Word String Art

Inspired by Poppy Haus (left) and Honey and Fitz (right), I decided on a string art project for my son's year 3/4 (7,8,9 year olds) school Art Exhibition project. The school was pursuing a theme of "growing" in its curriculum so that seemed like the obvious word to string out. A string art project is also great for getting many little hands involved.

I had some foam board left over from some IKEA packaging, so the principal costs for the project were calico fabric to wrap the board, a couple of packets of steel pins, and crochet thread - in a solid and a varigated colour.

I chose to push pins into foam rather than hammer nails into board because, well, life is short! Even so, the set-up (wrapping, printing word, pinning) took about 3 hours.

If you chose to do a similar project, I would recommend cutting the letter out before pinning it (above) - ripping the pieces of paper away after pinning is pretty tedious (below)!

Primary school Art Show fun

Many schools have hit upon the idea of getting students to produce collaborative artworks then pitting parents of those students to bid against each other to take the work home, proceeds going to the school (via the P and C). So it is at my sons' present school as it was at the last.

Not every class at the present school had a parent put up their hand to help in their class, so I ended up helping a few classes make collaborative works. Some classes had more input from students than others. This was one idea which is pretty basic but produced a work that sold at auction for $210 - and cost about $25 to put together (the cost of the frame, paper, and a new cutting knife).

I've always admired Australian artist Rosalie Gascoigne's work - especially the yellow and black works made with old packing boxes, or, here, road signs:

And currently there's "textual" fashion in art - using words to create artworks. I combined the two by getting the class of first years (5-6 year olds) to go through junk mail catalogues and magazines and pick out yellow pictures, and cut them out for me. You start with this:

And then, some sticking and cutting (words printed from computer and traced onto heavier card) later, you end with this:

There are many similar projects out there - here are some others for inspiration:

1. 2. 3.

from Grow Creative (1); Susy's sitcom (2); A beautiful mess (3).

Where have I been?

Just doing a little renovation to the house.....and then some interior decoration.

Inspired by this lighting display, I created this in my new dressing room:


(Note - In December 2013 I visited the shopping mall where the shop which inspired this array was located, and the shop has been gutted and re-tenanted - and the lights are gone!)























And this image led to the inspiration for Austin's room:

Thank you eBay for all your help!

Watch this space!

Austin's birthday is in September. Right now it's the end of July - not too early to be planning...

A flourless chocolate cake

Any recipe where I'd be happy to consume most of the ingredients raw is OK in my book. And so it is with Silvia's Walnut, Dark Chocolate and Honey Flourless Cake.

Simply delicious. Especially with thickened cream. Even my father, who wondered what the point was (gluten-free-ness!), was happy to wolf it down. Especially with thickened cream.

Photoshop Fun

Thomas was off to a Harry Potter party o the weekend so we made a card for the birthday girl. These are the "before" and "after" shots:

A poster for the P&C Mothers' Day cake stall

As I used up all the school's blue ink with the last poster, I decided to keep this one a bit simpler.

Trying to come up with designs that are eye-catching and perhaps generate interest or draw the attention of school parents but that can also be displayed in front of children from the age of 4 can be trying. Thomas (9) simply thinks this is one is silly. That will do me!

Another poster for the P&C

And to think that the P&C believes they can't have an art show unless they employ an artist-in-residence! I'm tempted to say "you don't need to employ an artist - I'll do it!" But then why should I do for free what what everyone else gets paid for?

Before and After

One of the few creative outlets I have (meaning I can spend time on it and not feel that I'm not doing something useful) is creating flyers for my sons' primary school's events.  Just to get a measure of how much I enjoy this, here's the poster used for last year's bush dance (and, I'm reliably informed, many years before that):

That was before I appointed myself to the self-created position of "director of communications". This is what the poster looks like after my appointment:

(It's a bit cheeky posting it here, as the poster hasn't even received the Principal's nod yet, but I'm not anticipating any difficulties! And maybe someone who has actually studied some creative stuff beyond high school could have done better, but I think it's not bad for a full time Mum. And I had fun!)

More inspired card making

After seeing this, at Next to Nicx's inspiring blog:

I knew I had the perfect idea for my Dad's birthday card. And here's how it turned out:

I didn't use Next to Nicx's template as it didn't print correctly for me. Instead I just printed text onto paper (making sure it was the right size for the card I had), put the printing over the card, and made holes through the paper and the card with a needle. I was lucky I had a carpet sample stuck on cardboard as the ideal surface to work on. (Although if you think the lines of text aren't quite level, that's either a trick of the eye, or the fact that I was doing it on my lap, sitting on a bed with two active children. Because when you are living in a one bedroom house with two children, things are bound to slip.) I then started embroidering. I didn't have embroidery thread (like 99% of my possessions, it's in storage), so I used sewing machine cotton, doubled over. And yes, it did take hours. But my Dad liked it!

I make stuff all the time - but not all of it ends up here!

Sometimes there's just not time. Sometimes it's hard to get a good photo - like this time!

These are Flourless Zucchini Brownies courtesy of Delighted Momma's link.

Anyway, they are surprising cakey for something make pretty much of nut butter and grated vegetable.

Just a thought - if you were a vegan who was allergic to nuts life would be pretty difficult, I'd imagine!

Fruit leather - is it worth it?

Inspired by recipes all over the internet (aren't we all!), plus a glut of strawberries at the supermarket (A$1.50 a 250gm punnet), I had a go at fruit leather.

I cooked a punnet of strawberries with 2 red apples (peeled, cored, chopped), then pureed it.

I then spread it out in some silicone baking dishes (see below) to dry. And waited. And waited.

What I learnt:

1. I have the perfect dishes for making fruit leather. You don't need to line or grease the tins. It just peels off when dry. Eventually.


2. The most important thing is to get a thin, even layer, to speed drying.

3. You probably could dry it in your car, as some sites suggest. Pictures below of the trays on my hatchback's rear shelf, soon to sit in the sun. But the car will smell of fruit and you've got to keep the kids out!

4. The oven is in the end the best dryer you have. But using all that energy to make fruit leather sort of takes away from the wholesome, no preservative, environmentally consciousness of it all.

5. It tastes as good as anything you could buy, but I'm experiencing some resistance to eating in, on the basis that it took SO LONG to make!

Two apples and a punnet of strawberries....

Chocolate covered strawberries for Austin (turning 5) to take to Kindergarten for morning tea

Perfect for the gluten intolerant! Nut free too. And it's fruit. Everyone's happy.

The book of marbled papers comes in handy again

Silhouettes printed from internet images, cut, stuck to the rear of the patterned paper, cut again and stuck to card.

Step by step marble cake

My very own cake wreck

The spelling mistake was in fact deliberate. The Kindergarten (pre-school) teaching aide was leaving, so we  had a farewell cake. The cake reflected the fact that when the children met her, they found it almost impossible to pronounce her name - Miss Loth. The best variation was "Miss Fluff". I fear that if she keeps teaching 4 years old, she will never hear her name pronounced correctly! Luckily she is very good humoured about it.

All I needed was a little inspiration

Yes, been a while since I've been here. But inspired by How About Orange's origami dress card (right), and a book on marbling paper being discarded by the local library (and full of full colour plates of marbled effects), I whipped these up:


(I think I could learn something from How About Orange's photo styling.....)

A dolphin cake for Thomas

White chocolate tinted with black food colouring makes grey! Perfect for piping dolphin shapes.

Life goes on

A new year, a new school and new school clothing to label. No reason it can't be done creatively! Inspired by a Craft Gossip post featuring a project by RadMegan of In Words and Pictures, Austin's hat will stand out from the crowd.

Template cut from paper (printed from PC)

Chalk used to outline letters

Hand embroidered

Finished!