Merry Christmas!

Phew! School is out today! What a week it's been. My daughter had her very first stage experience during her school Christmas concert. I cannot say for sure who was more excited...her or me. The dress code for her class was white and green, and let me tell you it is not easy to find a nice green and white dress. Pink, purple, red...no problemo. Green? Nada.

Luckily, I remembered she had a plain white dress, and I had an idea on what to do for the 'green' bit. It was green ombre ribbons to the rescue! I made a floaty ribbon ensemble using an oval ribbon slider and pinned it on the dress.

It was a hit. She loved it and kept playing with the dangly bits.

My next project is...to pack our bags! We're flying off for a holiday tomorrow morning. This is me signing off for 2010. I'll be back and blogging again in January 2011. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!! :-)

(Note: This post is taken from our Facebook page notes written on 10 December 2010)

One for the kids

In my previous post, I mentioned that December is a month of many celebrations for us, one of these is my daughter's birthday. As the actual day is during the school holidays, we decided to have a little birthday bash at school during snack time.

It was fun to plan and prepare little 'lunch boxes' full of yummy treats for the kids...and even more fun to make these...

Cupcake dressing?

At first glance they may look like cupcakes, but they're actually made of coloured paper clay...and this is how they were made.

Using the palms of your hand, roll some clay into a ball. (Here I mixed red and white coloured clay).

Roll some paper clay into a ball

Flatten the ball with a smooth, flat object (I used my Mum's pyrex cover).

Flatten the clay evenly

Use a cookie cutter for consistent sizes and shapes.

Use a cookie cutter

Peel away the excess

A perfect circle

The best thing about coloured paper clay is the ability to mix the colours together. If you blend the two colours well, you will end up with a different shade altogether. You can also mix the colours in such a way that you end up with swirls...like so.

Swirls of yellow on blue

Make a hole near the top big enough to slip a ribbon through. This can be done with a clean drinking straw.

Make a hole using drinking straw

A nice clean hole for slipping ribbons through

Roll some coloured clay to form alphabets and press it into the base.

Glue on some flat back jewel embellishments. I chose dragonflies, butterflies, flowers, leaves, starfishes and teddy bears for this project.

Flat back star fish jewels for Ines

Flat back teddy bear and dragonfly for Brandon

Leave the clay to harden overnight. Then apply some clear varnish, and leave it to dry again.

Flat back flower jewels

Flat back flower butterflies

Flat back flower starfish and flower (and some clay waves)

And when the varnish is dry....slip on some lovely coloured grosgrain ribbons, tie a knot...and you have homemade giveaways that make great Christmas decorations, bedroom door signs and baggage name tags. Alternatively, brooch pins can be attached to the back of the clay before it hardens and you'll have a lovely name badge. Either way, the little ones loved their customized name tag/decorations...and so did the parents ;)

(Note: This post is taken from our Facebook page notes written in December 2010)

O Christmas Tree!

Hurray! It's December! My favourite month of the year, with things to do, places to go, people to meet and an assortment of celebrations to enjoy. School will be out soon and we're looking forward to the hols. But first...we have Christmas assignments at school to prepare for.

My daughter's class had a Christmas party last Friday and all the kids had to come dressed in Christmas clothes, bring Christmas snacks to share with friends, and a Christmas decoration for the tree in their classroom. As I couldn't bake anything (I'm one of those delightful personages who has never baked anything edible before in her life), I decided to, at least, try my hand at making the Christmas decoration.


This time, I managed to find some light weight paper modeling clay at an arts and craft shop in town. The clay was different from the one I used in the post 'Frosty or Rudolph, anyone?', which turned out like porcelain and was quite heavy. Here's a short tale of my experiment with lighter paper clay...


1. Take a piece of red 6mm grosgrain ribbon and glue the ends together.
2. Fashion a triangle with the paper clay and cut the triangle in half.
3. Apply glue to the center of both triangle pieces and attach them together with the grosgrain ribbon in the middle.

Forming the top of the tree

Attaching the top of the tree to the ribbon

4. Mold and cut bigger triangles for the lower half of the tree.

5. Cut the top off the triangles.  
6. Attach to the ribbon. 

The lower branches

7. Smooth away the grooves between the triangles by molding in some flattened paper clay...just like applying putty to cracks.

Smooth away the grooves

 

8. Mold and attach the trunk, and a circle for the base.

The 'snowy' base

 

9. Leave to dry and harden, then paint the tree.

Paint the tree

10. Once paint is dry, glue on colourful flat back pearls of varying sizes, glimmery sequin snowflakes, shiny flat back pearl stars, and apply clear varnish on the whole tree for that extra sheen.

Decorate the tree with sequin snowflakes and flat back pearls

11. Let 3-year-old daughter carry the tree to school and proudly hang it on her classroom tree.

She wasn't the only child with a store-bought Christmas snack....but she was the only one with a homemade decoration :-)

(Note: This post is taken from our Facebook page notes written in December 2010)