Salaric

I started a series of blogs called The Monster Blogs and have been making monsters of various types ever since.

This is the first of a group of felt monsters I plan to make – this is Green Monster – he is a Revue Monster who specialises in Horror, Fantasy and Scifi. (once I sort the server out there will be a how I make the monsters but I thought you’d all like to see the individual monsters as they get made too!)

I am attempting to do some gothic arts and cute scary crafts for Halloween – this is my first sketch 🙂

I sat down to take part in the next Time Capsule for Art Evolved – an on line paleo-art community (ie people who draw dinosaurs etc) – the next capsule is basically elephants, so mammoths and mastodons etc… I sat down to draw one but with christmas music and decorations around I found that I couldn’t get rid of a specific image… a mammoth in a Santa’s hat.

So I drew her! Ever Hopeful Helgar may just get her Christmas wish is the tag line. Anyway I suppose I should get one with drawing a non-christmas one 🙂 The drawing was done by sketching an outline in pencil and then inking it in using Stabilo fine liners. I have quiet a few coulors now – though still not quiet enough!

Anyway Happy Christmas 🙂

Last year I decided to write a poetry book with my little girl – it was halloween themed and unfortunatly did not survive the half term holiday! She gave me poem ideas and I wrote the poems and then drew pictures on folded card which we stapled together.

I drew the pictures with felt tip and went for a child like style.

You can see the poems here I am hoping to produce it as an actual book to buy etc… for news on that go to Orange Monster which is my illustration and childrens books blog. This year I did something else for her using the same book concept 🙂

I made this card for mine and my husbands 5th wedding anniversary. I used a card blank from The Works and selected three hearts from a collection of paper shapes cut in different papers. I went for the sort of black, blue, purple feel as they are his favourite colours. I attached these with sticky pads. I also had some wedding stickers which come out as silver out lines which I used one the out side and inside. These stickers are good as you can get writing and things – though peeling them off of the sheet without stretching them can be an issue – they also don’t always say everything you want so I had to write in some of it using a black fine liner pen.

I then composed a poem which I carefully wrote out on the inside of the poem – about our last five years together. I really wish I knew how to do calligraphy but I don’t so it was again just written with my fine liner.

This framed picture of her foot print was my little girls valentines presant to me and my husband. It is framed with cardboard and has a parcel ribbon (the stuff made out of a sort of papiery plastic) as a loop on the back so you can hang it up 🙂

After Christmas and birthdays and the like my husbands family expect Thankyou Cards – this was a new one on me as in my family you just say thanks to each other. None the less I struck on a good way of making thankyou notes and occupying a small child at the same time.

First off I got some sugar paper/mounting card and some poster paints and just got Jean to paint on one side of the card – I went for red and green card as these where Christmas thankyous. This worked best as a hand squishing and swerling paint excersise so was extrememly messy.

Once dry I cut out the thankyous we’d written on plain white paper – they could have been printed but I like hand writing notes. I then cut them out and using little loops of cellotape stuck them to the card on the none decorated side. I then used a paper gliotine to cut out the card as a boarder to the letters. This was suprisingly effective – especially as I made sure they would all fit into the various sizes of envalopes we have!

I think this would have worked better with double sided tape and perhapse the more uniform sizing of printing the letters.

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.