I took some pale lilic A4 mounting card and folded it in four to make the ‘card blank’. I then used a snowflake stamp and light blue ink pad to print the snowflakes on the bottom of the card in a diagonal. I did several off these - it makes a nice start to a card that you can then make specific for each person with glitter or metallic gel pens.
This snowman bag was made by my little girl when she was I think one and it was done at her nursery - its one long bit of thickish paper, with a very fiberous feel too it in pink. They then with Jean’s help stenciled a snow man in white - Jean obviously added a purple streak!
Then the sheet was folded in half and the sides taped to make a bag. Metalic pink parcel ribbon was then stapled on for handles - this contianed all the presants she had made Mummy and Daddy.
It’s a lovely simple idea and perfect for younger children!
I made this border by folding a piece of slightly bigger than A4 card in four to make the greetings card.
I then took a foam holly stamp foam stamp from a set I found in the pound shop and pressed it into an ink pad of the more yellowy green I have.
Because of the red of the card I needed to make sure the stamp was well covered in ink and then only stamp on holly leaf at a time - this was to get a more solid green and not dingy looking leaf.
I created the border pattern on quiet a few cards as it then allowed me to personalise the cards with glitter pens and the like for each person who was going to receive one!
Glittery Christmas Tree Vase
For this vase I used one glass tumbler (Tesco’s value glasses survive baking. I always do a test run to check, before I spend ages decorating a glass), a pen knife, rolling board (marble or glass is best but I use an old chopping board with greaseproof paper over it), a hi-ball glass (this is instead of a glass rolling pin as polymer clays, of which fimo is one, melt certain plastics and get stuck in the grain of wooden rolling pins), one metal Christmas tree cookie cutter (I have specific cutters for the polymer clay work as it is not advisable to re-use for food), one baking tray and one oven.
The fimo colours I used were all fimo soft:
Dark green, light green, green glitter, yellow glitter and red glitter.
I started off with the Christmas tree for which I used the dark and light green. I started by cutting the dark green into small chunks and then squishing them back together again to get a nice malleable ball of fimo. I did the same for the light green. I then rolled them into sausages so that I had one light green sausage and one dark green.
I then placed the two sausages next to each other and rolled them into one big sausage, one half light green and one half dark green. I then folded it in half and rolled it again. I folded the sausage in half once more and rolled it between my hands until it was a smooth sausage, about 7mm in diameter.
I then cut slices off the sausage, 2-3mm thick, which I arranged next to each other on the chopping board. With my fingers I then pushed the edges of the discs together to ‘fuse’ the gaps. I then used the hi-ball glass (a tall smooth-sided glass) as a rolling pin. You have to turn the fimo sheet over after every few rolls or it sticks and ruins the pattern. I rolled from different directions to try and get an even thickness of fimo sheet. This also helps stop distortion of the pattern, giving a nice mosaic look. Once the sheet was between 1-0.5mm thick, I cut the Christmas tree out using the cookie cutter. I then gently lifted the shape and softly pressed it onto the glass tumbler. You have to be careful not to stretch the shape or squish it out of shape at this point. I rolled over the shape with the hi-ball glass to try and get rid of fingerprints.
I then baked the glass at 130 degrees C for half an hour (30 minutes) and left it to cool. This is so that I didn’t distort the Christmas tree shape whilst adding the background.
For the background I rolled together balls of red glitter, green glitter and yellow glitter. Once it was one big smooth ball I rolled it into a sausage and then folded it once and rolled it into a smooth sausage, about 1.5cm in diameter. I then cut this into discs about 2mm thick. Then I took each disc and squidged it onto the glass; this merged some of the colours and gave a very different effect to the way I did the tree.
For the top of the vase I pushed the fimo right over the rim and into the interior of the vase. Once I had completely covered the vase I again ran over it with the hi-ball glass into order to smooth it and eliminate the fingerprints (you can actually sand polymer clays once they’ve been baked but I have never tried this myself yet). I then scraped around the inside of the vase with a knife blade in order to remove the excess fimo. I sign my vases and things on the bottom, using a knife or sculpting tool. Once that was done I baked it for a second time at 130 degrees C for half and hour and let it cool.
For Christmas my aunt helps santa send out letters to the children. She says it always seems sad that we expect the children to write to santa but he never writes back - so she went and badgered him and as she has secretarial training he aagreed to let her help.
The letters can be done using a standard colour printer and the sign needs a laminating machine - but it does make it water proof so it can go outside!
The envelope is a nice touch too 
Last year my little girl came home with this ‘letter to Santa’ they gave them all magazines and catalogues to cut the things out they wanted for Christmas and then they glued them to the card. This is brilliant as at three they really are too little to write stuff themselves.
The down side however was that Jean announced she was getting a puppy for Christmas - she didn’t get one of course - well I think there was little toy one in her stocking but not a real eating the furniture puppy!
As part of the centenary of the Poetry Society they are knitting a giant poem! They are currently looking for people to knit or crochet more blank squares!
They have a facebook group too!
This looks like a fun project that combines handicrafts with writing craft
I wish I was a better knitter.
My little girl made this hanging flower at her preschool for Father’s Day - it is very simple and quiet effective.
It is a yellow card disc 12 cm or 4 3/4 inches across (diameter) on one side - the back there is a smaller circle with the message I Love my Daddy becuase he takes me to the park. The other side has tissue paper discs stuck on like petals in blue, purple and yellow. They are 7 1/2 cm across or 3 inches, with a blue card disc or circle in the middle saying Number One Daddy. There is a whole punch whole at the top through which a fluffy white pipe cleaner has been pushed through and twisted to itself to make a hanging loop!
She also made him this card - it is simply a piece of orange card folded into a greeting card with a picture Jean has drawn cut out and stuck on. The picture is Daddy in Green Felt Tip 
We also made him a Rocket cake which will appear on Salaric Cooking shortly! And in its defence all I can say is that icing isn’t like painting and polymer clay!
Last year my little girl came home with this car card for her Daddy on Fathers Day. It is literially the shape of a car cut out of folded red card with the roof acting as a ‘hinge’ so the card opens. She then painted it (with red paint!) and the nursery school drew on the windows and wheels. Very easy and effective - Jean enjoyed making it and it is still up in pride of place this year!
Cheltenham is famed for its festivals and has a Science Festival ironically as I am a trained scientist (geology) I found out about the Science Festival last year from a poet!
This year there was an ecological art space organised with the Environment Agency where the Biologist and Artist Dr Lizzie Burns and her friend Matt where helping people explore the natural world through art. Getting children especially or so it seemed to me! to think about the world and our impact of the environment.
My little girl had a great time painting our garden onto the big white column just outside the Environment Agency Cafe. I had to label things as being 3yrs old some of the things were not that obvious. There were pots of clay and a watering can of water to make a ‘paint’ out of the clay and then lots of paint brushes!
Lizzie said it was great to work big like this and I felt it contrasted very well with Matt’s seeds - he had a table with different types of seeds on it - wild banana, seeds that float on the sea, a tub of 20 different tree seeds and so on. He then gave the children the option of making seeds out of clay themselves or drawing some. There were two colours of clay red/brown and white clay.
There where lots colouring pens and things avaliable for the children to colour there seeds and decorate them if they wished - my three year olds seeds were basically clay blobs with no colour on them but hey she tried
I am myself known (on twitter at least! plus in various poetry and science groups) as the Artistic Scientist or the Scientific Artist - you choose because I can’t/wont! So I was very excited to find someone who not only is trying to cross the percieved boundaries between these two areas but is being active and successful with it. She runs workshops on lots of fun things using art to interest people in science and to explore science giving it back the sense of adventure that is often lost in modernity.
She also makes fantastic molecular jewellery which is an idea me and Ella (Chemist come writer/poet/photographer) during our undergraduates but we never got around to doing anything about it - the closes I got is making tertiary and quarternary structures out of my wire working and thinking about protiens :). Lizzies work is bueatful and she embroiders ties and things.
If I had more money than I currently do I would get some of the jewellery for Ella as a congratulations presant on completing her PhD! (Ella if I ever get out of debt name your molecule!).
My Geo-Vases are probably the closest I come in the visual arts to this kind of thing (not sure that loo roll hubbles and pompom comets count!).