Diamond Painting

We've completed two diamond paintings between us now and have well and truly got the bug. I've found it to be a great mindful activity through these difficult times and have already ordered another two for us to do. 

This one used almost 16,000 "diamonds" and the resulting picture looks fabulous up on Jessica's bedroom wall. 

We've tried both round and square drills with these kits. The square drills were much more time consuming and fit so tightly that they were a bit of a fiddle. I ended up using tweezers rather than the pen for attaching them. On top of that, there were a couple of different cuts of drill with the surfaces looking very different and I couldn't decide whether that bothered me or not! The circular drills are uniform and much more forgiving in the application so we could make much faster progress. Not surpisingly, the new kits are both circular drills!

Having completed the kits, we've now got millions of them left over and I can't bring myself to get rid of them so I have to think of creative ways to use them up. Cue more card making and tiny mosaics... :)

 

Sticky Mosaics - a charity shop bargain

Jessica and I stumbled across this little gem in a charity shop in Colchester a couple of weeks ago. The kit is a set of four pictures to complete with gems and foam squares made by The Orb Factory. There are all sorts of designs available and are sold as Sticky Mosaics - mosaics by number. The quality of the product is fantastic and the designs are beautiful but they do come in more expensive than similar kits by Galt and even Crayola. That is, unless you spot them in a charity shop for £1! 

Jess is loving them. They are great for number recognition, following a key, manual dexterity and sheer patience and persistence. I highly recommend them, especially if you can find them on offer. They're currently half price in Debenhams...

Mosaic Decoration

The clocks are about to change and it's nearly November so it must be time to start making Christmas decorations, right?! Our first one to share this year is a hanging mosaic ceramic heart tile. 

We cover the ceramic tile in double-sided sticky tape then attach the mosaic pieces before applying grout over the top. We got all the materials for this little project from Hobbycraft. 

Spanish Mosaics

I have never seen anything quite like the enormous 3D mosaic map at Huerta Grande where we stayed for our springtime holiday this year. Jessica thought it was amazing and loved running around it. It is a miracle that she stayed on two feet the way she hurtled about from one place to another. She is now under the illusion that Morocco and Spain are within paces of each other but I shall try not to worry too much about that!

On a less spectacular but more realistic scale I also really liked their mosaic feature pieces on the walls of their cafeteria area created from beach-combed items. Jess and I love collecting shells and pieces of sea-weathered glass on our visits to the Essex coast so these served as inspiration for potential future projects...

St David's Day Holiday Homework

Half term holiday homework for Katryn and Archie was to create something inspired by Wales. I believe it's a St David's Day competition. Two of the seven wonders of Wales are Llangollen bridge and Pistyll Rhaeadr, a stunning waterfall. Both these wonders are very close to my childhood home and were the inspiration behind the crafts that Katryn and Archie created.

Katryn used painted lasagne and button mosaics to create a fabulous image of Llangollen bridge...

Archie made a collage to represent Pistyll Rhaeadr with a lovely Welsh dragon floating in the middle of the waterfall...

 

Lasagne Mosaic Flower

Archie was lucky enough to be the only Wave 4 swimmer who took up Chirk's booster sessions over this half term. This meant he benefited from three 40 minute one-to-one sessions with his wonderful swimming teacher, Rebecca. As a special thank you at the end of half term, Arch made her this beautiful card. He painted some lasagne sheets green, blue and yellow with acrylic paints before breaking and gluing. I still love this craft!

Lasagne Mosaics

We absolutely love this one. Dried lasagne is brilliant; the little ones love painting it and breaking it into interesting shaped mosaic tiles. We literally just painted the pasta with ready mixed paint and brushes and allowed them to dry overnight. The sheets did curl up but that didn't matter at all. Do be careful when you break the pasta up though, you can get a few shards shooting off when you snap. Creating the mosaic artwork went down a storm at the Toddler Group. We had a huge array of colours and lots of PVA glue, what's not to like?!

(These photos are really dating the crafts. Jessica, I'm sorry that I didn't sort your hair out before taking this one!)

Mosaic Coaster

Ahead of Father's Day last year I found myself in Hobbycraft (I know, however could that have happened?!) and I spotted a load of mosaic bits in their clearance. Ordinarily it's not a cheap craft and I hadn't really considered trying it with Jess (my blood pressure does increase somewhat when she makes a mess of more expensive materials) but I can't resist a bargain. The clearance price facilitated a brilliant activity. We bought a couple of ceramic coasters, lots of shiny pieces and a small pack of grout and planned to make presents for the Grandads. 

I cheated and covered the coasters with double sided tape so that there was no concern over speed or glue drying and just handed Jessica the pot of pieces. Once she was happy with what she'd done I did squeeze a few more small pieces into the gaps that remained but Jessica absolutely did do the vast majority of the hard work. I did do the grouting but now that Jess is a little happier to get her hands mucky I would definitely consider letting her have a go next time.