Painting Bauble Fillers

Yesterday was a painting day. After finally finishing painting the kitchen walls (I started in August!) I got out my finest brushes and turned my sights on painting and touching up bauble fillers from Hobbycraft. 

The small wooden cottage and pine cones took a while to paint but I'm so happy with the results. I created a little scene in this unusual fillable bauble with snow and a tiny log pile. Here is it hanging proudly from our tree...

Jessica had chosen a small resin cat to use in a bauble a few weeks ago. We decided to use cotton wool as a snowy base with a few glittery snowballs scattered around. We then glued some snowflake confetti shapes to the inside of the bauble and painted some snow dots on the bauble along with some snow detail on the top and around the edges of the opening but they are difficult to see on the photo below. The cat benefitted from a little touch up with acrylics and I added some snow on the ear and tail tip just because I could!

We've got several other resin figures in my Christmas supplies but I think I'll save them for next year now. It doesn't do to add too many new decorations each year!

 

More Animal Baubles

The tree is up but that doesn't mean that we've finished making baubles for the year. No, no, there's always room for more. 

There's nothing festive about a fox but I don't care, she's so cute...

I also painted a far more festive robin. They are both created using polystyrene eggs, acrylic paints and the tails and ears are painted card attached with my cool melt glue gun. I love that glue gun so much! 

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!

Ceramic Reindeer Egg Decoration

Inspired by an Easter post on Kids Craft Room, which I had filed away for future use, I created this hand-painted Christmas decoration made from a ceramic egg yesterday. I managed to pick up a couple of sets of ceramic eggs from Hobbycraft in the sales after Easter and set them aside to use for Christmas. As you may have already noticed, I really like using egg shapes to make tree decorations. I suppose this is because they are easier than spheres to craft into animals and we are partial to cute animals in this house. 

I used acrylic paints throughout but I could definitely do with investing in some better acrylics at some point. The white and gold are a bit thin so coverage was poor and there was no way I was going to get a smooth finish. I decided that reindeers are pretty shaggy so I tried to embrace the texture! The ears, antlers and tail are painted card which have then been glued to the decoration using a cool glue gun and I painted over the join to conceal the glue. 

This little reindeer may well end up being the star attraction on my Christmas tree this year. I just love it!

Polystyrene Pizza Base Printed Ice Cream Picture

Jessica brought her first book home from school today. She had chosen one about a trip to an ice cream shop. It's a book with just pictures and she enjoyed telling the story after she'd spent a while studying the images by herself. At the end of the story there are a number of questions to answer and then a few suggestions of other things you could do or discuss to engage further with the themes. We decided to make our own ice cream picture. 

We cut up a polystyrene pizza base into a wedge to use as the cone, a rectangle for a flake and two circles for vanilla and strawberry ice cream. We printed the paint with these shapes using the textured side for the cone. Jessica mixed red and green paint to make the brown for the cone and flake before adding glitter glue as sauce, glitter and paper stars as sprinkles, foam shapes to be marshmallows and a paper strawberry complete with felt-tipped pips. 

This all worked so well that I'll definitely be doing it at Toddler group later in the year. 

Decorated Birthday Present

We ordered my sister's birthday present from George this year and used their Click and Collect service. When we picked it up her crockery was in a large cardboard box so we decided to decorate the box rather than wrap them up in paper this year. It was so much more fun! Jessica wanted to make it into a tiger so we painted it orange and black before adding some unique features...

Painting at Blue Owl

For the past few months Jessica and I have been attending the storytime sessions at the rather fabulous Blue Owl Pottery Painting Cafe in Great Horkesley. Jessica really enjoys her mornings there, which we do on the first Tuesday of the month. The children have a few books read to them based on a theme for the month before painting a related item and enjoying a drink and a biscuit. I get to relax and enjoy their lovely coffee of course! We went once when Jess was younger but she didn't have the interest to do it every month back then but it's been a lovely thing to do in the run up to her starting school in September. 

Last month the books were all about Dads and the children were given the opportunity to paint a pen pot for Father's Day. This was the first time that she'd tried a sticker resist method and also the first time we'd used sponges to paint with. The colours are so much more vivid than with a brush because the sponges force you to use so much more paint. She also drew a mouse on her pot, which I then traced over using the writing bottles. We were both so pleased with the gift that I just had to share it on here. Here it is, front and back...

Blow Paint Poppies

We're participating in 30 Days Wild this month, which is a fabulous challenge run by The Wildlife Trusts. Admittedly, this was much easier for us to do before Jessica was stuck down with chicken pox but we're trying hard to keep going and do something inspired by nature every day in June. 

So, one day last week we took inspiration from the poppies that Jessica has been growing this year and had a go at painting a picture of poppies using a blow-paint technique. We used ready mixed paints but I think liquid watercolours would have been better to be honest. We squidged a spot of paint at the top of each stem and blew the paint into the shape of a poppy. The blow affect is a bit lost as the paint was so thick but it was still an enjoyable activity and we'll learn from our mistakes and try watercolours next time!

Handprints

I think it's really important to craft and create alongside Jess. I try not to do the same as her because that tends to deflate her and she will say that there's no point in her drawing a fox, for example, if mine is better than hers. However, it's good for her to see me playing, painting and making mistakes and for us to discuss creative processes. When we're painting I'll often get out my watercolours alongside hers and talk about what we both feel like painting today. She sees me plan, try, often fail, sometimes manage to salvage and always concentrate hard on what I'm doing. Crucially, we relax together and enjoy each others company while doing something productive. This handprint picture was a fun piece that I created during one such session. I love it!

Cardboard Tube Prinitng

I love it when Jessica's feeling inspired and asks to do something herself rather than waiting for me to come up with ideas or instigate our crafting exploits. They are studying The Hungry Caterpillar at nursery this half term. They're growing caterpillars in the classroom and have done lots of lovely crafts already. One that Jessica particularly liked was making caterpillar pictures from cardboard tubes. She liked it so much that she wanted to teach me how to do it too...

Next we created a flower picture. There's magic in the printing process no matter how you do it or what you create.

Simple Homemade Bird Bath

Jessica and I have made a couple of bird baths now, both using terracotta saucers atop an upturned terracotta pot. They are so cheap and really easy to personalise. We use acrylic paints to decorate outdoor pots. This is the one that we made for our own garden...

We introduced it to the garden while we still had nesting blue tits in our box but I don't think they ever found it. However, this week we're regularly getting a pair of magpies using it. They are fascinating. They're bringing in bits of bread from somewhere and dipping it in our water before eating it themselves or (I suspect) taking it to young in their nearby nest.

Fingerprint Dandelion Clock

Sometimes the simplest things are the most beautiful. As usual, Jess didn't arrange the colours as I would have liked but I try not to control her creativity so this is her finished canvas which now hangs proudly on the wall.

Modelling with Salt Dough

Kat created these pieces from salt dough back in February half term then painted them with acrylics over the Easter break. You have got to love a bit of salt dough haven't you!?!

Air Drying Clay Bowl

The second gift for Vicky's birthday was entirely handmade. We wrapped cling film around a bowl and then layered thin circles of air drying clay on top to form a flower shaped bowl. We had used this type of clay once before at a group we used to attend at Fingringhoe Wick but never to make something functional. Once dry, Jess painted it with acrylic paints. We only painted the inside so that the clay can continue to breath and dry in case it wasn't completely dry. I didn't like the idea of trapping moisture in the clay, which would eventually go moldy. With hindsight I think we should have used thicker circles of clay because I think it's probably very fragile and brittle but that's not my problem now that we've given it away!!! ;-)

Fork Painted Tulips

I came across this craft idea on Facebook. Aside from eating cake, what better use could there be for my Mary Berry forks than painting beautiful spring tulips?! Jessica insisted that she was pretending to be an artist in her studio cafe; I had to pay to join in!

Watercolour Mixing

Colour mixing has fascinated Jessica for quite a while now. It's a brilliant topic for experimentation and there are so many brilliant ways of playing with colours. We've particularly enjoyed using pipettes and liquid colours in the past. Today though, we just used a palette of watercolours and a brush. Jess used a crayon to repeatedly draw around a square tub and I encouraged her to overlap the shapes. She then painted each square with a different colour and was thrilled to find that the overlapping parts colour-mixed. Her preference for pinks and purples led to a somewhat less interesting image than we might otherwise have got but I really do try not to get too involved in these little projects.

Handmade Bauble Ideas

This time last year I was coming to the end of my rather long break from blogging so I didn't actually share any of our tree decorations from last year. So, here they are:

Decoupage onto cardboard or polystyrene balls...

Using marbling inks on cardboard and polystyrene shapes...

Hama bead designs...

Jessica's acrylic painting on polystyrene and mache shapes...

Salt dough, cookie cutters, acrylic base coat and sharpies...

Candy cane and pipe cleaner reindeers...

Miniature photo frames. I created these for myself, my sister and my Mum's siblings after she passed away in 2016...

Painted Reindeer

These blank reindeers that Jessica has decorated are now just £3 at Hobbycraft! They stand nearly 40 cm high and are brilliant. Jess chose to use acrylic paints and glitter glue to decorate ours but they'd be fantastic for decoupage too.

Disney Princess Christmas Tree

Jess is thrilled with our Disney Princess Christmas Tree creation made from a £5 Hobbycraft blank in very little time. We painted the tree (front and back) with acrylics before smothering it in glitter glue. The baubles were made using decoupage techniques and printed images of Jessica's favourite princesses. I had to be quick and light-handed to avoid the ink running but they worked quite well. I suggested that we also glue pom-poms all over the tree but Jessica rejected my suggestion. She's now going to spend the whole festive season rearranging the princesses I think.

Painted Penguin Baubles

I spotted this one on Kids Craft Room and thought we'd give it a go. I had a couple of cardboard baubles from Baker Ross left over from last year so we used them along with acrylic paints, googly eyes and orange felt for the feet.