Ice gem garden decorations

Baby its cold outside, so the girls and i are taking advantage of the cold and creating ice gems to decorate the garden.  After foraging around the garden we were surprised to find there are still pretty and colourful things to be found this time of year.

 Using a collection different size and shapes of pots we placed a sparing amount of water in them and let them freeze for 30 mins and then arranged the foliage on the ice adding another sparing amount of water and letting set again, we then repeated this one more time making up a nice half cm piece of ice.

 After using a metal kitchen skewer dipped in hot water this melted and hole perfectly for threading some twine so we could hang them from the trees outside.

Celebrating Autumn

We are continuing to celebrate Autumn at home last week we went on an Autumn walk and made autumn crowns and this week we are decorating the house, we cant resist making a wreath for the front door and used some of the acorns we foraged for, as well as some pretty fabric maple and oak leaves to add autumnal colours .  Sophie is getting a dab hand at wreath making now, even with the difficultly of an excited Ella wanting to join in by running off with all our crafting bits.  We even made a second small wreath for one of the kitchen windows and to add a bit of warmth and sparkle we mixed rattan light balls to natural oak leaves, ivy and maple florist wraps to lay across the window sill.

Seaside crowns

We are getting in the holiday spirit and wishing we were by the seaside so to keep up the seaside spirit until we get there we thought we would make some seaside crowns and to help us our friends from Baker Ross sent us these inspiring seaside shapes £2.25 for 10 which the girls got stuck into right away painting them up in the wonderful Pearlised acrylic paints £9.99 for 6 colours you can see us using the paints here as we made pirate swords and Thank the teacher presents.  Even Ella got involved as she loves watching and copying her big sister and her big sister loves to guide her in what to do and Ella's little fingers were perfect for picking up small Self adhesive acrylic jewelry £2.99 for 200.   Both Girls had lots of fun and wore their crowns, Apparently Sophie was Queen seaside and Ella was Princess crabby !!

Baker Ross Summer collection

We really love to play with Baker Ross crafting goodies they are really inspiring and Sophie just cant wait to get her hands on them, and Now we have little Ella watching closely and wanting to join in.   We are today playing with the following items Ceramic flower decorations £3.99 for 5   Wooden swords at £2.99 for 4 Pearlised acrylic paint £9.99 for a pack of 6 Self adhesive acrylic jewels £2.99 for a big bag of 200 gems To create the above collection of crafted items. 

The wooden swords are really great they are a proper pirate shape and we love that they are a wooden swords which means that you can actually play with them properly and do mock sword fights, they make a great sound when bashed together in fighting and it is just a shame that Sophie Pirate costume is packed away for the move else she would have put this on, these are great fun and also great for pirate parties to make a costume or as an activity at the party. The beautiful pearlised paint sat really nicely on them holding the colour well, we think this would be a great summer holiday activity to keep the kids busy with play and Sophie took hours painting the backs and fronts and then bejeweling the swords with the self adhesive gems, which there were many great shapes and colours that sparkled well.

With the end of term coming in 3 weeks these ceramic summery flowers are just lovely and perfect for making the perfect Thank the Teacher gift and with the extra special pearlised paint to bling up and bring the flowers to life Sophie set to work on creating mini master pieces ready for the end of term.  Again she just went to town with the adhesive gems, how could you not they really are great.   Sophie really loved the pearlised paint so much she started painting herself this was just one leg, you can see how shimmery and shiny it is and pretty pastel colours.

Edible paint for babies

I do love crafting with my girls and it seems to be on hold atm due to one thing or another in life getting in the way and also with Ella being so small has ruled out playing with tiny sequins, globby glue and real paints.  I was really itching to introduce my littlest lady to being creative so now she is of a decent size to enjoy it we made some edible paints just incase little fingers went into the mouth while we played, however i didnt need to worry about that as she must have my creative gene and had loads of fun finger painting she didnt want to put it in her dribbly chops

So how do you make edible paint, OH so easy mix up some flour and water to a nice moveable gloopy consistency and separate little blobs of gloop and with a toothpick add Wilton food gels as they are bright, strong and have excellent colours ( i think i need to contact Wilton the amount of exposure i give them on my blog)

The consistency is brill and hold on the finger to make marks and also sits great on paper and the colours stay good and strong when spread about.  Here is my little Picasso's first work of art now proundly on my art wall, good job Ella !

BIG Box Fun Pirate style

SHIVER ME TIMBERS its the blood thirst captain Sophie and her rabble of a crew Ella here to run you through beware!!

We hope we have not scared you to much.  Well if your a parent you will know a child would prefer a box over the toy inside any day so we are having some BIG BOX FUN AGAIN !!!!

 A little help with some great Acrylic paints from Baker Ross and a bumper pack of brushes  it was easy to go wild in the garden with some big style art.  Oh yes Ella is a pirate crew in training as she is sitting in a washing up bowl ... KIDS!

After a great painting session we taped the boxes together and  dropped a blue bed sheet and made TAD DAH a pirate galleon ship, if you squint your eyes together ... a bit more ... maybe a bit more you can probably make it out.  After a costume change and  a bit of make up and hair dreads Johnny Dep style the captain and her trained up crew set sail.

ALL ABOARD  

 The seas were perilous and shark infested. Danger was all around but nothing could stop the brave shipmates and as they drew their cutlasses and waged war against the great silver shark and a lengthy battle pursued

 In the end the might pirate crew won the day with and glory and spoils of treasures were found scattered across the seven seas of blue bed sheet.

Click below for Robot head and rocket ship 

Crafting Easter Eggs

Easter will be with us very soon and we have cracked open the crafting cupboard to make some pretty eggs to decorate with.  We have bought some polystyrene eggs that you can jazz up in your own creative way so we decided to decopatch  them in bright papers before blinging them up.  

We have been sent a few bits from Baker Ross that we used some self adhesive pearls, mini holographic stickers and self adhesive bows and some Giotto decorating pens we we used on some of our eggs, check out their web pages they have anything and everything you might need for crafting.  Sophie was so very careful taking her time to apply the pearls and i told her about Feberge eggs so she tried to make her eggs look like one of these and i think she did a nice job, especially as we had such nice and pretty materials to work with.  We also worked with lots of our own materials that we had in the craft cupboard.