All About Crackers!

I've made my own crackers for years and years. It was something Mum and I started together. She would buy some lovely little gifts for us and I would make the crackers to put them in. I'll never forget the year that we put a beautiful silk scarf in Nan's cracker - it was not very well received but her response was priceless! 

Anyway, we used to buy cracker making kits that included everything else you needed - precut templates, snaps, jokes and crowns. In the last few years I've just used snaps bought from Hobbycraft and have used cardboard tubes wrapped to form the cracker but I had a bit more time on my hands this year so I decided to try making them properly. I used a template from Mr Printables, which worked really well. I printed one copy, which I have laminated to keep. I then used this template to make a dozen crackers and will keep it to use for years to come. 

All that remains is to see if they actually snap properly on the day itself! Fingers crossed...

 

Birthday Cards

We have quite a few family birthdays in August so Jessica has been busy creating some beautiful cards this month. I am responsible for the cutting out but I do as I'm told and Jessica takes over once she has all the shapes she needs. Here are four of her most recent makes...

Jungle Tiger

I was inspired by Kathy's beautiful project this week and absolutely had to give it a try with Jessica. So, I copied Kathy's tiger as best I could and we coloured it in together. Jessica insisted on giving our tiger eyelashes and purple eyes! Once we were happy with the image we set about hiding it in the jungle of tissue paper. It's a lovely mixed media piece and we had a lot of fun creating it...

Toilet Roll Windsock

This is another one of our 30 Days Wild activities. We made our own windsock from a toilet roll, some tissue paper and some craft tape. Totally low tech and absolutely not weather proof but when the rest of June is forecast to be like this...

... it doesn't really matter. So, we made it and hung it high in our Cotoneaster. Now we have to wait for some actual wind because we made it on Monday when it was stifling and there was hardly a breeze in the garden.

Paper Bead Snake

So, our chicken pox crafting continues...

Yesterday we make an upcycled paper bead snake! We cut out large triangles from an old magazine and made them into long beads or tubes by rolling them around a pencil and gluing together. Next we found a polystyrene egg, a pipe-cleaner and some googly eyes for the head. We threaded the tubes onto some embroidery thread and used some beads for the snake's tail. Finally the snake needed some star markings on his head. Voila, one very long, satisfyingly bendy snake to play with.

Jess was pretty pleased with it wrapped around her neck!

Paper Plate Lion

I am a big fan of a paper plate, particularly when crafting with toddlers. They are so sturdy, easy for parents to transport home even if they're covered in glue, paint or glitter and they have so many uses. Off the top of my head I can tell you that in recent weeks I've used them to as shields, moons, faces, masks, hats and suncatcher windows. At just 2p per plate when you buy a pack of 50 from Poundland - you can't go wrong.

Now, anyone who knows my daughter will know how much she loves cats. Domestic or wild, big or small, it doesn't matter. She loves them all. Lions are amongst her favourites probably as a result of  her love of The Lion King. So, on yet another day cooped up with chicken pox we thought we'd have a go at making a paper plate lion...

World Book Day Part 3 - Paper Dolls

The Paper Dolls by Julia Donaldson is a fabulous story that we've enjoyed time and time again in our house. After reading it again last week we just couldn't resist making our own set. Jessica's names may be less imaginative than in the book and she insisted that her paper dolls must all be girls in dresses but they are firm friends and have already been played with a lot. Meet Reddish, Goldie, Pinkie Bow, Greyish and Bluey Sparkles...

Shape Pictures

World Book Day is almost upon us again so we've been thinking about favourite books this week and last. Jessica's taken some pictures into nursery that she's drawn, including one of Gobbolino and Sootica the witch's cats, which we're reading at the moment. Today we turned our attention back to a firm favourite, The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark. As with the other animal pictures that follow, I cut out what I was told to and Jessica assembled the pictures. She can be terribly bossy at times!!

This next one is Nala, the black cat that lives down the road from us. I'm not sure why she needed two pink paws or why she's holding them up as if she's begging but I can explain (to some extent) why she has seven whiskers - it is one of Jessica's many whims! She always draws three whiskers on both sides and then a fourth on the left. At this point, she always says, "there's the extra whisker". It's her little style, shows that the picture belongs to her I suppose.

The cat was for me, so she had to make one for Daddy too. Naturally, he got a bird. In this case a Tawny Owl. To be specific, a lady Tawny Owl, identifiable by the eyelashes. Six eyelashes, not seven as her whim has not extended beyond whiskers yet!

Valentine Animals

These lovely ideas come from iheartartsandcrafts and firefliesandmudpies. We love how the hearts can be used as feathers or spikes depending on how you glue them on. We'll be making them at Toddler group next week as Valentine's Day is in the middle of half term this year. Jessica made the peacock and hedgehog for people at nursery today...

Nest Building Again

The combination of the garden whispering to me that Spring is coming, the RSPB big garden birdwatch this weekend and our installation of a new nest box on Sunday has got me thinking about the birds this week. We're also trying to complete our RSPB Bronze Wild Challenge where we have to complete different tasks about either helping or experiencing nature. One of these tasks is to upcycle some of your rubbish so we thought we'd upcycle an old magazine into a nest or bowl or hat depending on your perspective!

It will probably end up as a bowl for pompoms or feathers in Jessica's play shop I think. We didn't use nearly as much paper this time, we've got gaps and have not trimmed the edges so it's definitely more nest like than our first attempt last Easter. We did it all in one go and it dried within an hour or two - fabulous! 

Apple Trees

It was our first day back at Toddler group today. Next week we're all off to an orchard to enjoy some fresh, juicy apples (weather permitting) so I thought we'd make our own apple trees this week. Paper, glue, toilet roll tubes and a craft punch - surely a winner! Actually, we were very low on numbers this week as the school's are all on inset so there were only about twelve trees made and at least half of them all went home together - sorry, Karen! The children did a combination of tissue paper and shredded paper and a few of them also made blackcurrant bushes and blueberry trees using some scrunched up purple tissue paper. I loved them.

Paper Bead Necklace

In an idle few minutes on Friday afternoon when I had given in and finally let Jessica watch some telly I decided to make a handful of paper beads from some old Good Food magazines that I had lying around. I was very haphazard about it and didn't bother marking out or measuring; I just wanted something to keep my hands and mind occupied for a while. They worked just about as well as when I have measured them carefully and it was quite liberating to be less precise about it to be honest. So I cut out some triangles from two adverts in the magazine and rolled them up around a wooden skewer (start from the base of the triangle) before brushing some acrylic varnish on them to secure. 

Once Jessica was able to tear herself away from CBeebies she was very keen to commandeer my beads and make herself a necklace. I usually use a cocktail stick to wind around but the wooden skewers made it much easier for Jess to thread the beads with her elastic and plastic needle.

She definitely didn't order them as I would have done but it's her necklace so her choice. This is one of the things I find challenging, particularly when working with my own child. It's so tempting to meddle in the creative process of children but it teaches them nothing positive and potentially gives them lasting insecurities. As I have mentioned before, it's all about the process and not the end product. 

Besides, she thinks it's brilliant and I have to admit, it does look pretty good on her!

Buddleja or Lilac Collage

This piece of Jessica artwork was inspired by a beautiful card I received for my birthday (thank you, Katie!). I'm afraid to say that she liked it so much that she started writing her name on it (sorry, Katie!) before I could get a photo of it for here...

Katie's card is embossed and then she has filled each circle in the design with various jewels and studs. It's stunning and gave me the idea to do a collage with Jess. I can't decide whether we've created a lilac or buddleja flower but either way I love it! I drew the general shape and punched out a whole load of circles then Jess got to work with her glue and stickers. She decided she liked them overlapping so we have a really full head of flowers. It was a great preschool craft. Thank you for the inspiration, Katie.

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...

Ocean Suncatchers

Is it possible that contact paper (sticky back plastic) is the best thing since sliced bread?! I can't resist the mess free wonder of the stuff and have usually got a couple of rolls lying around. I've only used it for craft purposes myself but I have seen some lovely sensory ideas using it with little ones such as walking on it taped to the floor. 

The first time we used it to make suncatchers was at Fingringhoe Fledglings, a preschool group at a local Wildlife Trust visitor centre but we've done several since. We use things like tissue paper, coloured films and glitter to create them. I cut the aperture out of a rectangular piece of card and cover the whole thing with contact paper before letting Jessica do her thing. Once she's finished sticking I cut around the aperture to make a card outline around the suncatcher...

In addition, when we did them at our Toddler Group we added some ripped tissue paper tentacles to make these lovely jellyfish. There was much discussion about whether jellyfish should have eyes and if so, how many. Neither of our solutions are accurate but this is craft not Biology! As you can see, Jessica also took the opportunity to practise her scissor skills out on the one she made at the group. 

Upcycled Paper Beads

This is my preparation for the WCHS co-curricular day tomorrow. I can’t give away too much information just yet as the girls don’t know what they are doing but I’ll explain and post some more photos after the event.

So, I’ve been making my first ever batch of upcycled paper beads. I chose a nice orange advert from an old Sainsburys magazine and cut 17 isosceles triangles from it. They are cut lengthways (to make them as long as possible) and all have a base of 2cm. I then rolled the beads using a cocktail stick to start them off. The rolled paper then needed to be secured so I varnished it. Tomorrow I will be using acrylic varnish but I only had clear nail varnish at home so I tried that. For the record, it gives a nicer shine but is not as easy to use as the acrylic varnish.

Once dry I threaded them all onto a piece of elastic to make an African-style paper bead necklace, which I look forward to wearing with my authentic Ghanaian dress tomorrow.

 

Origami Colibri Hummingbird

As we all know, first anniversaries are traditionally meant to be gifted with paper. So, back in 2010 for our first anniversary I spent hours and hours perfecting the skill of folding a Colibri Hummingbird from paper for David. Three years on, here’s the little fella standing proudly on my clothes horse!

Although it’s Ruby-throated rather than Colibri, here is one of my own video clips of a hummingbird feeding in Texas from our holiday in 2011…

Book Review - Project Origami, Thomas Hull

Although there is a second edition of this book out at the end of this month (click here for details) I only just got this one for Christmas. It’s brilliant. Mind you, it is very definitely another one of those books that will appeal to the few of us who really are passionate about both Mathematics and crafting.

 

This book consists of 22 activities to inspire mathematical discovery in the classroom through origami. They range from “folding equilateral triangles in a square” to “rigid folds – Gaussian curvature and spherical trigonometry”. The worksheets and solutions are carefully produced and, at least at first glance, appear to be very useable while the pedagogy and extension sections are really interesting.

 

Although the material is primarily aimed at higher education Mathematics courses such as topology, number theory, calculus and graph theory, many of the activities can be adapted to suit high school Mathematics too. It will just take a bit of creativity, flexibility and plenty of enthusiasm to see them through.

 

Once they have constructed the net of a truncated icosahedron (football), I have often challenged my key stage 4 classes to colour the net so that no two faces of the same colour touch before cutting and folding the net into the 3-dimensional shape. This book has given me some further ideas on this topic and next week I’m going to attempt to introduce my Year 10s to the concept of planar graphs allowing them to demonstrate that four colours are sufficient to colour the ball without like-coloured faces touching.

 

Imagine putting a football (which is made up of 20 hexagons and 17 pentagons) onto the table, stretching the bottom face out and pushing the rest of the ball down flat onto the table so that none of the edges cross. This creates the following planar graph of a truncated icosahedron:

Note that this representation only shows 31 faces as the 32nd shape (the final pentagon) is stretched out underneath all of the others. This new 2-dimensional representation of a football clearly shows which faces touch each other, making the colouring problem significantly easier to tackle. It is easy enough to show that three colours are not sufficient so all they need to do is to colour the diagram with four colours so that no two adjacent shapes are the same colour and the outer hexagons are coloured using only three colours (so that the hidden pentagon can be coloured in the fourth colour). This is a simple exercise that they will have no problems with. It can then be extended to a 3-edge-colouring problem, which is even more interesting!

 

That’s why I keep asking for these kinds of books. They give me so much inspiration and help me to steer clear of hum drum textbook learning once in a while. I know it’s a niche market but while they keep publishing this kind of material I will keep buying it. Sorry David, my quirky library is ever expanding.

Late but definitely worth the wait

Okay, so I ran out of green paper but you have to admit that this Sierpinski tetrahedral structure made out of 256 individual tetrahedrons is pretty impressive. Each edge of the structure is 64cm long so I have had to be careful carrying it around school – it just about fits through the doors!

Two of my students also constructed a beautiful topper for our Christmas tree. Again it was done properly using a pair of compasses and consists of equilateral triangles. There are three of the snowflakes taped together to create a sort of pyramid that sits on top of tetrahedral structure.

The topper is another example of a fractal and is called a Von Koch Snowflake. You start with an equilateral triangle and draw three more equilaterals, which have sides a third of the original, in the centre of the three sides. Now do the same on the twelve new sides and repeat as many times as you like as shown in the diagram below.

Our Van Koch Snowflake began with an equilateral triangle of sides 9cm. The next iteration used 3cm equilaterals and we stopped once we’d done the 1cm triangles as this was fiddly enough using a pair of compasses.

Mathematics really is beautiful.

How to make a Sierpinski Christmas Tree

This Christmas tree (which is yet to be completed) is inspired by the Sierpinski triangle fractal. The image below shows the progression of the fractal at different levels of complexity.

 

The number of black triangles in each diagram forms the geometrical progression 1, 3, 9, 27, … . It is an example of a fractal, which means that it has a self-similar structure and you can see the same pattern repeated over and over again.

My challenge with Year 10 this year was to take this design into three dimensions and create a fractal Christmas tree. We started with regular tetrahedrons constructed with a pair of compasses and a straight edge. In just an hour the girls managed to create one and a half level 4 fractals each containing 4³ = 64 tetrahedrons. They worked really hard and I promised them that somehow I’d get up to the next level of fractal, which has a total of 256 tetrahedrons in it. My Year 12s and 13s helped but I was only just over half way through at the end of the day and I’m still working on it now!

This is the first one that they created:

So, this is how to do it…

1. Create the nets of four tetrahedrons and sellotape or glue them together to make a larger tetrahedron. Do this by taping three tetrahedron together on the base and adding a fourth one above.

    

2. Remember that fractals require a self-similar structure so you now need to make four of these structures and tape together to make the next stage in the fractal.

    

3. Repeat this process as many times as you like. Create four of the current structures and tape them together in exactly the same way.

I’ll post the finished tree sometime in the middle of next week, then I just have to find an appropriate place to keep it safe. It’s going to be beautiful!

[Here's a link to the finished tree - it's huge!]