Conkers!

We have had great fun collecting conkers the last few days over the park and on walks. The boys collected exactly 100 on their first outing - couldn't have managed that if they had tried to count!

Anyway, we weren't sure what to do with them all until I left the boys on their own to play and came back to this! A giant conker man!

Driftwood embroidery

A lovely project for today combining drills and embroidery needle - great fun!

I found a small piece of driftwood which I then marked out the word 'home'.

I then drilled holes along the wording. I initially used my Dremel, but it struggled a little. I then tried my Grandad's old hand drill which worked perfectly! The oldies are the goodies!

When all the holes were drilled I then threaded wool onto a needle and backstitched along the wording. 

I love the end result! Simple but effective! I have popped it on the printers tray with the stones I 'sharpied' in Spain, and  the wood weaving from our recent camping trip. I think it fit's very well!

Eden's 4th Dinosaur Party

Eden wanted a dinosaur party for his 4th birthday. Well actually it was initially a batman party, then a 'ladybird dinosaur' party and then he decided to drop the ladybirds!

I started with the invitations. These were great fun to make!

For the food I kept it fairly simple with dino twists where I could! I was working all the previous day and the party was at 11am so there really wasn't time to go too fancy. 

Book page drawing / greeting card art

My lovely friend has just moved into a new house and I popped round for the grand tour this evening.
I wanted to give her a welcome card / gift and came up with this artwork based around a torn book page. I have seen similar around and love the mixed media approach. My drawing ability is very limited but the paint markers providing the smash of colour around the basic line drawing on an old book page was simple yet effective!

Sweetie Wreath take 2! (Secret weapon loom bands!)

I have been making sweetie wreaths such as this pervious post here each Christmas for the last few years since a visit to Dan's sister in New Zealand who always makes one for Christmas!
I was approached a couple of weeks ago by a good friend who works for a firm wanting to put on a charity fundraiser / team-building craft workshop. As the company distributes sweets it seemed the perfect craft to take advantage of the raw materials available! As I will be teaching to a team rather than individuals however, some tweaks needed to be made to simplify it.

The first step is with a wire coat hanger. This needs to be stretched to form a circle shape.

This is followed by winding a long strip(s) of fleece around the hanger. 

Now comes the new secret weapon .... Loom Bands! After the 24 hour initial enthusiasm from my son we now have hundreds around the house and they seemed the perfect solution. 

Lego Party!

JJ wanted a Lego party this year for his birthday!
We decided to keep it small - ideally to be able to comfortably all build together around the table so we invited just 5 of his best school friends.

Both boys helped me with the invitations and we had quite a production going with the cutting of circles and sticking in a 6 nobble Lego brick shape, with sticky tabs helping the nobbles slightly raise.

Food wise everything had to be square (including square crisps which they were probably the most excited at for some reason!)
 I cheated a little with the brownies with shop bought mini ones but 'legoed' them up by adding choc chips to make a 4 square brick.

I had tremendous fun making the lego cake stand!!!

Sandwiches were of course lego bricks with circles of bread cream cheese glued on top.

 And I made a sleeve for rectangle cartons of juice to give the lego brick appearance.

The cake was homemade - a basic rectangular victoria sponge with oreo cookies on top, iced with red butter cream icing. Slightly messy but they enjoyed it and it wasn't too much of a challenge for my rudimentary skills!

 The balloon lego men doubled as decoration and then party balloon cups later filled with sweets and a small lego kit. (A newspaper had done a lego give-away earlier in the year and I had stocked up in anticipation of the party!)

All the food went down a treat anyway! The juice sleeves became actual sleeves and lego arms were sported for the rest of the party!

Schedule

As the children arrived the first activity was to guess how many bricks in the jar. 

We later counted them and the winer was only a couple of bricks out! (there were 43.)

They were then invited to sit at the table where I had prepared different tubs of lego bits - wheels, bricks, flat plates, steering wheels and people bits. The challenge was to make a car which we would then race. 

 One at a time they let go of their car at the top of a wooden slope and we marked on the floor where the car stopped with their names written on masking tape.

The winner used the excellent technique of bigger wheels and went the longest by far!

We then  went outside to play brick and spoon race - 

As well as a bean bag toss into hoops with different coloured cardboard lego shapes. 

Along with pass parcel, corners game (with a spinner and again using the lego cardboard shapes at each corner ) and lots of free play in the garden it was great fun! It was actually a very stress free party with very little prep too! Can't beat lego!

Cardboard Robot

Eden recently received a late birthday present from our  lovely friends round the corner, of a Makedo robot making kit. Basically it has all the connectors and hinges as well as a cardboard saw, hole puncher and stickers to transform junk into a wonderful creation!

It works like a cross between a cable ties and a  nut and bolt, but plastic and easy for little fingers to put together and remove with only a little help. 

It was all Eden’s design and he knew what he wanted to do. I helped suggesting how the hinges would work for the arms, and where best to put the holes, but he loved fixing it all together and being a proper workman! 

He was very proud of his creation! It was been up a week now and taken a fair bit of bashing around, being hit behind, being a dance partner and lots more and the fixings have stood up really well. Best think is we can re use all the bits to make something else soon!