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.

A while ago we went to Cheltenham museum and as part of one of the exhibits the children could make leaves to hang on a tree. My husband made this leaf with our two year old.

He started off with a green circle of waxy tissue paper and folded an edge into the middle so that part of the edge was on the other edge of the circle, then he folded it in half and cut out a crescent shape. This left a leaf shape. Whilst it was folded in half he folded out from the middle crease, which represented the main middle vein in the leaf. The folds were at an angle and he only made the folds/creases ‘hard’ by running his finger over them near the main vein. This gave the leaf its characteristic shape.

The idea of these leaves was to put them on a ‘alphabet’ tree with something written on them, but I think with different greens it would be a good project to make for summer mobiles and you could even get some twisty twigs to act as a tree to hang the leaves on. Alter the colours to include yellows, oranges, reds and browns and you could have fun with some sort of autumn tree.

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 as a get well soon card for a neighbour who had broken their hip. I used: the picture of the flowers which I had cut out of an old calender, a sheet of brown and a sheet of yellow card, scissors and a pritt stick.

I had cut around the yellow exotic flowers so that they had a slight border to them that was nicely curving with now sharp corners. I then stuck it onto the brown card and cut around the shape again - this time leaving a brown border of a few mm.

I then stuck the resulting shape onto the yellow piece of card which I had folded in half.

I then cut around the shape for the third time, this time making sure I didn’t cut completely through the folded side so that it remained a hinged card and not two separate shapes.

I think it looks nice but isn’t really a card you can stand up as it doesn’t have a flat bottom. Also, I should have left more of the folded edge as it flops a bit too much when opened.

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.

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 princess hat with my two year old for a Prince and Princesses week they were having at her nursery, mainly because I had left the little princess/fairy dress she’d been given for Christmas at my parents’ house and therefore had nothing to make her into a princess. The idea behind the hat was that it was one of those big pointy jobs with the material train coming out of it.

We used one paper doily, PVA craft glue, and little carousel horses and hearts I had stamped out of wrapping paper from presents and coloured envelopes from Christmas and birthday cards we’d been sent. We also used masking tape; scissors; purple, gold, iridescent blue, pink and silver glitter paint pens; gold and red twisted cord; and pink silky fabric offcuts from a dress my mother had made about five years previously!

I the started off by folding the doily in half and half again so that I ended up with it divided into four equal quarters. Whilst folded up it looked like a ‘pizza slice’, which I cut the tip off. Once unfolded the doily now had a hole in the very middle of it.

I then cut a slit up to the hole from the frilly edge, and slipped one side of the doily underneath the other and moved it all around until it made a cone. I used a strip of masking tape to secure it in place (I put one strip on the inside of the cone as well to make it more secure).

I then gave the hat, drizzled in PVA white craft glue, to my two year old daughter along with the paper shapes and some offcuts of the red and gold twisted cord. She proceeded to put the shapes on the hat or to give me some specific ones to stick on for her.

Once bored of this she picked out the colours she wanted from our glitter pen collection and proceeded to squeeze glitter all over it. I did have to help her with some of the glitter pens as they need to be squeezed harder than she was capable of.

For the train I selected the pink silky material offcuts I had, and presented them to Jean for her to pick her favourite. I then cut out a rough isosceles triangle.

Once the glitter and glue were dry enough I pushed the point of the triangle of material through the hole in the top of the cone.

I then cut two lengths of red and gold cord and tied them to the sides of the hat as a strap to tie under her chin.

I made this castle with my two year old for her nursery’s “Prince and Princesses” week. I have split how we did it over three posts; this is the last one of the posts. In order they are:

*Making a skeleton castle *Making a tissue mâché castle *Painting a tissue mâché castle

We used a silver craft/poster paint and pots of yellow, orange and black paint we had picked up in Tesco’s. We also had a mixing pot, a water pot, one large children’s paint brush and one small children’s paint brush, plus some tissue to blot spills up! We also had a plastic mat on the floor to work on and a painting apron on the two year old.

We mixed the paint, which was mostly the silver paint with a little bit of black in it, as well as varying amounts of the yellow and orange in it.

We didn’t completely mix it up as we wanted a nice stony, mottled texture. We then painted the castle.

Obviously, with the uneven texture of the tissue castle, I had to go over it at the end, making sure all of it was covered in the paint. I also attempted to make sure the inside of the towers were painted.

Whilst I was doing this, Jean was washing the brushes out rather militantaly.

We then left it to dry.

Once it had dried I made up a 3:1 PVA glue to water mix, which I painted onto the castle to seal it. This did, however, make the paint run slightly which didn’t really matter with the texture we were hoping for. But it still makes me wonder if I should have mixed the PVA glue with the paint in the first place and reduced the amount of drying time that we had.

I made this castle with my two year old daughter for her nursery’s “Prince and Princesses” week. For ease, I have split up how we did it over three posts - this being the middle one, they are:

*Making a skeleton castle *Making a tissue mâché castle *Painting a tissue mâché castle

I started off with the above masking tape and cardboard castle and then used watered down PVA white craft glue, tissue or loo roll, a baking tray, tin foil and an oven.

Jean helped unravel and rip up the toliet paper, a task which she enjoyed greatly. This resulted in some frustration at the end when I said we’d finished making the castle. She asked to make another and I stupidly said we didn’t have any more loo roll innards etc. To make another one she then promptly unravelled the last of the toilet paper to make an ‘all gone’ that we could use to make another castle!

The PVA water mix was about 4 parts water:1 part of PVA and stirred thoroughly. We then dipped the toilet paper into the mix and literally slapped it onto the castle. I found that I had to use a square of tissue paper for each of the turrets, or as they were at the time, sticking-up lolly sticks.

Once the castle was completely covered in the PVA-soaked tissue I covered a baking tray in foil and carefully moved the castle onto it. I realised that the thickness of tissue would mean it would not dry in time for Jean to take it to nursery and I had read a book that said you could bake paper mâché in the oven. So I put the castle in the oven on 120 degrees C setting.

This, it turned out, was a bit too hot so it got turned down to 100 degrees C for a second cooking. I left it on for about 45 minutes, and the next morning I put it on again for about 2 hours at 80 degrees C. It had got slightly singed but seemed ok.

What I hadn’t planned for was that it had become glued to the tin foil, so I cut a panel out of the back of one of the boxes that Jean’s Christmas presents had come in and simply transplanted both castle and foil to the cardboard once it had cooled sufficiently. I then turned the castle upside down to neaten up the tin foil on the underside and to fasten it with brown parcel tape.