Quirky Easter Bonnets

We're in Lent so it's perfectly acceptable to be thinking about Easter, right?! We do love a good Bonnet Parade at Toddler Group so Jessica and I set about making a sample hat while we were snowed in last week. We cut a spiral in a paper plate from the centre out to the rim and then sellotaped a couple of straws to the rim and centre to give the height and structure to the hat. Feathers, pompoms and tissue paper were used to decorate this one but we also have Easter stickers and shredded paper available for the children to use on the day. I can't wait to see the creations this year.

Shredded Easter Egg Nest

Eggs definitely belong in a nest so Jessica and I made one to house our polystyrene eggs this year. The process we used is something of a mix between papier mache and decoupage. Jessica was thrilled with shredding magazines while I enjoyed layering up the nest.

Right, here's the how to...

1. Shred plenty of pages from a magazine. I think we probably did about 8 sheets but it depends how big and solid you want your nest or bowl to be.

2. Line a bowl with cling film that is the shape you would like to replicate.

3. Mix PVA glue and water in the ratio of roughly 1:1.

4. Paint a layer of glue and water mixture onto the cling film and start layering paper on top of it in different directions.

5. After placing about half a dozen strips paint these over with the glue mixture and keep layering.

6. Keep repeating the layering and gluing until you're happy with the thickness. This doesn't have to be done all in one go. Take as long as you like over the nest and make it as thick as you fancy!

7. Allow the nest/bowl to dry completely at which point you will be able to easily peel the clingfilm away from the paper.

8. Trim the edges if you want to tidy them up a bit.

Here are a couple of shots of our nest in progress...

Easter Bonnets

It was our last session at Toddler group before Easter this morning.  We made Easter bonnets from paper plates and bowls. I made the bonnets and attached the ribbons beforehand and let the little ones loose with Easter stickers, pom poms and tissue paper. Here are some of their masterpieces...

They were all very proud of their creations and enjoyed posing for photos before doing a mini parade for us. Here's Jessica showing off her bonnet back at home later...

Marbled Eggs

For about the last month Jessica has been walking around with a polystyrene ball pretending that it is an egg. She's taken such good care of it that it has hatched multiple times with little pink and orange dinosaurs. So, as we're in to Lent now I bought her a whole bag full from Home Bargains for under £1. Now I should imagine we'll spend weeks decorating them in one way or another. We've marbled our first half dozen... 

Jessica did these all herself and didn't do it as I normally would but they still worked very well. Jess wanted to do them one colour at a time and she swirled the eggs around in the water. Ordinarily I would add a few drops of each colour to a tub of water and use a stick to swirl the inks before quickly dipping the eggs in. Either way, these make excellent dinosaur eggs for my nurturing daughter!

Here she is hard at work. One dip...

Two dips... 

More... 

She thoroughly enjoyed this craft. Can you tell?!

Crafty Final Day of Term

For me and my classes, the last day of term means crafting, whether they like it or not! With just one lesson to be taught today and suspecting that Year 8 would have constructed the perfect Easter egg last year I decided to do curve stitching with them this morning. We didn’t actually stitch but used a pencil and straight edge to create the curves from straight lines. They concentrated well and worked really hard to create excellent results that looked just like my stitched version…

Next, whilst half the school was in the Easter assembly and the other half were sorting out form rooms and the like, I sat in the senior library and taught one of my tutees to knit. It’s a skill that she needs for her A-level Art project and I was delighted to help. She took to it very well although had a slight habit of picking up stitches. She’s using huge needles at the moment, which are quite a handful, but I look forward to seeing how she’s got on when we get back to school in a couple of weeks.

Happy Easter Holidays everyone!

Easter Bunny

I’ve been working hard making soft owls on Mum’s sewing machine this week. They’re for my A-level Further Maths group when they leave in a few weeks and I will post them later in the week when I’ve finished the trims. Anyway, upon seeing these sat on the mantelpiece, Katryn asked if I could make a bunny for her. I enthusiastically agreed and set to it immediately. My first attempt (designed by us on paper) was not very successful so I decided to get on the internet to find a real pattern. I used a tutorial on sew4home, which was relatively straightforward to follow until I got to stitching the face and neck together. I found that I had to stitch the pieces together in a different order and my rabbit’s face does not look exactly as it should. I also avoided too much hand stitching by machining the head onto the body before stuffing the bunny from the bottom. As usual, it’s not a perfect piece of work and it has taken me hours and hours but I think Katryn will love her…

         

Construct the perfect Easter egg

As a mathematician, I like the geometry of my craft work to be perfect and have a secret passion for constructions (my pupils may not agree that this is a secret). In addition, tomorrow is the last day of our spring term so I am feeling the urge to embrace Easter a little early. Constructing an Easter egg is a great activity to do with years 7 or 8 but I missed my last lesson with Year 7 this week so I shall share the construction on here instead. I’d love to say that I have the skill to have produced this video but I’ve shamelessly stolen it from YouTube. The construction is done in real time and explains each step as you go along. Why not give it a try and make a perfectly proportioned Easter egg for someone special!

Easter cards

Here are my stitched Easter cards. This really isn’t the right time of the month to be posting them but I was busying flying to Malawi at Easter this year!