Miniature Modelling

There are times when Jessica takes advantage of my keeness to craft and I start to question my sanity. Last weekend I found myself modelling all sorts of things from polymer clay and hot glue for her Sylvanian families. It was therapeutic and Jessica was delighted but surely there were better things I could have been doing with my time!

It all began with making bowls of cream for the cats...

These were moulded around small marbles, baked and then filled with hot glue "cream". Jessica then decided that they needed remote controls for their television and a ladder to reach their top bunk in the caravan. Naturally, they also needed a new set of tiaras as well. 

 

Perhaps this weekend Christmas will arrive in the Sylvanian town and I'll find myself making tiny rrees, lights and tinsel!!! I will not be giving these ideas to Jessica; we're going to be far too busy finishing Christmas gifts.

 

I'm back!

It has been such a long time. Things have changed; let's face it, the world has changed. It's a challenge to fit anything in for myself around work, being Mum and other commitments but crafting remains incredibly important in my life. Fortunately, Jessica continues to share my passion so whilst I struggle to complete my own projects I get my fix sharing moments with her as she starts her creative journey through life. 

In these crazy times, with long, dark evenings ahead it feels like the right time to start sharing on here again. Like so many others, I have struggled to maintain a healthy work-life balance in 2020 and I'm desperately hoping that this additional focus will help address it. It's almost time to crack out the Christmas crafts so there will be no shortage of material to share!

For now though, here's a little glimpse at the kind of thing we've been up to recently (aside from all the mask making) ... 

We absolutely love our local pottery cafe, Blue Owl. Before starting school we used to go to a Storytime session but these days we love a Paint-at-home kit. I love being able to spend hours designing and painting my pieces. I lost count of the number of hours this pasta bowl took! 

Jessica was incredibly proud of the cushion she created for her teacher as a thank you present back in July. She enjoys using my sewing machine, making clothes for herself and blankets for her toys. Needless to say, she's a huge fan of The Great British Sewing Bee.

Crafting for her toys and imaginative play motivates Jessica to try new things and create some beautiful things. This hot glue waterfall was a quick, simple but incredibly rewarding little project earlier in the year. It is currently used in play with her Schleich animal collection.

I'm afraid she has also developed my habit of having multiple projects all on the go at the same time. We've both got cross-stitches, latch-hook cushions and diamond paintings on the go on top of patchwork, figurine painting and paint-by-number kits.

There are a few big projects that I have completed but not shared yet and I have been seeking mindfulness in drawing so there are plenty more posts in the pipeline so please, don't be a stranger. Come back and see what else we've got to show you!

Unicorn Baubles

I've turned my attention to my sister's tree now; her style is somewhat different from mine! I have to admit though, these have been my favourite baubles to create this year and I'm really pleased with how they've come out...

These are made from fillable baubles, which means that the glitter is all enclosed! Jessica and I painted the inside of the baubles with clear PVA glue and poured in the glitter. She also helped me make the horns from Fimo Soft. I then painted the eyes with acrylic paint and made the ears from card before using my cool glue gun to put it all together with a few ribbon roses and crystal flower to finish them off. We've made four large and two small unicorns and I can't promise that Sarah will get all six because I think Jessica is going to love them!

Harry Potter Wands

Let's have a break from all this Christmas talk for a moment and have a look at a selection of Harry Potter style wands I have been creating shall we?!

These have been so much fun to make and are going to be sold to raise funds for the Friends of Braiswick Primary next week. They are made from chopsticks, air-drying clay, melting glue (I preferred using my cool melt glue gun but hot glue would be fine) and a selection of acrylic paints. Cheap as chips and utterly fabulous results. This won't be the last time I make these!

Snow Globe Baubles

So, this is what we did with our Christmas tree and snowman figures from yesterday. We glued them to the base of fillable baubles and added a scoop of artificial snow and glitter to create fabulous little snow globe baubles.

We also used a miniature gold bottle-brush tree to do the same thing, which will look stunning on our tree but has far less charm and character than our entirely homemade ones above!

Hot Glue and Pastel Thank You Cards

So, we opted for hot glue flowers and artists pastels for the next batch of thank you cards. Chalk works just as well but I have pastels by me and the colours are much more vivid. Jessica loves creating these pictures and they really don't take much time at all.

Pinecones and Pompoms

Good grief you need a lot of pompoms to stuff a pinecone! In all honesty, I think my cones are a little small for this so they are a bit cramped but they still make cute decorations for the tree. Unfortunately I was part way through a bright pink glue in my glue gun, a clear glue would have worked much better! 

Here are my two decorations adorning our tree...

An Afternoon with my Glue Gun

I wiled away Jessica's nursery hours today with a glue gun in my hand preparing some very simple drawings for the little ones at Toddler Group to colour with chalks next week. It was less fun than it looks but Jeremy Vine and Steve Wright kept me company and I'm sure the children will love using the chalks on Monday ;)

Hot Glue and Pastels

My glue gun gets used for all sorts and certainly not always for glue. I particularly liked this idea though. We've tried using PVA glue to resist paint before but it takes great patience waiting for the PVA to dry. Hot glue, on the other hand, dries really quickly and leaves a solid border to be filled in. Jessica used chalk pastels to fill in the design on this occasion. She scribbled in the gaps and then used her fingertip to spread the colour and fill in the gaps.

She coloured the leaves green first and then decided they should be brown as it was autumn! She also added a sun and some lovely fluffy white clouds. Here's her final piece hanging in the conservatory.

Melted Crayon Art

Finally for the big one. Melted crayon art! This was a lot of fun but took a long time and a whole lot of crayons (nearly 80 I believe!). I just wish I’d used the same type of crayon from the very beginning because it would have been beautifully uniform then with just the smartie like blobs of melted crayon rather than the very runny or particularly stringy patches that you might be able to spot on the close up shots. It was the first time I’d tried it though and I didn’t know just how differently the brands and sorts of crayons would react. I’d read that different colours melted at different rates but I suppose the composition of the crayons are different by different manufacturers too.

Anyway, here’s what I did…

I attached six photos of our wonderful (?!) children to a large canvas using double sided sticky tape first. Next I removed the crayons from their wrappers or plastic barrels and heated up my glue gun, which has rarely been used to glue anything ready to feed the crayons through. I found that by far the best crayons to use were Crayola twistables and I was glad that it’s “Back to School” time because the current deals saved me a fair bit of money. These were the best both in terms of controlled melting and size to feed through the gun as they are only fractionally narrower than the glue sticks themselves so the trigger mechanism still worked perfectly. Hours and many, many crayons later I was satisfied with the result and I’m pleased to report that my glue gun still works with glue sticks too, which was a bonus and I was fully prepared for it to become my crayon gun only.  I wonder how many crayons it would have taken to cover the whole thing…