Salaric

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.

My three year old came home from pre-school with a cuddle token – this was a simple heart shape cut out of paper with a promise written on it in felt tip pens. She promises to cuddle her mummy 🙂

She also made us a Valentine’s card out of orange card folded with a large white heart she had ‘coloured in’ stuck on the front. (It is behind the meal my husband cooked, which is written up over on Salaric-Cooking).

Then we made the heart decorations which I’ve already posted about here.

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.