having 5 tabs open to try and sort out links for youth hostels we’ve had a bit of an arts and crafts (for girls) fest here today.
After a long and oft-interupted IM chat with Ali this morning during which I got the children dressed, made cups of tea, brushed Tarly’s hair – and yes that is worthy of mention when it becomes a fortnightly event, got loads of nail varnish and other odd things out of it, so that was good! – and even put a wash on although I neglected to hang it out :oops:. Then we nipped into Lancing, took a couple of books back to the library that I’d forgotten last night, got a couple more out for the children, wandered round the charity shops and generally mosied about. We picked up a few bits in the charity shops actually – Davies spotted a cuddly Gromit toy – which brings his total up to 4 of them, but having spent lots of time looking at W&G stuff on ebay I know I could sell it for at least double the £1.50 it cost so I don’t mind. I found a little chinese style dress for Tarly which I have long thought she’d look lovely in, red, which is a great colour for her and for just £1.5o. If you can look past the odd posed grin and the fact she refused to wear it done up at the neck:
I’d been thinking about paper mache in the morning for some reason, having seen something somewhere about papier mache boxes and meant to google for some ideas and found a papier mache book in the ‘4 for 99p’ basket in one of the shops. So I got that along with a M&S version of The Velveteen Rabbit and two Usborne First Nature books – one on trees and one on creepy crawlies. Also picked up a big box of art straws for a quid to go in the craft drawers when we get them sorted out. We also saw the leap pad book of Madagascar which Ady has promised he will buy for Davies when he next makes a leap forward in his reading, so hopefully that will inspire him to get the leap pad out and do some more with it as that really helped bring him on last time far more than sitting with me seems to. Need to bring it out of his bedroom and try and encourage him to use it a bit tomorrow I think.
Came home and the children did some plasticine modelling with Davies following the instructions from a W&G modelling kit and using pieces of wire Ady had picked up at Hobbycraft yesterday to give more stability. I got a bit involved in that but I try to stay fairly hands off when he does this otherwise he gets disheartened that his efforts don’t look ‘as good’ as mine and ends up just wanting me to do everything. I explain that the only way I learnt to do stuff was by lots of practise but he seems to expect to be able to do everything perfectly at the very first try – and comparing his efforts to mine removes some of his pleasure. 🙁 But he did some great work anyway and when I’d stopped sitting with him he made a really good representation of Morph – who was pictured in the back of his book, so that was good. 🙂
I started looking at my papier mache book and decided to have a bash at something not too ambitious, so I cut out a Wallace shaped bit of cardboard and covered that in papier mache with lots of ‘help’ from Scarlett. It’s already hardening off as I didn’t make it too thick and providing it dries lighter and the head is not so top heavy it snaps I think it will look really good painted up. Scarlett wants a jewellry box next and we have lots of those big fake gemstones which would look really cool imbedded in a chunky box with lots of bright colours so I might have a bash at working out how to construct a box for a base (or pop along to the Wizard store and see what suitable cheapo boxes they might have to just cover instead. Actually I can think of all sorts of craft ideas which would look good with papier mache using stuff from the scrap store but as I don’t want to clutter my own house up with handcrafted tat I might need to save them as present ideas for people instead 😉 Do shout if you have a birthday coming up and fancy a bathroom mirror with 3D mermaids and an intergral shelf on it! 😀
We’d just about cleared all that up and they’d had tea by which time I was getting shouty and fed up with such full on parenting so happily Scarlett fell asleep almost instantly in my arms and Ady is taking care of Davies. Apprentice tonight served with pizza and wine! 🙂