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Autumn Art Using Egg Paint

It’s autumn Down Under, so for art this week we did some autumnal painting.

The idea came from here.

The instructions called for tempera paint. I had no idea what that was, so I looked it up and found that it was easy enough to make your own. So that’s what we did. Basically, all we did was use egg yolks and add a little food colouring. The egg whites will be used for a yummy treat…marshmallows!

It was really nice to paint with and when it dries it has a beautiful sheen. In the words of Millymoo: “this is the nicest paint I’ve ever used!”

Linking to:

TGIF Linky Party hosted by 123Homeschool4Me

Tags: art, autumn, autumn art, egg paint, Homeschool, paint, painting, tempera paint

Comments 4 Comments
Categories Craft, Homeschooling

Spring Lamb Anyone?

6 Sep

Yay, it’s spring! My favourite season of the year.

We are changing things around in our classroom to make it feel more springy. So, out with the snowflakes and in with the…Spring Lambs! baaaa.

The idea for this particular craft came from here.

First we downloaded the pdf pattern and traced it onto our ~~cardboard~~ manila folder (all I had that vaguely resembled cardboard was a manila folder).

Then we cut out the different parts and started cutting a whole heap of cotton buds. Who knew that cotton buds were so versatile when it came to craft? Remember our pointillism paintings which also featured the humble cotton bud? Anyway, cutting the cotton buds was messier than I thought. There were cotton buds flying all over the place.

Next we started attaching them with some craft glue to the body. Once we finished covering the cardboard with cotton buds, we moved onto the head.

This time we glued white paper to our manilla folder, so the sheep’s face would be white. Then we added two small cotton buds as ears and three smaller ones on top as a fringe.

We then tied a small bow and covered the part where the three cotton buds at the top of the head meet. Then we were ready to add some facial features.

Once the body was dry – this took some time because we used quite a bit of glue – we attached some wooden pegs to the back as legs.

Then when that was all dry, we attached the head.

These little lambs are supposed to be able to stand so you can use the pegs as a holder for notes or photos, but ours were so heavy from the amount of glue we used they have trouble standing. Oh well, we still think they are super-cute!

Tags: cotton buds, craft, Homeschooling, lamb, q tips, sheep, spring

Comments 5 Comments
Categories Craft, Homeschooling

Our Family Room Gets Some Love

17 Jul

We’ve been living in this house for some time (I think it’s been four years), yet we still have many unfinished rooms. Our family room was one such room. We had a HUGE blank wall crying out for some love and attention.

I’ve been planning for a while to make my own art, since I’ve looked around and haven’t been able to find anything I really loved to fill that space. Although, I did come close to buying something a couple of months ago. I saw this in a shop window and thought it was my favourite colour – duck egg blue – got the lady to take it out of the window display, got out my wallet ready to pay when I noticed that it was WHITE! The lighting in the window had made it appear blue. I thought white would be too washed out, so I didn’t buy it.

I had recently finished another project with a small sample pot of duck egg blue paint and thought now that I had some leftover paint this would be my opportunity to get started on my wall art. I went out while I was still in a creative mood and bought myself a canvas. I had seen some art some time ago with those cute American red barns and really liked the look of them, they were simple, which was perfect since I can’t actually draw or paint. They were also perfect because of the colour, we have small amounts of red in our downstairs, so it would tie in well with what we already had. I painted the background blue and while I waited for it to dry, I googled red barn art and found a few which I liked and used as inspiration.

Okay, so I’m no Michelangelo, but I like it and I think it has made the room look and feel more loved.

Tags: art, canvas, duck egg blue, painting, red barn, wall art

Comments 7 Comments
Categories Craft, Everything Else

iPad Cover

28 May

I’ve needed a cover of some kind for my iPad. I have the one that Apple make and that’s fine, but I wanted more of a sleeve so it would be protected whenever I took it anywhere. I looked around but couldn’t find anything that I liked for a reasonable price. So I decided to make one.

After some searching on the net I found some tutorials. There weren’t too many that I liked, but there were quite a few laptop sleeves, so I adapted a pattern for a laptop sleeve to make mine.

This is the one I liked the look of (from Film and Thread), I also liked that it was reversible:

Film and Thread

I pretty much stuck to the pattern provided on the website, I just used the measurements from my iPad, however, I couldn’t for the life of me get the tab to sit right, so I did away with it.

It was almost impossible to photograph this so you could see the actual colours/textures.

My next crafty goal is to learn how to crochet so I can make one like this:

It may take some time since all I can do at the moment is this:

babysteps, people, babysteps!

Linking to:

Delightful Order
Lovely Crafty Home
A bowl full of lemons

Tags: craft, Crochet, ipad, iPad Cover, iPad Sleeve, sewing

Comments 6 Comments
Categories Craft

I’m on the Case – The Camera Case

21 Nov

When I got my new camera a few months ago, I wanted a cute little case for it, not the boring black one it came with. So when I saw this felt one I thought it would be perfect. I really liked the look of it, and that it was unique. I also liked the fact that it had a strap which keeps your hands free (my other one was hand-held).

So everything was just fine, until…

Now, this wasn’t the first time the strap had broken. The first time it was fixable. This time though, I had to come up with a new plan, especially since the second time it broke, my camera fell out of the case and onto the road!

I decided to make one myself. How hard can it be, right?

Once again, I looked online for some tutorials. There were a few to choose from, however, the one I decided on was from How Joyful, I thought I would add a strap to mine (hopefully one that won’t break!).

Image from How Joyful

I changed some of the measurements to suit my camera and added the strap.

Here are the results:

I’m really pleased with how this has turned out, I like it much better than my other one – it’s much more “me”. This was super-easy to make, so I’m thinking of making myself a couple of different coloured ones, just for some variety.

I have since made another one with a different strap for Millymoo’s camera. I prefer this strap, so my next one will have a strap like this one, only that I’ll make it adjustable.