Utterly lovely hearty-bunting... a make-along with me (er Marion!)

Its deep dark January now.  

As we speak my two babes are screaming in joy at being allowed to play a round of 'Jump on the Sofa as hard as you can' in the sitting room...  deep joy (don't get involved, don't get involved, don't get involved Mum!)

Now then, I don't know about you but I believe it's really important to give children the space (occasionally) to get bored.  Poor old ds has been home ALL week with a weird viruses-temperaturey thing that sweeping through our village...9 children off in his class since Tuesday.  Not to have a ripe old moan or anything but coupled with being snowed in ALL of last week and the week before that it being half-term - let them have bored...I'm all out of ideas!

Queue Marion, my gorgeous childminder and fellow artist, she is a plethora of all things creative and saved the day.  I had some plastic and she did the rest.  Here's what she did:

Hearty Bunting with Ribbons

List of items you need:

Sticky back plastic, a sheet of.  (Book covering is good)

A heart shape to cut around, hand-sized is good.

Tissue paper shapes

Scissors

A hole- puncher

Ribbons

1.

Cut the sticky back plastic to the same height of the heart shape.

Place the shiney side of the plastic on to the table then peel the backing off.  Place the colours tissues shapes on to the sticky back (not too close together, lots of spaces)

Fold your plastic over on itself, securing the tissues and sticking the plastic back onto itself.  Place your cut-out heart shape underneath and cut around it.   

Then cut each heart shape out leaving you with this..

At the top of the heart place the hole-puncher and push down to make the holes that the ribbon will go through...your'e doing great!

After you made all the hearts (do about 6) trread the ribbon through the holes and create the banner. 

Beautiful!  Well done everyone, Marion especially for saving the day!  Beautiful bunting.  Hope you like the cloudy shed too!  Much love, Sam x  

Help...snowed in with the children?! Make newspaper bowls & decorate away!

Thank you whole heartedly to the wonderful team at Access Art for this absolute Gem from Lisa Smith.

For my Artypops after-school art class last week I will still at a bit of a loss as to what to do with the babes considering we had done a drawing session the week before.   It was really good giggle as I got the children to draw in pencil masking taped to the end of 50cm garden canes, they loved it naturally.

This week I wanted to do something makey-decoratey as they LOVE to take things home and I had had some new beady-jewellery things delivered this week too.

What to decorate?  Well, thanks to the wonderful treasure chest full of art ideas and inspiration for both children and adults I came across these.

Newspaper Bowls.

Newspaper, large sheets are good.

Garden bamboo cane or a 

Lashings of glue

Tissue paper

Gems & Beads

1.

Take something to roll the newspaper around, I used a garden bamboo cane.  Having laid the newspaper flat out, roll up with the bamboo cane inside LOOSELY as you need it to slip out at the end.  Lay the newspaper out flatly and squish down.  You may need to double it over so its proper thick, I had to.  Tape with making tape in the middle and at the ends.  peasey.

2.  

Next..roll up the newspaper so its tight as can be..am going to borrow a picture or two here from Access Art..

Tightly coil up the newspaper until it looks a bit like this:

3.  When you have your flat coil of newspaper, begin to push the bottom of the bowl out.  Do so gently and feel free to reinforce with masking tape, I did.

4.

& then...decorate away!  Lashings of glue and paste over with tissue paper.  Add more glue to 'varnish' it all and then stick on a piece of paper and pop on the radiator or in the airing cupboard overnight.  Perfecto!

Pushing, lifting, bending, scooping, walking, scoffing, Grrrring and woofing...read on, read on...

Ah yes, it's all getting proper snuggly, cosy and baltic.  Yesterday, as much of the family as possible was summoned to my aunt's house, who lives deep, deep in the countryside to help stack the huge pile of logs from pile to 'dry-log-room-in-shed' (all very rural.)  We worked like little elfs, loading up the wheelbarrow (flat-tyred wheelbarrow of course) tipping out, stacking and bending over and over again..and again...singing merrily as we worked.  

And then there was the real version.  Summoned to my aunts house in the freezing freezingness with teenagers and toddlers to move a gazillion logs...marvellous, yay...no really.   Our part of the family swung in to our local bakery to purchase hot pasties, sausage rolls and mince pies for the whole team to scoff once our work was done.  They tasted goooood and we ate them next to the real fire with the (really) big dog looking lovingly at us/our pasties.    After nosh, we walked said massive lab dog in beautiful countryside.   Our bellies full and thoroughly exercised, we waved, laughed and jollied ourselves into our cars to reverse through the garden and back onto the lane to be off our our merry ways...Oh such fun, tra la la.  

The car didn't start.  Nice.

Butting up to two cars to try and jumpstart said motor, no avail.  Rush into nearest town to purchase new battery..an hour with the babes in the cold..nice.  Hurray they are back, battery in...no start.  Bugger it.  Left car in the village and went home driven by aunt.  Grrr.  

Home, hot baths all round.  Hot choc all round.  Bed by 8pm for all apart from Daddy to watch two lots of The Killing (apparently brilliant but bit too gruesome for me in places).  Woken at 10 for two lots of puke from darling son and then back to bed, via a quick dip into twitter after loading wash 1 of 20 in the w. machine.  

Hurray for rescue services.  Fresh-faced and jolly once more (it being the next day) we all arrived at the broken down car at the same time...  The nice man started our car and instructed us not to stop or stall until we get to our local garage (no pressure there then).  Once there, dump the car.  We did as told.

Back into the maroon Corsa that we purchased last week for 450nicker to be runabout for me, allowing me to get to art classes, etc etc.  We jammed ourselves in, along with a big big box that my mum had given me sheepishly and told us to open when we get home.

Back at home, babes (one very white one) jammed in the back of tiny Corsa with massive box, out we spilled..or planned to but snap - the handbrake on the Corsa snapped, amazingly this time...I didn't and neither did Darling husband.

Once untangled from the far-too-bigger-bodies being in a far-too-smaller-car for us...home home home.  Sofa day for wee boy, wee gal on and off it too all day in sympathy.

So where is the art in this post then eh?  Well, dearest readers. the art is in the everydayness of life. The beautiful countryside that we walked the dog in.  The fire that we scoffed our pasties by...from every situation we have to find the  good bits...

My best bit was seeing my teenage nieces pushing the car, along with my mum, aunt, massive dog, Darling husband and babes!  It felt distinctly 70's!

A new post coming about what was in the box...its very very special.

Merry December everyone...no really!

x