Pseudo-Peonies

While the weather might be warmer than it was before, and while I pulled these lovely daffodils out of my garden last week …

… my garden still looks like this.  Which means that my peonies haven’t bloomed yet.  If they’re going to bloom at all.  And I like peonies.  They’re one of my favourites.

So I’m going to make my own here.  It’s not that hard.  I found a quick tutorial at Two Shades of Pink and had at it.

Start with a bunch of coffee filters.  I don’t know how many.  A bunch.

And some warm water.  And some food colouring.  Or watercolour paint.

Dissolve some of your paint/dye in the water. This is some Crayola stuff I broke off and stirred in.

I tried this craft paint but it wasn’t water soluble, not really.

Then dip your filters into the coloured water.  You can do a bunch at once. And they don’t need to sit in the water for more than a few seconds.

Experiment with the outer edges.

Versus the inside. Or the whole thing.

Squeeze out the excess dye with your hands.

I totally dyed my hand pink.

Spread out the filters to dry completely.

Mine took a few hours, less when I fully separated the layers and put them in a place with lots of air flow.

This is the full stack next day.

Now, in addition to the filters, you will need scissors, a stapler (with staples), and then some tape or wire (I have floral wire here).

Grab between 6 and 8 of the filters and stack them up.  Flatten them a bit with your hands.

Fold the filters in half, then half again so you have a little cone.

Take your scissors and scallop the rounded edge of the cone — don’t worry about perfection, it’s all good.

Now unfold the thing and ruffle it up a bit.  Pinch that spot at the very centre where you made your folds.

Flip the filters over and you can see what I mean by that pinch.

Staple over that pinched spot to hold things in place.

Now flip it back over and smooth it out a bit.

Pull up the edges of the topmost (innermost) filter and, working from the bottom, squish the filter in on itself, leaving a nice fluffy gathering on top.

Keep going with each successive layer.

Make sure to keep the top nice and fluffy, while still jamming the paper against itself.

Gather up the bottom layer and push it upwards, squeezing into the little handle you’ve created for yourself.

The paper will hold its shape for a short time, but you want to fix it more permanently.  You can use tape around the little nub here or floral wire, which is what I used.

I attached one flower to one end of the wire and another to the bottom.  What am I going to do with it?  I’m getting to that.

Because of the variation in the way I dyed the filters, you can see different colour gradations in the finished flowers.

On this one I put the darker filters in the middle.

This was the resulting bloom.

I used 8 filters per bloom and ended up with 18 flowers finished, which means I had 144 filters dyed.

When I was finished I gathered some of the blossoms that were tied together and I used an additional piece of floral wire to wind their stems together.

And it made two lovely little bouquets of 9 flowers each.

I don’t even want to talk about that horrible plaster job in the background.  The landlord took our chimney away and now I have no place to display my work.

So until I figure out how to compensate for my lack of a fireplace, I’ve put my pseudo peonies flanking my television.  Because I’m classy like that.

The things we do for love: Learning to Silk Screen at Home

Beware: this is a very long post!

Because I love my husband and because I support his weird video game addiction (I did make him a cake after all), I agreed to make up some t-shirts for an upcoming tournament in my hometown of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in May.

Screen printing in a studio is awesome and you can do all sorts of fun stuff.  And fortunately nowadays (unlike when my mother was an arts student), the materials you use won’t kill you.  Which means you can do this stuff at home, too!

DESIGN

First you need a design.  For our first attempts, we decided to work with something simple: a giant squid for myself.  Because I love giant squid.

After several attempts, I had something I liked.  I didn’t notice, however, that I’d put an extra tentacle on the thing.

But after photoshopping it looked pretty good.  Pick something simple with high contrast.

Then copy it onto a transparency — this way you won’t have to cut it out.  If you have a strongly black and white design you could just print it out in black on white paper and cut it out.

Now, the first time we tried this it didn’t work (I will show you that later), because the transparency printings weren’t as opaque as they should have been.

Having learned from that, we printed our images in triplicate, and lined them up.  You can see in the photos below how the opacity increases with each layer.

After carefully lining them up, tape them together with a bit of clear tape.

PREPARING YOUR SCREENS

And now for your screen.  We ended up buying a kit from Urchin downtown to get us started, but we also made a few of our own screens.

This is the Speedball screen that came with the kit.  This is the squeegee side, where you will burn your image and spread your ink.

Here is the print side, which will be going flush against your fabric.

To make your own screen, you need frames and screening.  Here I have some sheer polyester that I picked up from Value Village.  It’s denser than, say, pantyhose, which means that the details will come out much more finely, but it’s also hole-y enough that you can squeegee paint through it, which is kind of key.

And I have these picture frames, also from Value Village.  Take out the glass and the picture and everything and you can staple your fabric onto your frame using a staple gun.

Pull it relatively tight — not so much that it buckles or tears around the staples, but tight enough that there are no wrinkles and you could run a squeegee up and down it with no worries.

Give your finished screen a scrub with warm water and a bit of dish soap and leave it to dry.

Use tape to line around the outside of the frame on the screen so paint won’t go all over everything and make a mess.  I used hockey tape because it’s pretty waterproof and sticks well to fabric, but I’m sure there’s some specific tape you should really be using.

Do it again on the inside of the frame as well.

Oh yeah, and you need a squeegee.  If you don’t have one, you can get away with using a piece of stiff cardboard.  Who came up with the word SQUEEGEE anyway?  It’s fantastic.

Okay so we’re almost set here.  Do you have photoemulsion?  You should get some — it’s kind of key.  It’s a weird greenish stuff that will turn hard and waterproof under UV light.  I got the Speedball stuff that comes with the kit.  Make sure you follow the instructions on the back, as they’re all different.  Normally it comes in two parts: the dark green Diazo sensitizer, which comes in a wee bottle and you add water to it:

And the blue photo emulsion base, to which you add the Diazo sensitizer.  Once this is mixed, you can keep it in your fridge for several months.  So you see here that it is green, indicating its mixedness.

Spread the emulsion carefully and in a thin, even layer all over your screen, on the FRONT side, and the back side.  Use the squeegee to get a nice thin layer all over.  The first time we did it we spread it on too thick and as it dried it dripped.  Gross.

Quickly place the emulsified frame in a completely dark room.  Lay it horizontally to dry for a few hours.  Don’t let any light touch it.  A nice big closet or a well-sealed box is a good place.  Ideally you should set the screen bottom side down while you dry (not what is shown in this picture, because we did it wrong the first time), so you will need to prop the screen up so the wet side doesn’t touch your closet.

EXPOSING YOUR IMAGE

When you’re ready to burn the image onto your screen, you have to work quickly.  Some people like to expose their images inside, under high-wattage light bulbs, but we did ours on the cheap and exposed them outside on a sunny day.  Worked like a charm.

You’ll need your image (cut out from opaque paper or printed on transparency) and a sheet of glass that will fit inside the confines of your screen.  And a dark towel or thick piece of dark fabric for wrapping your frame in while in transport.

In the dark (we shut the curtains to our bedroom and I stood almost IN the closet while the Pie held the door mostly shut), lay your image on the inside of your frame (on the squeegee side, and orient it the way you want it to look when it’s printed (as in, you don’t need to mirror this).  Lay the sheet of glass on top so the image is fully covered and flattened down.

Now wrap the frame up in your dark towel so that the print side of the screen is resting on the towel, face down, and the rest is wrapped up around it.  Take it out in the sun and lay it in a flat, sunny spot.  Unwrap the towel so that the frame is resting completely on the dark surface (you want it flush so that there’s no chance of any reflection hitting the photo emulsion on the bottom and exposing it by accident).  You can see that the dried photo emulsion starts out green.

And then in a few minutes turns a nice bluish.  We left ours out for about ten minutes.  Then you need to wrap it back up in the towel like a burrito and take it back inside.

Now you need a source of high pressure warm water, like a sink sprayer or a shower head, and a nylon scrubbing brush (like a dish brush).

Working quickly, remove the wrapping, glass, and image from your frame and put it under the spray.  Use the scrub brush on the parts where your image is to get the unexposed photo emulsion off.  Scrub both sides vigorously until it comes clean.

If you exposed it correctly, the contrast between the blue exposed photo emulsion and the stuff you hid under your image will be quite good and the unexposed stuff will come right off. If you didn’t have an opaque enough image, then the contrast will not be good and the photo emulsion will not come off, and will in fact continue to expose as you work.

You can see this failed attempt only had a few spots that were truly opaque and so that was all that came off.

But this one worked pretty well, save for a bit around one tentacle that didn’t expose properly.  But I can live with that.

After you’ve gotten all the unexposed photo emulsion off, let the screen dry in the sun for a bit (this will also cure the remaining photo emulsion).

And here’s one that the Pie did for his video games.  He is using drawing fluid to fill in some pinholes in his exposed screen.

PRINTING

Make sure that you’ve washed and dried any fabric you are planning to print on first, to get rid of sizing and make sure that it has shrunk all it’s going to shrink.  I picked up this handful of t-shirts at Old Navy and Michaels for cheap.

Protect your work surface and wear an apron — fabric ink is permanent, after all.  If you’re printing clothing, put a piece of cardboard inside the t-shirt so that if ink comes through the fabric it won’t stain the other side.

Lay out your shirt flat and place the screen where you want it to go.  For our initial test we used a piece of scrap cotton.  Pour a line of ink on one side of the screen, on top of the emulsion.

Hold your squeegee at a 45° angle and using even pressure, pull the ink across the surface of your screen.  It helps if you have another pair of hands holding down the screen frame while you do this.  Do a second pass in the other direction.  Experiment with the pressure you put on and the number of passes you do until you are satisfied with how the ink looks on your fabric.

Ease the frame off the fabric on an angle (so that one side is still touching the surface if you need to put it back down) and set the fabric to dry.

On our second pass I tried a blend of two different colours.

I tried to repaint the missing tentacle. It didn’t go well.

My two shirts, one in greenish-gray and the other in silver.

The silver wasn’t as opaque as I’d like it, but it’s still nice.

And the Pie’s two shirts.

When we did the yellow one we forgot to re-fill the pinholes and you can see they came out onto the fabric.

When the paint is fully dry (give it an hour or two), place your shirt on an ironing board and, with a sheet of paper between your design and the iron (no steam!), run the iron on hot over the design for a few minutes.  This will “fix” the image and protect it from frequent washings.

Modeling.  Sorry for the selfies.

 

Silver on blue …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gray on orange …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tada!

SCREEN CLEANUP

Unless you want to use those screens again, you’ll need to get the photo emulsion off as soon as possible.  I used the ScreenClean stuff that came with my kit, but you can also use 1 cup of washing soda dissolved in a gallon of warm water.

Use a paint brush to apply the cleaner to both sides of the screen and scrub briskly with a nylon brush.

Apply the cleaner again with the paintbrush to both sides and leave it to sit for about 5 minutes.

Run under a forceful stream of hot water and scrub again until all the emulsion and cleaner has washed away.

Wow, that was a lot to take in.  I hope it was easy enough to follow.  If not, please let me know!

PEOPLE WHO DID IT DIFFERENTLY:

Here are some of the links to the other sites I checked out to learn how do this stuff:

How to Screen Print! Silkscreening at home - The Art of Doing Stuff

Screen Printing: Cheap, Dirty, and at Home - Instructables

Top Ten Worst Screen Printing Mistakes - Adventures in DIY Screen Printing

DIY Screen Printing - I Love to Create

Cheap screenprinting tutorial - Craftgrrl

How to Silk Screen Posters and Shirts - No Media Kings

STAMPS

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMA!

My mother, if you didn’t know, is an artist.  So when I was a kid, instead of playing around with construction paper and crayons (well, I still did that), I also got to experiment with India ink, French curves, and etching plates.  Let’s just say that for someone with little artistic skill I know my way around an arts supply store.

My mum and I tend to go off on artistic tangents when we’re together, and on a recent Skype conversation we got stuck onto stamps.  I have been collecting champagne corks for a few years now with the intention of turning them into nice little rubber stamps, so I figured, what better occasion than my mother’s birthday to try them out?

Generally when you make your own rubber stamps you use a special set of wee chisels that make your life so much easier.  Since I am incapable of doing anything that logical, I have a specialty set of craft blades instead. You also tend to use rubber, which has a more uniform consistency and is easier to cut. But what the hey.

So first you draw a design on your cork. I’m going with an A (for my name, natch). The bonus is it’s a symmetrical letter so I don’t have to worry about putting it on backwards or anything. Conveniently the Pie’s name also starts with an A so I’m killing two birds with one stone here. I will consider doing our last initials, B and F … some other time …

After I finalized the design I sent it to management for approval. Fortunately management was sitting on the arm of the couch while I was doing this so it didn’t take long for the paperwork to go through.

Then I set to with my wee knife, carving away at the negative space. Just remember, if you are using cork, that it’s a conglomeration of natural fibres, so things tend to come off in chunks. Also, please don’t cut off any of your fingers or stab yourselves. Blood does not make for a happy crafting occasion.

The finished A.

Testing it out. The uneven and pocked surface of the cork makes for that texture. If you use rubber (say, a Pink Pearl eraser), then you’ll have a much more solid fill on your stamp. Also now that I have three As in a row it looks like the sound someone makes when they fall off a high surface.

I tried to carve out a corgi. But then I accidentally cut off one of the eyes. The Pie said it just means that this corgi is winking.

So because this made me sad I made another stamp. I wish I’d had this one around when I was teaching and marking the papers of students who had not been paying attention. I like the deep disappointment that this stamp conveys.

I’m going to try this out with real rubber and tools eventually, but this is a good start, and I still have some blank corks left to try!

Guest Post: Renovating a TE Stick

Hooray, it’s our first guest post!  I helped the Pie re-do his MadCatz gaming stick back before Christmas and I’ve finally gotten him to agree to do a post about it.  Enjoy the geekery! – Ali

Hakan is my favourite character from Super Street Fighter 4, and I thought it would be fun to modify the artwork on my fight stick. Here is what it looked like before:

First you have to take it apart. I unscrewed the top and this is what the insides look like:

You have to remove the buttons and the stick in order to replace the artwork on the top. It’s a good idea to take a (blurry) picture of the buttons or write down the colour-coding of the wiring so that you can put it all back together in the proper order.

Blurry button removal:

This is the old art that I have removed and will be replacing.

I used a template, which I found on the Shoryuken Forums, to create my Hakan art. I printed it out in colour. Cutting out the circles with an exacto knife was the hard part.

To make cutting out the negative space easier I traced it on the old art.

All cut out. You don’t have to worry about those rough edges too much, as the button will cover those up.

Because the old art was printed on a piece of plastic, I had to print the new art on paper and then purchase a clear plexiglass cover from Canadian Joysticks to go on top. You can see that it is held in place with the buttons and stick. If you wish to get new buttons, this would be the time to replace them all. You can get new buttons and sticks from Akihabara and/or Canadian Joysticks.

This is where your earlier photo of where the wires go comes in handy.

Now for the ball top.  I followed this tutorial on the Shoryuken Forums for proper technique.

The first thing you need to do is sand your ball top to rough it up. Use a fine grade sandpaper for this, because you don’t want it TOO rough, just rough enough that the paint sticks.

I used Ali’s stale beer bread and a skewer as a prop to hold it up.

Next, you need to prime the ball. I used two coats of Citadel Imperial Primer in Skull White.  These are acrylic paints designed to be used for painting miniatures, and hold up well to handling.

Then I used painter’s tape to mask off the parts of the design I wanted to stay white (at least at first).

One million coats of red paint later, and Hakan’s skin was filled in.

Peel off the tape.

Hakan has turquoise hair. Because he’s awesome.

I used a permanent marker to add in eyebrows and a nose.

Then I coated the ball top in a clear sealant and put it back on the fight stick.

Hakan is awesome.

Updated Magnets

Our refrigerator here on Elizabeth is like a hundred years old.  It’s rusty, it sweats, leaks weird green stuff when I turn it off, and produces copious amounts of black mould if I’m not around to wipe it up frequently.  It’s not my fridge, though, so I can’t really complain.  Nor am I really going to do anything about it.

But the thing is, the stuff I stick to the fridge is mine, and the rust and moisture on the fridge itself has made some of my steel magnets a little bit dirty and dull.

One afternoon when the Pie was out and I was bored, I decided to jazz up some of those old magnets.

I mean, they’re just magnets, right?

So first I took some CLR to them (actually the organic version of that ever-popular calcium/lime/rust remover).

I scrubbed off what I could, then carefully dried them.

Then I picked up some of my craft paints. I went with red and black to match the red walls, black counter, and red and black floors of my kitchen, and then a sort of white-gold metallic to touch up the rest. They’re nothing too spectacular, but they’ll do for now.

Rustic Pencil Holder and Homemade Pencils

I saw this about a year ago, and I remember thinking at the time that it was such a simple yet elegantly nifty project I would have to make it sometime.  What better time than the present?

I wrangled a log out of the mildewed pile in our dilapidated excuse for a shed and got to work.  You can of course use any form of windfall or anything you find lying around.  I’d love to try this with driftwood, if I still had my beach handy.  As it was a pretty long chunk of wood, I figured I’d make three pencil holders, just to spread the love amongst my Christmas gift recipients.

I also thought I might make them slightly angled, so that all the pencils or pens could be viewed from one side, instead of them all being on the same level. So I sawed them accordingly, in varying thicknesses.  Actually, the Pie did most of this because I took too long.  But we didn’t really try too hard to get things level or straight — the crooked adds to the charm, and I swear we did this on purpose.

And then the bark, which had been sitting and drying out over our kitchen heater for two months, just peeled right off so easily.

I used a butter knife to get the thinner inner bark off.

Now you drill your holes.  I used 3/8″ and 1/2″ drill bits, to accommodate skinny and fat pens and pencils. You know, like the fat ones you pick up from the bank or that you get in swag bags at conferences and stuff.

You can space them out evenly or put them in randomly, whichever floats your boat.

To make sure that all your holes are uniform in depth, use a bit of tape around your drill bit to mark how deep you want it to go.  When the line of the tape touches the wood, you’ve gone far enough.

In addition, if you are pursuing an angled approach, make sure that your drill is going in perpendicular to the surface upon which the wood is sitting, not perpendicular to the surface of the top of the disk.  Although I suppose you could do that, too, if you wanted your pencils to stick out at an angle.

Then I sanded, to smooth out the edges and to make the top nice and even.  You don’t want splinters in something you’re going to be touching all the time.

I stained one of them as well, again for kicks.

To go with the pencil holders, I thought I would include some pencils I made myself.

I got the idea from here, but modified it so it was easier for me (because I found this actually quite difficult).  You need some 2mm pencil leads, the kind that go into architectural drafting pencils (also known as clutch pencils).  They tend to come in small plastic boxes of 10, and you can find them at art supply stores or on the internet.

Then you need some thin paper.  I used a combination of newspaper flyers and origami paper for this, with the cheap newspaper on the inside and the nice origami pattern on the outside.  Cut the paper into squares that are the same length as the leads, which is usually about 5″.

Take a paint brush and some glue and paint some onto the edge of one of the pieces of paper.

Lay your lead onto the glued surface, just a little bit from the edge.  Fold that extra part over the lead and tuck it in.

Now start rolling, carefully, putting even pressure on both ends of the lead.  You want the paper to be tight around the lead but you don’t want to put too much pressure on it that the lead breaks.  I definitely broke a few.  And go slowly, so you can make sure that the lead rolls straight in the paper.  Many of my pencils came out crooked and had to be trimmed later.

When you reach the end of the paper, add some more glue and fasten the edge securely on your roll.  Repeat with more paper until you get to the thickness you like, with some nice patterned stuff on the outside.

Put some glue on the outside, just to seal it all in.

Allow your pencil to dry, then trim the pointy end of the pencil with a knife or a pencil sharpener, and you’re all set.

Three-Dimensional Name Plate

I was perusing Not Martha a while back and she was talking about a company called graypants, which specializes in products made from recycled cardboard.  While that is totally cool and I am behind that all the way (someday I will make/buy these gorgeous scraplights), what struck me about this in particular was graypants’ company sign.  It was the company name, carved out of several sheets of stacked cardboard.  My first thought was that is so nifty.  My second thought was I can do that.

So I did.  With my nieces’ names.  I get these sheets of cardboard stuffed into some of my book orders at work as packing material, so they were a good (and lightweight and small, thereby mailable) surface to work on.

First I picked fonts to work with.  They had to be easy enough to cut out of cardboard, but also with enough difference in them to sort of semi-express my nieces’ very different personalities.  Hard to do in a font.

I printed the names, in their respective fonts, out and from that created a stencil on card stock for each. This was easily done by flipping the name over and tracing it in pencil on the back.

And then flipping it onto the card stock and tracing it again on the front.

Which left a faint pencil outline for me to cut.

Then I got to work.  Tracing the outline of the name twice onto each cardboard sheet, I carefully cut it out with an Xacto knife and some very small scissors.

This is definitely the most time-consuming part of the whole thing, and is tricky if you’re working with large or dull scissors.  I regretted my choice of that G early in the game, but kept going because it looked good.

I made each name ten layers thick, and glued the layers of each letter together with Mod Podge, which I think is my new favourite substance.

Then I took some acrylic craft paint and coloured in the sides of the thing, just for visual interest.

And then I painted the surface of the letters in a slightly different colour, mostly to hide my accidents when I failed to colour inside the lines.

Then I glued all the letters to each other, in the way that they best fit in terms of a glue-to-surface ratio. I used hot glue to stick the letters to each other, just for security.

I left off hanging materials, because I’m not sure what the girls will want to do with them and so I wanted to give them some leeway.

But I think they turned out rather well. The girls can put them on their bedroom door, their wall, or their desk — whatever they want!

Oddities in String Art: Arr, Sweet Arr, and the Howling Wolf

Okay so I’m definitely behind the trend on this one, but it looks like so much fun that I had to try it out.  When I asked Stef what he and the Stone would like me to make for them for Christmas, he suggested some form of decoration for their home.  And as Stef is my favourite pirate, I made him a skull and crossbones. For a little bit of contrast I used gray crochet thread on the crossbones part, so you could differentiate it from the rest of the skull.  Then I thought it would be cute to add a cross-stitched platitude to the bottom in a nice bright red.  Instead of Home Sweet Home, I thought that “Arr, Sweet Arr” would be more apropos.

These beautiful copper carpet tacks belonged to my great-grandfather (who never threw anything away) and they look fantastic against the wood.  You can use any kind of nail you like, provided it has a decent-sized head.

For the People Downstairs, whose last name is lupine-related, I made a slightly cheesy wolf howling at the moon.  To get the template, I simply drew a large circle and then freehanded the wolf silhouette.  It took a couple tries, because I am not the artist my mother is, but it ain’t bad. It only kind of looks like a corgi.  But that’s cool too.  I used a more delicate white thread to pick up the slightly more elaborate pattern.

Because of my latent inability to cut anything in a straight line, the Pie was kind enough to do the sawing for me, as I had to cut this piece of craft board (which I bought from Kent) into smaller pieces.  The wolf piece is 12″ x 12″, and the pirate piece is 12″ x 16″.

Spray paint the boards the colour of your choice.  Black is a good go-to background.

You can see how there’s a mottled texture to my paint — I ran out of one can of spray paint partway through, and like a good little soldier I sat there and drained all the air out of the can so it could be properly disposed of.  Because it was occasionally spitting paint at me while doing this, I figured I’d do it while pointing it at my painted surface.  And thus the weird texture.  But I’m going to roll with it. It adds character.

While that is drying, work on your design.  On a piece of paper, sketch out the outline of the shape you want.  Mine are obviously pretty simplistic, due to my lack of artistic skill (I’m the only one in the family who can’t draw, go figure), but you don’t want to get too complicated when it comes to string. Basic and slightly embellished shapes are probably your best bet.

Temporarily tape the design to your board, and carefully hammer in nails along the lines you’ve drawn, spacing them out evenly.  My board is only 1/4″ thick so I had to be careful not to hammer them in too far.

I found a pair of pliers kept me from hitting my fingers.

Once you’ve got all the nails in you can rip off and recycle the paper.

Now, with your thread or wool or string or whatever you’re using, tie a knot around one of the nails and start weaving the thread around the nails, back and forth across the space you want to fill.  Don’t worry too much about a pattern (unless that’s what you’re going for).  Stop when you’ve filled it as much as you want to.  It’s a pretty fluid thing.

And there you have it.  I screwed hanging hardware into the back and that is that.

Distractions: Easy Finger Paints

It’s Christmas Eve.  If you have small children, I’m sure your nerves are frayed with their over-excitement.  We’re having enough trouble dealing with just Rusty today, and he’s over thirty.

Why not whip up this quick distraction tool (from Easie Peasie, what a great name) for the young (and old) to keep them busy for a while.  It’s worth the mess, I think.

In a small saucepan, combine 3 tablespoons sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 cup corn starch, and 2 cups water.

Heat, whisking often, until the mixture starts to thicken.  It happens all at once, so make sure you’re paying attention.

BAM.

If you keep going it will turn into plastic, so make sure it’s still stir-able when you take it off the heat.

Remove from the heat and pour it into individual containers.

Use food colouring to create the desired colours.

Stir those colours in well.  Make sure you scrape the bottom and sides to get it all mixed in.

I went with the classic rainbow.

Keep the paints sealed and out of direct sunlight.  Give them a bit of a stir before using, because there will be a bit of a dry skin on top.

When I was young my dad refinished our back room, where the laundry machines were, and the door to the backyard.  While it was empty, my mother chucked in a huge roll of craft paper and a pile of finger paints and I would spend hours back there, making a mess.  I’m handing these (along with a roll of craft paper) over to the Incredibly Little Hulk and Il Principe when they get back from Kansas so I’m sure I will be soon seeing some very painty little boys.

New Found Ornaments

I saw something like this at a craft fair in St. John’s and thought that I could easily make my own with some found objects and some hot glue.  The “jellybean row” is an iconic element of St. John’s architecture: a series of brightly coloured and quaintly crooked wooden row houses that line most of the downtown streets.  So every craft fair and gift shop in the area sells some version of this, painted on mailboxes, pieces of wood, in stained glass (similar to the disaster I made last spring), and on pieces of shale, which conveniently break on a rectangular plane.

So I found some pieces of this shale, relatively thin pieces that wouldn’t weigh down a tree branch.

And I painted them to look like the crooked, shambling houses around here.

And then I glued string on the back for hanging, with hot glue.

An extra dab, for security.

And that’s it!