Category: craft

Underwater Collage

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‘Underwater Collage’ by Julie Anna Douglas. Why not download the worksheet that accompanies this poem? Or get out your paints or pencils and some paper and make your own Underwater Collage?

fishes

 

Click here to download the worksheet.

 

Fish

Make your own collage fish.

 

IMG_4924You will need: Scissor, different types of paper, glue, pencil, pen, paint.

If you only have plain paper you can paint it with splashes and blobs of paint.

 

 

 

Cut out the fishes body shapes from patterned or coloured paper.IMG_4931  Cut out tail fin shapes from a different colour paper or tissue paper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glue the body shape to a background piece of paper. Draw or stick on fins. Draw the fishes faces with pencil or pen.

Colour the face and fins with paint, coloured pencils or felt tip pens.

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Create a sea full of colourful fish using as many different colours and papers as you can find.

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What other colourful sea creatures could you make using collage?

 

Crafty bits… Fairy Lights

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jI have to admit this craft project came about after I saw some lovely fairy lights by artist  Louise Traill and decided to try to copy them.

Hers are made with (I think) with tissue paper and wire.  I made some using this method and others on my string were made with lampshade sticky PVC and a stapler and covered with fabric or paper.

 

 

The method I worked out for the wire framed shades was more or less like this:

 

I used pva glue and paper strips wound round the wire shapes and then glued paper around the frame to hold it together.  The second and third sides need a small overlap.  There is a fixed wire across the top opening and a second wire that is only fixed at one end. This is to attach the shade to the light string, using the second wire to hold the bulb in place (so it is not touching the paper).

I made various shapes and tried different methods.  The paper wrapped wire was best for sticking delicate paper coverings onto and was neater than my first attempts where I twisted the wires together.  I used tissue paper, old paper bags, wrapping paper and Japanese tissue paper, and decorated the shades with scraps of braid, buttons, wire curls and beads.  The moon face is from a drawing that I printed out.

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Here is part of the string above my desk.

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Mole has been out in the garden…

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…and is reassured that warmer days will soon be here. He may even take his scarf off.   The crocuses and snowdrops are flowering and I can’t wait to get outside to tidy up and plant.   This week I’ll be sowing tomato seeds.  That’s always my first gardening job of the year and heralds the almost-arrival of Spring.  And I’m looking forward to photographing my woolly characters without getting wet knees.   🙂
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Pasta Machine Printing

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I love prints as an art form, but apart from some basic lino printing and screen printing I haven’t done any myself.  Print making seems a bit of a daunting thing to try, requiring expensive equipment and space. I’ve always particularly wanted to try dry point etching, so I got really excited when I saw an artist on Twitter talking about PRINTING AN ETCHING WITH A PASTA MACHINE!  Gosh.

Naturally I rushed out to buy one. Luckily my local cookshop had a modest one on sale and I got some sheets of flexible clear plastic from a nearby model shop.

This is what I did:

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The plastic sheets I bought were A4, so I cut them up so that they were small enough to feed through the pasta machine. They don’t need to be clear, but it’s handy if you want to trace over a drawing. I scratched my design with a pointed implement I found in an old box of tools. I’ve no idea what it’s really for. Any pointed tool you can comfortably hold should work.

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I used block printing ink as it was available. It worked fine. I’m going to try printing with acrylic paint with a drying retardant mixed in. I found the best way to ink the design was to rub the ink into the scratches with a cloth, then rubbing of the excess with a dry cloth.

2I printed onto cartridge paper, as I had some. Soak it in water for a few minutes first and pat dry.  You’ll need to experiment with how wet the paper needs to be.  Put the paper onto another piece of paper and some felt and place the inked plate face down on your paper. Fold the other side over. Be careful to hold the plate and paper together as you feed it into your pasta roller.

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Wind the handle! You’ll need to guide the bottom end so that it doesn’t catch on the bottom of the machine as it emerges.

 

 

This is what I made:71

There are several demonstrations of this by artists on YouTube. Worth a visit.

I’m looking forward to experimenting and printing lots more 🙂