whole lot into a fat sausage about 1.5cm in diameter, followed by squishing one end of it onto the table, making it flare out and stabilise the structure. I then pinched out a rim from the other end, using my thumb and index finger – this formed itself naturally into the sort of bowl shape I had intended. Easing the whole lot off the table and signing the bottom, I baked it in a pre-heated over for half an hour at 130 degrees C.

For this design of card you will need:

*One sheet of purple card about A4 in size

*One rectangle of pink thick tissue paper with purple feather pattern

*One pink handbag made out of tea bag paper

*One silver rectangle of card with message on it

*One large pink gem about 1 cm

*Two slightly smaller pink gems

*Two pink gems the next size down

*Three small pink gems about 4 cm in diameter

This card was very simple to make. I took a piece of purple mounting card that is just a bit bigger than A4 and folded it in four. I then selected a pink piece of thick tissue type paper with purple feather pattern and a pink tea bag handbag.

I glued these in opposite corners and then made a corner bracket type border on the pink rectangle, using four different sized coloured gems in three different pinks and lavenders. I put a complimentary gem in the opposite corner – the smallest in size.

Then I carefully placed a silver rectangle of card with ‘Just for you’ emblazoned on it in golf leaf effect, half on and half off the pink paper. I glued this on using PVA glue, but the gems were already sticky.

All of the decorations came from the pound shop so I was highly impressed with the results. 🙂