Salaric

    

August 5, 2012

Week Two of Workshops

The Wild Cherries at Bead Workshop Centre Arts Cheltenham

I had my second and final week of running Centre Arts in Cheltenham – and boy did we pack alot of stuff in! We had crotchet, knitting, weaving in the circle, mini pompom making, a fantastic turn out for my story tree, weaving paper to make bags and baskets, creating cards, bookmarks and hanging plant pots. We learnt two different types of stitch in bead work and my cake baking improved drastically with feedback on what worked and what didn’t 🙂

These ones even got mistaken for being an art display!

Tennis Ball Cake

Recipes and decoration how to for the cakes is here.

Here are some pics of what we got up to 🙂

Alaric working hard on the tea cosy Alaric Crotchetting Jeans upcycled vase Butterfly sparkle Pretty sparkle flower tin can planter Jean's cardboard Olympics Ammonite picture before the rain Ammonite Rain Picture Jean making a rain picture o a dry day Blurred hearts rain picture purple woven flower for head dress Needles galore! Jeans spiral snake card weaved bag Easter Egg Card Spiral snake Asleep snake Jean making a pompom herringbone pattern White toddler cardi Royal Sarah Jean's book mark Blueberry book mark made from a graze box grass bookmark made from a graze box Jean weaving paper weaving card

And of course more cake pics.

English Rose Cakes Rose Cake close up White Flower topped strawberry cake Strawberry and white chocolate sport and GB cupcakes Medal orange cupcake Orange cupcake Orange gold medal cakes

My little girls loved it all too and proved time and again that kids really can make a noise with anything!

Jean and Mary making street music Jean playing a pokimon box Jean and Mary with cake Queen Jean

July 29, 2012

One Week of Running Workshops

I spent the last week doing craft and writing with people at Centre Arts. And boy have we crammed it in!

We made cards, Olympic torches and medals, decorated volcanos, made leaf garlands, sock puppets, upcycled skirts out of old t-shirts, beaded rings, made hair bands, pom poms, created cardboard looms and wove, knitted and crotcheted, plaited/braided, worked on story ideas and comic book sketches, we made pencil pots, templates and phones.

Here are the photos 🙂

Tin can yarn wrap pencil pot Festival Sheep at Centre Arts Cheltenham Alaric making a tin can phone for Jeany Jean on her home made telephone Little wool flowers Landscape tin can Wool covered tin can Weaving still on the cardboard loom Alaric still making the tea cosy :) Jean's tin can pencil pot Jean's wool braid hair bands Olympic rings pom pom hairband Upcycled skirt from t-shirts Jean plaiting lime green crotchet cardigan Jean finger knitting tinsel Skirt segments cut out of t-shirts Sarah Snell-Pym with skirt made from old t-shirts Jean writing her story The Shy Spy Jean thinking Putting leaves on the Story Tree Baby Mary going shopping Ferfer and baby Mary making sock puppets Fun with fabrics The sewing machines

Eating CAKE at Centre Arts Mary eating cake Mary enjoying herself Cardboard medal about to have the silver facing added on Jeany and her cardboard gold medal Jean with her Olympic Torch The torch bit of the cardboard Olympic Torch Jeany cutting out the flames for her torch Mary with the paper punches Jean having fun with glitter Brick Stitch Decorated papier mache volcano Jean colouring her volcano

And of course we had CAKE! The who to of which is on my cooking blog.

Sports cakes Football and flower cakes Citrus burst cupcakes Rugby and Football cupcakes Flowers and Football Cupcakes on the stand Edible Olympic Rings Olympic Coloured Cup Cake Swirl

Jeany has really enjoyed this week and has even been looking after the plant! The baby too has been tiring herself out 🙂 The kids and adults who have come along have all enjoyed themselves 🙂 I shall be running it again next week starting on Tuesday!

Jean tending the lavender plant too much make and do, Mary thinks it's time for a snooze

July 22, 2012

Two Weeks of Art, Craft and Writing!

The next two weeks from Tuesday will see me running Centre Arts in Cheltenham. Apart from the wonderful art work which deserves a visit in it’s own right! There is information about the excellent courses they run during term time and drop in craft workshops run by me 🙂

Tuesdays I will be doing paper craft and beading

Wednesdays I will be doing Fun with Fabrics

Thursdays is Story Time for the little ones at 1 and creative writing for adults 3-5 kids are welcome as I have lots of stuff to keep them occupied

Fridays is yarn craft and the knitting doctor

Saturdays is Upcycling and Junk Art

There will also be cake and drinks 🙂

November 26, 2008

Snow Mix Seed Bead Necklace

Filed under: Bead Work — sarah @ 11:34 am

snow mix

With the approach of winter I thought it would be nice to make some winter themed jewellery so I looked through my bead stocks and discovered that I had a ‘snow mix’ of seed beads from Jilly Beads. So I simply got some nylon fishing line which is transparent and strong and to me looks like the special beading thread you get. I simply cut a length that would make a necklace to go over my head without a clasp or anything – making sure I left extra for tieing up etc…

I then put a clip from the electronics bench on one end to stop the beads pouring off and threaded a fine needle on the other end, I believe it was actually a beading needle – they have thinner eyes to help them go through the middle of small beads. I then just threaded them on randomly until the thread was full. I then joined the two ends and with the needle threaded and looped the ends of the thread through the beads either side of the join so that it was nice and secure without having large horrible knots or fiddly clasps.

I then made five more and prefer to wear them all at the same time!

June 22, 2008

Heart Beads

Heart beads

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.

May 4, 2008

Making the Skeleton of a Castle

Filed under: Bead Work,Kids Projects,Paper Craft,Polymer Clay — sarah @ 2:00 pm

PVAed

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:

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.

stuff mummy!

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.

tape it

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.

Jean's tower my tower

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

four towers

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.

first tower attached towers in place

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.

masking tape castle

I ended up with a masking tape tower.