A place to call one's own

one from the archives of forgotten blog content.... at the beginning of the year lexi finally moved into her own room!
(we pretty much follow classic attachment parenting theory, and hey, if you've got a bad sleeper it's much easier to resettle them if they are in a bed next to yours!)

so i decided to make her a sign for the door, using some craft jigsaw pieces (cos she loves jigsaws!) and various scrapbooking bits & pieces!
they're rather *eclectic* for my taste (i'm not a natural scrapbooker - i struggle to put anything much on the page lol) but suffice to say it was very well received by its recipient!

and unrelatedly, apart from the paper bit, check out the basket of window stars that we made at playgroup so each of the children could take one home for the winter holidays! there are at least 40-50 in there i reckon!

the same, but different.

one long dark evening i let the kids loose with some wet-on-wet watercolour painting-
(soak proper watercolour paper in a bit of water for 5-10min until it's a bit soft, then paint with big brushes & watercolour paints - biscuit trays are perfect for containing everything, if not very pretty!)

the finished paintings-
i then cut circles out of the paintings - a stockpot lid for the big one, cake tin for the smaller - and painted them with cheap canola oil. yes you read that right.
the aim is to make the paper somewhat translucent... Dr Nick's Window To Weight Gain for the uber-geeks out there ;-)
once dry i folded the paintings into star lanterns!
and cos i was in that sort of mood, i made the little scraps left over from turning the circles into octagons into a mobile for lexi's window.
(the sun was too bright this morning to get a decent pic of all the delicate shades, but i'm not complaining!!)

Stars, in their multitudes...

(of course the awesome skatey-beachbabe-katie breaks out movie quotes, and i reach for Broadway. i never claimed to be cool! ;-) )

anyhoo... around these parts it is a time of year known as Matariki (maataareekee), also known as the Maori new year, also known as the time when the Pleiades become visible in the night sky, and in part due to that we've had an abundance of stars cropping up around the place!
Par exemple- our playgroup is undergoing HUGE renovations, and in the long term plan is a beautiful stained glass windows for the tiny babes to stare up at, but in the meantime i decided to make us a biggish window star (each point is half a sheet of kite paper, so the whole thing is approx 25-30cm tall). We then decided that making these was a nice craft for the parents to be engaged in, so we've started a mass campaign of star making, in part so each child can take one home at the end of the term for the mid-winter break (cos who doesn't like a bit of colour injected into grey days?!), and also potentially to sell at our advent fair.... i must get a photo of the big basketful next week!

anyway, there is a good tutorial for these waldorf window stars over at Gardenmama, and i get my kite paper from Forest Folk, which is the little shop run by our playgroup's school :-) (they're a perfect little gift for a new baby or wee kiddo's birthday when you don't know what they've already got!!)

annndd....

after seeing a tutorial somewhere (might have been this one at Childhood Magic) i decided to have a go at making a little star lantern!(this one was too small to fit a candle inside it, but they're still cute as holders for taller candles too)

and then taught a few of the mums at playgroup to make them, using the kids watercolour paintings, which then became little baskets to hold a biscuit for each of the kids at our matariki celebration morning!this is a few of them *just* catching the morning sunlight up on the windowsill....there were all sorts of delicious star-themed treats for the kids to eat- and lexi did a story for eli & one of the little girls (who was singing "twinkle, twinkle" as accompaniment!)and the kids sung star songs and listened to a special story :-)

annnndd...

completely unrelatedly, i saw these on The Magic Onions a while ago, so had to try it out!it's nice to add a little sparkle into these wintery days!!

a special star..

for a special munchkin!

rainbow challenge!

how many colours can you find from your recent (and unblogged) projects?

i've got...
pink & orange - another window star

white & yellow - there would be red too, but, well.. the toddler got it first

blue - my new project board! the fabric is left over from our roman blinds

green - our 1m+ tall silverbeet monster, finally bolting! it has an apprentice down on the left though

green & brown - to-be-felted-crown V2 (work in progress), a sylvan theme with the lovely "green tea" wool i received from our yarn swap!

and for a big rainbow-

a train that lexi made from her beeswax block crayons!

waldorf window star..

purdy huh? :-D


they're *supposed* to be made with special waxed paper, but you can do it with tissue too, it's just not as tidy or durable.. but i had some blue tissue left over from wrapping xmas gifts.. oooh.. 6 years ago.. so i decided to give it a go!
and i like! :-)

(i sealed it in duraseal cos, well, i have a toddler. 'nuff said.)