Salaric

I made this witch as an example of what sort of halloweeny things the scouts could make with pom poms, pipe cleaners and lolly sticks. All of the things used for the witch came from a Big Box of Spooky Crafts that I got from a shop called the Works last year. For the witch I used:

• One medium-sized green pom pom

• One sheet of black crepe paper

• One green metallic pipe cleaner

• One purple and black stripy pipe cleaner

• One purple glitter paint pen

• One medium goggly eye

• One small goggly eye

• One thin orange pipe cleaner

• One yellow lolly stick

• One natural wood lolly stick

• One thin red pipe cleaner

• A pair of scissors

• White PVA craft glue

• Sellotape

First off, I took the natural unstained lolly stick, which was for the body of the witch, and wrapped the purple and black stripy pipe cleaner around it about a third of the way down from the top. I then twisted the pipe cleaner around the lolly stick to fix it in place and I bent the two equal lengths of pipe cleaner into legs by putting them an ‘almost’ right angle where the knees would be.

I then added arms in a similar fashion by attaching the green metallic pipe cleaner about 1cm from the top of the lolly stick. I didn’t bend this one, but made sure that the arms were sticking out of the ’side’ of the lolly stick body, whereas the legs were sticking out of the ‘front’ of the body.

I now basically had a ’stick figure’ which needed to be dressed. I thought it would make more sense to put on the witch’s clothing before her head as the head would be too big for things to go on nicely over it.

I had a rectangle of black crepe paper which I cut in half; I then folded one half of it in half and cut a slit along the fold in the middle for the the ‘neck’ to go through. I then slid it over the lolly stick and made sure the fold lay over the pipe cleaner arms.

This, however, didn’t really work that well so I poked the palms through the paper so that it looked like she had little green hand poking out of her dress sleeves. This held the dress in place a lot better than before.

I then added the witch’s head by taking the green pom pom and cutting a slit in the bottom of it, squirting some PVA glue into it and putting on the top of the lolly stick. I then left it to dry for a while.

For the witch’s face I used two mismatched goggly eyes - I thought this would make her look more scary and demented. The eyes were self-adhesive, which was good as it made things a lot easier: all I had to do was peel the back of of each eye and stick it on where I wanted. For the mouth I cut off a 2cm long section of the thin red pipe cleaner and bent it in the middle so that it made a nice open angle, and glued it in place with the PVA.

I then cut out a semi-circle out of the remaining crepe paper and wrapped it around to make a pointy hat, gluing it one edge of the hat to the other using the craft glue. This was a bit messier than I would have liked. I then added hair using a purple glitter paint pen and basically drew on the hair and stuffed the hat on top of it. It then had to be left to dry for ages as the glitter pen took a long time to dry, which is one of the reasons I tend not to give them to the scouts for craft projects.

Whilst the witch was drying I made a broomstick for her. I did this by cutting the thin orange pipe cleaner into sections 3-4cm long and gluing them on the end of the yellow pipe cleaner. I was careful with the placement of the ‘bristles’ so that they fanned slightly. I then used a spare section of pipe cleaner to wrap around the end of the bristles that were on the ‘broomstick’, ie the yellow pipe cleaner. This made it look a lot neater and broom-like in my opinion.

Once the witch was dry I bent one arm so that her ‘hand’ was hooked under one end of the broom. I then sellotaped the end of the witch’s body lolly stick to the centre of the broomstick lolly stick, which meant the witch looked like she was siting on the broomstick nicely. I then bent the remaining arm so that she looked like she was waving.

I made this card to show to my scouts an alternative to making spooky halloween things. I got the purple card and the sequins on the card, not to mention the PVA glue, from the Big Box of Spooky Crafts.

I picked out three black star sequins, three metallic orange butterflies sequins, one black circle sequin, two metallic orange three dimensional flower sequins and four metallic green sequins. I then arranged the sequins into a pattern I liked and glued them in place. If you look at the picture you will notice that I stuck one of the flowers onto the black circle, I think this gave a nice effect. Also the purple worked well with the orange and green metallic sequins.

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.

I made this card to send to my friend - I wanted to catch the essence of a summer/autumn landscape. I used one sheet of pale blue card because I thought this would look good as the summer sky in the backdrop of the picture. I then constructed the actual picture out of 3D paint pens: yellow, two types of green and a brown.

I folded the card in half to make a large greetings card.

I wanted a very representative picture rather than one that was full of detail and I was also new to the paint pens so was concerned that trying to do too much detail just wouldn’t work. I took the slightly bluer and darker one of the green pens and drew grass along the bottom edge of the card - the grass was made up of lots of short vertical lines ranging slightly in size from 0.5cm - 2.5cm. I made sure they sort of wiggled slightly too, to make it look more like grass.

Taking the second green pen, I added on two curving lines to represent the green rolling hills I had seen in the South Downs during my Duke of Edinburgh Award.

I then took the brown paint pen and constructed what I think of as the ‘bare bones’ of a tree. I had it dominating the left hand side of the picture and let it grow organically from my hands rather than thinking about what it should look like. Again I held an image in my mind of the strangely desolate trees I had seen. It has no leaves because I felt it was late summer in a place that was normally quite windy, though the day represented was calm. They also may well have been too ‘busy’ for the card and ruined its composition.

I then took the yellow pen and drew a small circle just larger than a penny and filled it in with the paint. Then I drew slightly wavy lines coming out from the circle, though I made sure they weren’t touching the circle. The paint pens are quite difficult to use at first and it is similar to trying to writing with icing. You have to keep squeezing the pen uniformly, which is difficult as there is steadily less and less paint in there to squeeze out.

The pens dry raised but they also dry transparent which I hadn’t realised and had initially picked colours for the pastel shades, but I was actually happier with the result when they had dried than I had been with the original.

Last year I gave the scouts some sheets of different coloured card, stick on red and orange gems in various sizes, stencils of cars and boats, and various colouring pencils and pens. Here are the fathers day cards they produced. Some of the fathers had birthdays around that time so some of the kids made joint cards for the two occasions. They also had some sheets of felt that I had picked up in the Pound Shop; the glues they used were PVA white craft glue and pritt stick.

Apologies for the state of the photograph, I had forgotten to take the camera with me and this particular one was taken on my husband’s phone.

I made this card for a friend’s birthday; as her birthday is in spring and our garden was abundant with ox-eye daisies, ordinary daisies and various flowers that I don’t know the name of (but might well have been purple and lavender daisies), I wanted to make a spring flower card.

I used a sheet of blue card with pink blurry lines running around it; I think they look like little clouds scudding across the card. I then selected a blue, lavender and white iridescent glitter pen and a 3D yellow pen.

I started off by folding the sheet of card into four to make an appropriate greeting card; I then squeezed out eight little yellow dots in roughly three columns down the card. These were to be the centres of the flowers.

I then took the glitter pen and carefully added petals to one of the yellow dots. It then became apparent that I could not fit petals on all of the dots so I initially did three flowers.

I then discovered that I had to be careful not to get the petals either too near each other or the dots, as the paint sort of fused together.

I then added another three flowers, making two columns. I felt that the two spare dots looked a bit odd so I added lots of other dots which I felt looked right.

This was my first card I made for my husband (then boyfriend) for our first Valentine’s as I had no money for a card but had a lot of card about for making posters. I was surprised to find he still had it as it has been through two house moves and a flood!

I used one sheet of black card, pale lavender card and shocking pink card; I also used pritt stick and a pair of scissors.

I folded the black card in four and then decided I was going to use the resulting blank card in ‘portrait’ orientation rather than ‘landscape’. I then cut the heart out of the lavender card. I did, however, draw it out first before doing this, hence this heart is a bit more symmetrical than a lot of my hearts! I then decided that it would look far too girly to put the heart straight onto the card (I was worried about how I could make the card a Valentine’s card without it being very frilly and feminine). I then glued the heart on the shocking pink card and freehand cut out an explosive abstract border made up of irregular zigzags.

I then stuck this onto the black card and was very happy with the effect.

I made this card for my friend’s wedding but it would make a good engagment or Valentine’s card or possibly a birthday card for a girlfriend or some such.

For this card I used a sheet of pale blue card, magenta/purple card, pale pink card, eight iridescent leaf sequins, PVA white craft glue, pritt stick glue and scissors.

I started by folding the pale blue card into four, I then cut out a heart about 7cm in height from the magenta/purple card. I stuck this onto the centre of the card using the pritt stick.

I then glued on the iridescent leaves in pairs as they make nice little hearts like this. I had to use blobs of PVA to glue them onto the card. I then had to leave it to dry lying flat on the table top. I made four of these little hearts which irregularly border the large heart in the middle of the card. It was at this point I decided something needed to be in the middle of the large heart. I did initially try another iridescent heart but decided it didn’t look good.

Instead I cut out a small pink heart from the baby pink card. I then stuck this onto the card using the pritt stick.

I made this card for my friend’s birthday as his birthday, like mine, falls in the winter months, I wanted to show that the winter landscape can be just as beautiful and majestic as those of summer.

I used a sheet of craft card that was slightly bigger than A4 as it is meant more for mounting work on. It was pale blue with a pink blotchy texture that I felt was representative of the winter sky. I also used some pale blue card, magenta purple card, pink card, pritt stick glue, winter trees (which I had punched out of wrapping paper from my birthday the year before which had pale pinks, purples, blues, whites and silver on them) and a pair of scissors.

I then folded the blue and pink paper first in half longways and then in half again to get an appropriate card size.

I then cut out the swooping hills from the magenta card, measuring it against the bottom of the card. I stuck this one with the pritt stick and then did the same for the pale pink hill which I had swooping in from the other side.

I then cut out a large circle from the pale blue card - about 5cm in diameter - which I stuck on the card as a large cold winter sun.

I then arranged the trees in a way I thought looked aesthetically pleasing and stuck them all on, one at a time. With a shape like these trees there are lots of thin fragile pieces of paper which will pull off or crumple up if you are too rough with the glue. What I did was to carefully lay the shape completely on the end of the pritt stick and then slowly slide it gently over the surface of the glue. I then peeled it off using the thickest part of the shape.

For the New Year I wanted to do floating lanterns with my Scout group to help them think about global and local issues. I came up with this design of lantern the night before the meeting. Initially the lanterns were cut out of a square of cardboard and folded over one side to the middle to make a rectangle. I then folded the other side over to the middle to make a narrower rectangle. Then I folded the ends over to meet in the middle.

I then unfolded it and had a smaller square in the centre, marked out by the folds. Then I folded the square along the diagonal to get a triangle and then folded that in half to get a smaller triangle. Following that, I unfolded it again. Now I had a small square in the middle which was divided into four triangles - I ignored those triangles. Around this small square there were four rectangles joined at each corner by a small square - the small squares were divided into two triangles. I pinched the cardboard at these corners so that the small squares folded along the line that made the triangles - this gave me a nice square-shaped dish with elegant pointed corners.

I then roughly checked weather a tea light candle would fit. It did, so I roughly measured how long the side of the dish was - this is equal to that of the inside square I had earlier on. At this point I had no ruler so it was very very rough. I cut out a rectangle that was about four times as long as one of the dish’s sides and about one and a half dish sides high. I forgot to add in any sort of tab before cutting it out.

Once cut out I folded it into four so that it made a chimney for the lantern. I then cut a slit the depth of the dish’s side - up each corner of the chimney at the bottom. I then slid each of the sticking out corners of the dish through these slits. I had to use sellotape to fix the chimney together, which was a bit fiddly. I then lit the tea light candle with a long match and placed it on a bowl of water. The design worked!

I then got a ruler and a black fineliner (bought at WH Smith’s) and drew out a plan for the lantern, this time with a tab. I then scanned it but unfortunately the base/dish and the sides/chimney would not fit onto on sheet of A4. Now I had a digital copy of it on the computer where I got rid of the slight mistakes I’d made - drawing a solid line where I’d wanted a dashed line.

I then printed enough bases and sides for 20 lanterns on brightly coloured paper from dazzle create pads we’d picked up at some point in Tesco’s. I managed to get two bases onto one sheet of A4 - I realised this would mean I had more bases in various colours but reasoned that the kids would probably want to mix and match anyway.

So, using my template you need one template base and one template chimney, one pair of scissors, some sellotape, a tea light and a pen.

I cut out the templates; I had bold lines for lines where you cut and dashed lines for where you were supposed to fold. This included the slits at the bottom of the chimney.

I then put the names of countries that had been in the news for some sort of negative reason on the sides of the chimney and taped the tab to the side. I put the sellotape on the outside to prevent any sort of fire risk but some of the kids put it on the inside and their lanterns were fine, so I think I was being over-cautious.

When I finished I then showed the lantern to the kids and explained what to do.

This is what they produced. There were some interesting variations on the original design but they all worked and looked really good with the tea lights in them glowing away in different colours.