Salaric

For these heart beads I mixed up the appropriate colours to create the textures out of fimo soft (polymer clay). I then rolled each texture into sausages of fimo and cut them into millimetre-thick discs. Following this, I aligned these into a wonky square and used my finger to squidge the discs together. I then took a straight high-sided glass and used it as a rolling pin.

I had to keep moving the sheet of fimo I was rolling, otherwise it sticks to the glass or the worktop. Once the sheet was uniformly thin (as much as you can get a uniform thickness by hand - some people use pasta machines for this but I have not tried this myself yet) I used medium-sized aspec cutters that I got from Almond Sugar Crafts.

I then used a paper clip I had bent out of shape to poke a hole just below the point where the heart plunges at the top. Following that, I carefully placed the heart beads onto a baking tray and baked them for 30 minutes at 130 degrees C in our kitchen oven. These look good on earrings and on ribbons around presents. They are a great way to use up spare bits of fimo and for adorning things for weddings and Valentine’s day. If you don’t put a hole in them they can be used as generic craft bits or as re-usable table confetti for romantic meals. The polymer clay also survives second bakings so the hearts can be added to other projects.

Me and my two year old made this castle for her nursery’s “Prince and Princesses” week. I have split how I did this into three posts called:

• Making the skeleton of a castle
• Making a tissue mâché castle
• Painting a tissue mâché castle

This is how I made the ’skeleton’ or framework of the castle:

We used one small box (about 15cm across) that electronic components had been delivered in, four loo roll innards or tubes, masking tape, scissors and wooden lolly sticks.

We cut strips of masking tape and then taped the lolly sticks around the loo roll innards but with the lolly sticks slightly proud of the top of the tube, to make the turrets of the castle. The loo roll tubes were going to be the towers. Jean helped a lot with the taping.

Once all the lolly sticks were in place I wrapped the whole thing in masking tape to get rid of all the tatty ends - which, as a two year old was helping, there were a lot of.

We repeated the process with the other three loo roll innards until we had four towers ready and waiting.

I then attached the towers to the corners of the box using the masking tape - this was actually quite fiddly and they still moved a bit precariously after I had fixed them to the box.

To try and make it more secure and because at this point I hadn’t yet thought about doing the paper mâché, I covered the entire structure in masking tape as I thought it would make a better surface to paint.

I ended up with a masking tape tower.