Left to their own devices…..

my two children created a band.  P was on drums and percussion, made out of unturned plastic containers, a wooden snake and a comb, T was string and vocals, with a guitar made out of paper, sellotape and elastic bands. A wonderful song about goodys followed.

We have also been making beads from mached newspaper. P and I tore newspaper into small pieces, covered it with boiling water and left it to stand for a couple of hours. I then added lots of PVA glue and the three of us made balls of grey mush, squeezing out as much liquid as possible.

They are supposed to take a few days to dry, then we drill holes through the middle to make beads, and then paint and varnish them. Will let you know how they turned out.

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Granny’s New Life

Hello again to my regular readers and welcome to any new readers, look at this link (not the photo, I just couldn’t get that in the right place)  http://www.thedailybuzz.com.au/2012/03/20-things-to-do-with-toilet-paper-rolls/, I am number 19 ! I had over a hundred hits  in one day from this link. I think the article has been copied onto another site and I am getting a lot of hits from there at the moment, so if you are new to this blog please do leave a comment to say Hello.

Anyway I suppose I should try to raise the creativity of my creations, the sports cars were probably one of the best things I’ve created to be honest.  But that will happen next time, this is just another post with an uninspired idea….

My mother in law retired on Friday from her job of many years in a primary school. I think she had been planning retirement for a while, but in the end her reasons for retirement became more pressing and she retired a term earlier than expected. I decided we probably should make her something to mark the occasion so the children and I created ‘Granny’s Box of Ideas’. We glued lots of pictures onto a box and covered it in sticky-back plastic, my 7 yr old daughter than thought of a few things Granny could do when she has ten minutes or so spare… I was hoping they’d turn into aspirational life improving ideas, such as ‘Do something to make you laugh’ or philosophical questions, such as ‘What is beauty?’, but these ideas were turned down. Even my ‘go on holiday’ idea was dismissed with a ” How’s she going to do that if she’s only got ten minutes?” So there are ten mundane but pleasant (almost all pleasant, there is a ‘Kiss Grandad on the lips’ suggestion in there) ideas for Granny to do. unfortunately I don’t know her well enough to add some of my own in there. I’m hoping she will add things she would like to do and save them up for another time. Well I’m sure she’ll like it anyway.

Getting back on trac (tor)

Sorry for the bad pun in the title. I think however, it is appropriate as the week’s rubbish craft is brilliant, back to the old standard of  stuck together rubbish!  The whole thing was decided upon, designed and done by my four year old (well most of it).

After watching Mister Maker he decided he wanted to make a tractor. We rummaged around in the junk box(es) until he found the bits he needed. Using 2 cardboard tubs, 6 lids and part of a cereal box he made this.

 

First the tubs were painted green and left to dry.

 The next day the wheels were stuck on with double sided tape. I then mixed some pva glue with yellow paint for him to paint the wheels. This bit didn’t work very well!

After it was dry we attached the trailer to the tractor and added stickers for decoration.

Brilliant eh?

I have also been working on this, would like to know if you can work out what it is meant to be. Even my usually perceptive children took several guesses on this one. Good Luck!

 

What to do?

Happy New Year, as this is my first post of 2012. It seems that having lots of time and nothing to do has made me  very disorganised. Weekly blogs are definitely a thing of the past. Not only have I run out of ideas, I have also had a bit of a clear out and thrown many many many things in the …… bin.

However, I have found time to help help my son make an Octonaut GUP-A , following  instructions in his CBeebies magazine. It was very simply done.

In case you can’t tell the body is torn up tissue paper stuck onto a plastic bottle, using slightly watered down pva glue. It took about 12 hours to dry.

 The other bits were cut out from his magazine and sellotaped on.  Quite pleased with how it turned out. It also helps nicely illustrate one of my favourite words, translucent,  which my daughter has as one of her spelling words thisweek.

I was considering covering other bottles in tissue paper and turning them into a rocket mobile for when we finally decorate my son’s bedroom (though this won’t be very soon). He seemed quite interested in space just before Christmas. However, when we were talking about it he decided he wanted a Lego bedroom.  My initial dismay has turned into inspired excitement as I think I have just the thing to make a large, fake lego bricks….. watch this space……..

A Very Rubbish Craft

Hello,  here are some pictures of our latest rubbish crafting session. My aim at the moment is to clear the pile of plastic packaging I have in the corner (and other places) of my kitchen. I reluctantly let small amounts of it go into school with my youngest, but the pile seems to be increasing, not decreasing.

With this in mind I let my two children choose two of the biggest boxes, gave them a pile of stickers, wrapping paper and glue and left them to it.

Messy chaos followed.

This was the result:

A very useful box for putting stuff in.

I have also found a use for the many plastic bags I have been collecting. I have turned several bags into plarn and tried knitting with them but found it difficult, we have made suncatchers out if the strips but they got condensation trapped behind them and went yucky. Finally, at a traditional craft fair we went to at the weekend, I discovered weaving sticks. I bought a set and when I got home had a go at weaving with the balls of plarn. It was very easy, and I think a whole heap of potential makes could follow. (That’s a very non commital sentence). Concidentally when I went to Hobbycraft  on Monday they still had signs up advertising their weaving stick course from the weekend. Just when I think I’ve discovered something new everyone already knows about it.

Anyway, this is what I created. Does this count as upcycling?

All comments welcome!

Birdfeeders

We have recently finished chopping down and digging out 3 large bushes in our back garden. We started the job back in May but found a bird’s nest with eggs in there so had to stop, since then we have been busy doing ‘stuff’ so hadn’t finished the job until week before last ‘s heat wave. Anyway my main regret at losing the bushes is the loss of bird life in our garden. We have one (or maybe many) family of sparrows that nest under our roof tiles and I used to see them flying around a lot.  In an effort to attract other birds back  we made recycled bird feeders to hang on the new fence.

These are made of an old water bottle with a lid, a stick, some tape and some old cable.

1.We cut 2 holes near the base of the bottle to poke the stick through. This provides the perch for the birds.

2. Just above the stick on each side of the feeder  we cut a flap (leave it attached to the bottle at the top).The plastic was then bent up so that the hole is protected from any rain. This is where the bird will get the seed from.

3. We then taped the stick into place to prevent any wobbling and wrapped cable around the bottle to make it attractive to birds.

4. The feeders were filled with seed- only as high as the flaps- the bottle top was put back on the top and the bottles were hung up.

As yet no birds have even looked at them, oh well. Still it amused the children (and the class teddy bear who came home on Monday night) for half an hour. Will keep you posted on the successfulness of these.

Or maybe not. What we got up to in the holidays Part 1

Bizarrely I have been getting a few ‘real’ hits on here, mainly people wondering what to do with yogurt pots. I now don’t have to worry about yogurt pots the toddler group has found a way to raise money by recycling them through Terracycle- so as long as I buy Danone yogurt (as that is the type they take) I no longer have to bin them. A good start to reducing rubbish.

That aside I thought I would post a couple of the things we have done so far in the holidays. I know we’re only a week in.  My two children were playing schools on Tuesday so desperate are they to go back…..

My son discovered from somewhere (I have no idea where) two large cardboard tubes that were immediately imagined into horses and ridden around the house for the evening. The next day we got some cereal boxes, kitchen roll inners and pink wool and created unicorns.

This pretty unicorn has only one horn, my son wanted to go bigger and better and has a 4 horned beauty. I suppose this means it’s not a unicorn anymore?  No pictures of that one as when I took  the photos  he had just taken all his very muddy clothes off ( where he got mud from when it hadn’t rained for four days is one of those mysteries that children create).

Yesterday we visited a National Trust property where there were sculptures made out of twigs and pine cones hidden around the garden for the children to spot. We tried our own versions at home.  If you look carefully at the photo below you may spot a pine cone caterpillar on the purple table and a pine cone spider dangling near the entrance of the den.

 

I guess the Rubbish Crafting is still going on, I just don’t have any toddlers to craft for anymore.

Fathers’ Day Craft

 

Take a muller light yogurt pot and a nutella lid and glue together.

Wrap in tinfoil.

Make 2 thin ‘sausages’ out of tin foil and tape in place to look like handles.

Tie some ribbon around middle.

And this is what you get:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perfect trophies for Fathers’ (or Father’s ???) Day. Would love to know what you think.

My husband and daughter have also been rubbish crafting this week, making a dinosaur for her to take into school.

 

                                        Amazing what you can do with a load of old junk.