Back to the blog

I've been away for nearly 18 months, time for a bit of a catch up now I have some time to myself.

I'll start with the most recent makes - the Frozen dresses. Both my girls wanted dresses to be just like the girls from the film. I refused to pay £65 for the official ones and decided it was time to get making again.

I went back to my roots and made the patterns from scratch, which fascinated the children, who had never seen dot and cross paper or a pattern master before. The dress patterns were relatively simple to design and the cape for Anna was based on a jacket from their wardrobe. I bought the fabrics from Ebay and got to work, two weeks later, here they are (with their heads photoshopped, obviously!)

ps. that Elsa fabric was the worst fabric I have ever worked with - never again!

Snowflakes and more

Today's Christmas task on our advent calendar was to make paper snowflakes to go on the windows. I have made them in the past and let the girls stick them on, but this year they made their own for the first time, and loved it. We also made some strings of Christmas things - robins, trees, reindeer and angels. Charlotte was amazed at the hearts that were made when we cut certain shapes out of the paper and was soon busy throwing them around the room like confetti.

Salt ceramic

I was pottering online the other day when I saw this blog post about salt ceramic. My 2 year old niece was here at the weekend, so I had a 2, a 4 and a 6 year old to do something with. I decided to try this as it didn't look too messy and they were all able to do it by themselves.

Method

Add together 1 cup of salt, 1/2 cup of cornflour and 2/3 cup of water in a saucepan. Mix and heat until it forms a dough then take off the heat and allow to cool before using in the same way as salt dough.

I made up the mixture according to the instructions, but I have a feeling I didn't add quite enough water, as it was a little dry. The dough was very pliable, and had a much nicer look than ordinary salt dough, as it is white and slightly opaque. The girls had buttons and shells to press onto their dough to make a paper weight. All three of them enjoyed pushing things into the dough and made their own designs with no help.

Unfortunately, the buttons which were flat started to fall off as the dough dried, and will need glueing back on. I think this may be due to the dough being a bit dry to start with. I think that next time I shall add a little more water and maybe mix in some glitter too.

Made and gifted to me by my 2 year old niece.

First nursery session

My first session as "artist in residence" at the local nursery is all planned and ready to go. I am going to show them the painting The Snail by Henri Matisse as our inspiration, then we are going to look at colour and shape.

The children will tear up pieces of tissue paper and place them on a piece of white paper, then spray the tissue with water and place another piece of white paper on top and press it down. Once these have dried a bit, they can peel them open and look at their masterpieces. The colour in the tissue bleeds onto the paper making new colours and patterns.

We will also be using pipettes to drop food colouring into water and see how colours mix to make new colours.

I have no idea how this will go, as the children are all 3 or 4 years old and unless I can capture their attention early on, I fear it will be an uphill struggle to win them over. Naturally, I will not be able to discuss specifics of the session or post photographs of it in progress, but I have attached pictures of the practice pieces that Charlotte did with me yesterday.

We only used orange, magenta and green tissue, but when they mixed they made new colours.

Marbled bunnies and cupcakes

Two children want to make cakes and inevitably both want to do everything themselves. I am fed up with saying who gets to crack the eggs or measure the sugar so I let them both make cake mix at the same time. Charlotte made chocolate cake mix and Emma made vanilla cake mix. I then swirled the two together and we made marbled cakes. All of us are happy and we get lots of lovely cakes to enjoy.

Charlotte made a mix using 4:4:4:2 ratio with 1 oz of cocoa powder added to it.
Emma made a 5:4:4:2 mix with 1 tsp vanilla extract added to it.

We swirled the two mixes together and dolloped the mix into the prepared bunny mould and some  cupcake cases. We cooked them at 180c until a skewer poked in came out clean - about 20 minutes for the bunnies and 15 minutes for the cupcakes.

Family tree

We made a family tree a few years back to explain to the children how all their family members are related. It has been incredibly useful, but not very attractive as the sugar paper faded and new family members got squeezed in. We have just finished a new one, which is more for decoration than for working out how the family works, but the girls made this themselves, with hardly any help, so I am very happy with it.

The miniature garden

Charlotte has entered the miniature garden competition at the village fete tomorrow. I tried showing her pictures of miniature gardens and suggesting ideas to her, but she was adamant as to how she wanted to do it. The ideas are all her own, and I was itching to help, but all I did was sneak a handful of coffee stirrers from the cafe today and cut them in half for her. I just wish she would put some flowers or plants in it!

Painted tea light holders

Charlotte is entering the decorated tea light holder competition as part of the village fair this year. She is also entering a few other competitions, as is Emma. The girls both decorated glass tea light holders with glass/ceramic pens, and the results were both very pretty. The glasses were IKEA ones from ebay, £5 for 4. I think the rest (we bought 8) will be decorated closer to Christmas as presents.

Emma's 

Charlotte's

Scooby Doo villain posters

The beast from the bottomless lake

It will be Charlotte's birthday next month and she has decided on a Scooby Doo themed birthday party. We started making the posters for it, to be used as part of a mystery solving game and I was very good and allowed the children to help. I am usually very possessive of anything arty for a party as I want it to be "just right", but I learned from this experience that I need to let go more often and trust the children to create with me.

Ghost astronaut

I drew up the villains on A2 card, then we all block painted them with acrylic paint, not worrying about details too much. Finally, when they were dry I used a black marker pen to fill in all the details. I have to say, the ghost astronaut and the beast from the bottomless lake look better than I could have achieved, and the girls painted these all by themselves.

Charlotte has decided that she now wants the whole Scooby Doo gang as posters too, so we need to get some more card now.

Trophy making

Yesterday, as we were unable to go out in the sun (one small person has terrible heat rash) we stayed in for the morning and made trophies. We are having a birthday party at the weekend which involves 10-pin bowling, so the girls and I made winners' trophies.

We have some leftover silver plastic goblets from Emma's party and we also used plastic balls, cardboard, an empty playdoh pot and lid, a plastic bowl, kitchen roll, stickers, pva glue and glass paints.

The girls made handles from cardboard and stuck them to their goblets with magic tape, then they painted them with gold and silver glass paints. Emma also used a variety of stickers to decorate hers.
The gold trophy was assembled then covered with a couple of layers of kitchen roll and pva. I then painted it with gold glass paint and used a sharpie pen to add the details.
The multicoloured trophy was Charlotte's. She also assembled and (with a little help) covered the trophy with kitchen roll and pva. She then painted it and after the picture was taken she added the details to hers with a sharpie too.

Makes, bakes and science experiments...?

Today Charlotte dived into the science kit I bought in TKMaxx a few weeks back for a pittance. She has now used vinegar and bicarb to blow up a balloon, seen iron filings line up to a magnet and made a zeotrope.

Her favourite bit was looking at liquid density. This was, basically, carefully adding different liquids to her new test tube (she feels like a real scientist now) to make layers. You then drop things in to see which level they sink to. I reckon this is just as easy to do without a science kit, as the main ingredients all came from my kitchen. It seems like a great way to allow kids to mix up all kinds of liquids and make a bit of mess without getting in trouble.

Here is a picture of Charlotte with her test tube. It contains (from the bottom):
honey
maple syrup
washing up liquid
soya milk
sunflower oil

It also contains a lump of clay, a marble and a paperclip at this stage. It all got a bit messy after that...

Playing with clay

For Emma's 4th birthday, a friend gave her a pack of coloured air-drying clay. I was expecting heavy, thick clay like we used as kids, but I was very surprised once we opened the packet. Each individual wrapper in the packet contained a chunk of soft, lightweight coloured clay. It reminded us a bit of silly putty as it stretches out like melted cheese when you pull it slowly, but when you pull it quickly it snaps. Not like clay at all, but so much more fun!

The girls had been watching Mr Maker and asked if we could make some "yolk folk" like he had made, so this was the first project.

Charlotte's, Emma's, Mummy's, Charlotte's (with a bit of help from Mummy), Charlotte's and Daddy's

After that, we had a lot of bits of clay left so the girls both made horses with the leftovers. It was bright, clean, easy to use and I have just ordered a load more from Yellow Moon.

Charlottes and Emma's horses.

Mug decorating

I have been feeling a bit unmotivated with all this grey weather. I have been busy making and baking, but not anything that seemed exciting enough to post about.

I was sitting staring into my cup of tea just now and I realised that I was staring straight at a make that I had forgotten all about. For Fathers day, the girls wanted to make decorated mugs for daddy. We went to Hobbycraft and bought some ceramic paint pens and painted on some cheap white mugs I had bought a while back.

Charlotte did one for daddy and one for herself (she's into dalmatians at the moment), Emma did one for daddy and I did the one at the end which contains my current cup of tea.

Pasty Pasta

I got the Creative Moments For Kids cards back out yesterday. The girls both wanted to do this one, so I did my best with what I could find in the cupboard.











I managed 4 shapes of pasta and puy lentils. I think I need to branch out in my dried pasta selection. I set the table up with a little pot of white glue and a paint brush each, paper plates to create the pasty pasta creations on and bowls of pasta shapes in the middle. I then let the girls get to work...

Emma spent a lot of time arranging the different shapes into a pattern, even though it looks like she just threw a handful of stuff on to see what would stick. Charlotte carefully drew a picture of a rabbit, then worked out which shapes to use where before glueing it all down. Here are the results, drying on the windowsill. Next, they want to paint them.

Stuff to do with kids

I was collecting books for the book stall at our school fair recently, and in one of the boxes I found a very tatty looking box with a couple of dozen little coloured leaflets inside. It couldn't go in the sale, but I didn't want to throw it away either, so I saved it to investigate at a later date.

I looked through the leaflets yesterday morning and discovered exactly what they were. A set of little projects to do with kids - some making, some educational and some puzzles. We picked a making one and tried it out. All you do is thread 2 disposable bowls onto string and hook them onto each end of a coat hanger to make scales. You can then see if things weigh more or less than each other.

The kids got their marbles out and before long, Charlotte was making guesses as to how many of different sizes would balance the scales. She didn't realise it, but she was doing maths and enjoying it too. Brilliant. Next I want to try the one where you make a sugar syrup and dangle a knotted thread in it and sugar crystals grow on the knots - it's titled "Grow your own candy". Who's a big geek? Me, and I don't care who knows it!

My creative kids

I'm having a day off today. It was such lovely weather that I decided to be destructive in the garden instead of creative in the house. I chopped 2 big bushes down and hauled them off, then felt all weak and had to sit down and watch my mum do some of my gardening instead.

While I was outside, I noticed how much the children enjoy being creative. They have had chalks outside and decorated the path, which is great, because a bit of water and it's all clean again.

They definitely have the creative streak, as I often come downstairs in the morning to find them furiously scribbling away at some new picture or creation. I have to say, my current favourite is Emma's trouser people, that she thought up all by herself before proudly presenting them to me.






Luckily, they also take after their dad, so they have rhythm (which I totally lack), an interest in music and the three of them love playing Mario together on the Wii!

Another mural

I have just got back from fixing up another mural. It is unfinished, as the children from the nursery are going to add foliage to the tree with all their named hand-prints. I can't wait to go in and do that with around thirty 2 - 4 year olds! I'll put up a finished picture, eventually.

Family sea collage

I went back to the gym today for the first time since before Christmas. I've had a bad shoulder, which would probably have been better sooner if I had done even the slightest bit of exercise, but I am an all or nothing person and unfortunately my body is not thanking me for it.

As a result, my usual Monday baking session became a lie on the sofa watching a repeat of QI until school pick up time. But as this is not very creative or inspiring, I thought I'd talk about a much more creative day I had with my children a few months back. It has been sitting waiting to be framed for ages and I really must get it done before it gets wrecked.

It all started when we went to the beach and the girls collected loads of shells. Of course, when we got home they wanted to make something with them. Once again, things escalated and we trawled our "making boxes" for stuff to make an undersea scene. The girls stuck all their shells on the sand while I ripped and stuck strips of blue paper to make the sea. They then embellished the sea with wool, beads, glitter, ribbon and sequins (I have A LOT of making stuff stashed away!). I got a bit fussy about making the seaweed as they just couldn't do it to my exacting standards, then Charlotte made a shoal of fish and Emma and I made hand print octopuses. That was it, easy to do and kept us all busy for a whole afternoon.