We’ve been renovating our house since moving in almost four years ago. Progress is slow but steady and lately we’ve (read Alasdair) been ripping out the old electrics in one room that will eventually be our living room. The old wire is a lovely thick copper wire that we just couldn’t throw away. So, I made some Christmas hanging decorations, while Alasdair replastered the walls!
Simple one first…the star. Made from heavy grade copper wire that has been lightly sanded and bent to shape.
So pleased was I with the star, that I decided to branch out and try an angel. I must admit to having to raid some colouring books for the basic outline!
Pretty good, eh? The star and angel set will be available from our stall at the fairs we’re attending this winter. Who knows, they might be joined by a gingerbread man or two.
Just in case all that Christmas decor is making you feel a little out of season, I also made this rather fetching copper and vintage button bangle. I am particularly proud of this, my first attempt at real jewellery from scratch.
With copper in such short supply, it makes me feel I’m doing my bit for the planet by recycling the wire rather than throwing it out.
Now, back to the renovating I think. Today the central heating is having a good old clean out.
Preparations are well under way for our first craft fair of 2010, which will take place in Hillhead Library in Glasgow’s West End this coming Saturday.
In the true spirit of leaving everything until the last minute, we have a list as long as both our arms of work to complete before Saturday morning and, in the true spirit of procrastination (something that we are very good at) Alasdair is currently rewiring the house and replacing the plasterboard, while I am busy redesigning and packaging my button pendants.
Going off on a tangent for a moment, these boards to hold my necklaces were made partially from the paper I made a couple of weeks ago. I mounted the paper onto mount board and stamped ‘madestuff’ along the bottom, cut a couple of notches in the top to hold the cord and (in a later version) threaded a piece of wire through to hold the cord in place. I’m so pleased with the way they worked out.
So, the list of things to do is still as long as our arms; however it’ll be alright on the day and if you would like to come along and meet us in person, and see some of the many other wonderful crafts on sale from numerous other makers, we’d love to see you there.
Back in April I entered a competition on the Craft Scotland website to win a copy of Papermaking and Bookbinding: Coastal Inspirations by Joanne B Kaar and was delighted to learn a few weeks ago that I was one of the lucky winners. I was even more delighted when I received my book last week to find that making paper isn’t the painful experience I remember it to be from my childhood attempts, where the paper ends up all pulpy and useless. The book also contains all sorts of suggestions for jazzing up your handmade papers and what to do with all that paper you’ve made. I particularly like the embossing from driftwood idea.
This Instructable describes the very method I used.
On a complete whim today (so wholly unprepared with any sort of shop bought materials) I made my first batch of paper, which is now handing merrily in the bathroom drying slowly – as directed in the book.
Tomorrow I get the iron out to flatten them out and decide what their fate might be. I can’t decide between labels for my handmade photo notebooks or whether I should print onto them and frame them as works of art. I kind of like that idea though…such ugly, unnecessary junk turned into art.
Just in case you think we’re really clatty, that grout is in fact pink and not dirty! We inherited a baby blue and pink bathroom (complete with pink grout and, for some very odd reason, an orange shower tray) when we bought our current house and it’s not up there on the list of priorities to change, in spite of it’s very scary appearance.
We always try to be very nice to the environment. We use mostly natural or recycled materials for our craft and reuse packaging when mailing, we drive a very efficient car and constantly lecture the kids to switch the lights off, but never turned a thought to how damaging to the environment blogging might be.
It’s not blogging per se, but the use of servers, routers, switches, computers and all that other technology, that enables us to blog and readers to view our blog, that makes for co2 omissions of around 8lbs a year for the average blog with 15,000 visits per month. Luckily the average tree absorbs around 11lbs of co2 per year. And even more lucky are we to find this programme that promises for every domain to sign up, they will plant a tree to offset the carbon output of your blog. Now, we have planted a heck of a lot of trees and bushes in our garden in the past year and have plans for many more but these people plant them specifically to offset your blogging and we have many more activities we need to offset with our own trees and bushes…travel, electricity, heat, general consumption…
So, from this day forward, our blog will be carbon neutral as demonstrated by this rather splendid graphic…yippee!
If you have a blog, please join this programme. It’s free and very easy to join and there really can never be too many trees.
Not to be outdone by his sister, the lad (aged nearly 7) decided to have a go at making his own soft toy. He designed and sewed this chap (almost) all by himself. I’m very proud of his ability to take his idea and turn it into something tangible. We worked together on turning his picture into a pattern, I showed him how to sew it up and off he went.
A couple of hours later, it was all finished. I think it looks a bit like something from ‘Charlie and Lola’. Not surprisingly, the most enjoyable part for both the kids seemed to be stuffing their creations. I love that they could see their ideas coming to life with the aid of some polyfibre stuffing and both are delighted with their creations.
Course, when you’ve been sewing for two hours solid, you need a rest.
There are so many kits with those nasty plastic blunt needles that are really good for nothing and must frustrate rather than entertain, it’s no wonder sewing is a dying craft. I really can’t see the problem with giving proper needles, and for that matter proper scissors, so long as there is proper supervision and I would encourage all parents to allow their kids the freedom to create in this manner…it’s very rewarding for both parent and child.
In spite of the fact that it should be summer and we are being teased with rays of sunshine trying to break the clouds, the small furry one decided to make a snowman today. OK, so it’s a red snowman and it doesn’t actually resemble a snowman but she says it is a snowman so a snowman it will be…in the middle of summer!
This was really easy and quite enjoyable once I got around my anally retentive everything must be perfect way of thinking.
First we drew our shape on a piece of paper and cut it out. Then we pinned the paper pattern to an old felted jumper and cut round it, leaving a seam allowance. We then chose buttons and sewed them on…that took forever; if you have kids you’ll be aware of the thrills of the button jars and just how long they can occupy them for. I held it and showed the small furry one where to put the needle, which was fortunately a blunt tapestry needle. Of course I had to finish sewing it up when she got bored. She stuffed it all by herself though before I sewed up his bottom.
I think this is a huge achievement for someone who only just turned 4 last week. He’s sturdy and she is over the moon with him. He’s been exploring caves already today and I think, by the sound of it, he’s about to learn how to draw!
BTW…she’s known affectionately as ‘The Small Furry One’ because she is indeed small and has a very hairy back! And, I’m sure she’d hate me forever if she was old enough to know I’d told the world that.
Following Jolene’s last post I couldn’t resist the post title, nor – I’m afraid – could I resist including a little musical flashback to my youth … I’ll leave that till the end though!
As Jolene said in her post I have been making more bonnie birds and taking her through the process at the same time, I could be wrong, but I think it falls into the harder than it looks category. Certainly I think it’s taken a bit of practice and development to get them to the stage they’re at now, I only wish I had saved the original prototypes to share with you by way of a comparison with the ones I’m making now … the difference is quite startling!
I’m working on something else now and have saved the prototype of that one so you can see that these things don’t simply materialise without any thought … although that’s often the way these things begin, with a random convergence of whimsical and divergent partial thoughts! Anyway these will be my last Bonnie Birds for a while so that I can concentrate on other things.
Alasdair has been guiding me through the process of making one of his Bonnie Birds…it’s not a process I will be repeating in the near future!
First you have to make the armature, which is quick and easy enough. Then comes the mache, which refuses to stick to the armature. Alasdair’s most helpful advice was to keep squeezing it together until it looked body like…yeah, ok…the more I squeezed, the more determined the stuff was to stick to me and not the armature! Then, and I am not the most patient of people, you have to wait overnight for the body to dry…
…next night you can make the tail in the same way…mache stuck everywhere but where it was supposed to be, and once again we had to leave them overnight to dry. The next night was a repeat performance for the head…I nearly threw it on the fire that night! My beak was huge, then too thin, then it all fell off…argh!
Alasdair assured me that it would all be ok in the end and to just try and get a sort of shape that sort of resembled a bird. I trust him, because he’s my husband, so I persevered, tried my best and created something resembling a bird.
This is Alasdair’s bird after sanding. Mine was too ugly to contemplate at this stage.
The next stage was to sand it all down…I needed to wait for the weekend for this…I won’t bore you with the whys and wherefores. Alasdair insists that sanding is key and other than advising me ‘not to be shy about it’ his other top tip was to mind my fingers!? That exercise went a whole lot better than I imagined it would and I ended up with the shape you see in the finished article. Alasdair was right…all of the mistakes I made earlier were wiped out at this point.
The final stage of painting and varnishing were nerve-racking for me. I’d spent all week making this bird and was about to ruin it all with one wrong brushstroke. Fortunately the Bonnie Bird is a forgiving creature and I was able to rescue it from an overzealous paint job by imagining target practice where the wings should be.
This is me fixing the bits that I missed the first time I varnished it…oops!
As I said, it took me two weeks to make mine from start to finish…Alasdair made five in that same time. See them all in the background laughing at my bird’s short legs and lumpy backside…still I think it’s pretty good for a first (and only) attempt.
Having made a few batches of previous bonnie birds and developed a decorative pattern that I think works for them – see previous posts here – I’ve been keen to develop alternative patterns, something as it turns out is easier said than done.
Here are a few examples of what I’ve come up with thus far, the first is my favourite of the the three and the last (zig-zag) is based on a design suggested by our wee lad:
It’s funny how an idea can sprout wings and take-off (dreadful pun entirely intended), such as it has been with these bonnie birds. It’s rather refreshing to have something I can make out of papier mache that doesn’t take forever and a day and that isn’t a bowl! Aside from this pair I’m hatching three more and they should be fully fledged in the next few days (and yes, that was a couple more of dreadful puns that were entirely intended).
This pair seem to be diametrically opposed in terms of form, one’s short and fat and the other a bit leggy with a great fan of a tail, the tail’s something I can see me repeating and refining on future versions.
Of course, like all birds that flock, it doesn’t take long for them to catch-up with more of their own kind …
… I imagine this flock will be growing as they, ahem, get to know each other better … well, it is almost Spring!!
29 August, 2010 2:05 pm | 
by Joanne B Kaar and was delighted to learn a few weeks ago that I was one of the lucky winners. I was even more delighted when I received my book last week to find that making paper isn’t the painful experience I remember it to be from my childhood attempts, where the paper ends up all pulpy and useless. The book also contains all sorts of suggestions for jazzing up your handmade papers and what to do with all that paper you’ve made. I particularly like the embossing from driftwood idea.
