Class artwork for school art auction

Every second year my son's school employs an artist in residence who inspires the children to create lovely things. These lovely things are then sold off to unsuspecting parents at an evening exhibition. In addition, each class produces an artwork to be auctioned off during the evening to raise money for the school. The parents coordinate the class artworks and, strangely, it's the same parents every time doing it. It will come as little surprise that I am one of those parents who always gets sucked in enthusiastically volunteers!

Secretly I love doing it, but don't tell anyone.

I am of the strong opinion that the artwork should have obvious input from the children. My idea for this year was to do a beach scene (beach scenes sell well, right?) populated by the children's beach-inspired self portraits.

Inspired by this SmartClass tutorial, I painted the background on a large sheet of stiff paper using a combination of acrylic paint, fabric dye and food colouring - basically whatever I could find in the right colours. I placed the paper on a slanted board, wet the section I wanted to paint and then dribbled the colour down the page, light blue for the sky, turquoise for the water and yellow for the sand, allowing the paint to dry between colours. I rocked the board and paper from side to side to gently mix and move each colour into place. The turquoise had a bit of salt sprinkled on while it was still wet to give a bubbly, sea foam effect.

Once the background was ready, I went into the Year 4 class (9 and 10 year olds) and played teacher for an hour or so, which was great fun. We talked about what the children liked to do at the beach, what they would wear and what they liked to bring with them. I then got them to draw themselves doing whatever they wanted and said the figure needed to be about 10cm high. I didn't worry about exact sizing as I knew I could use different sizes to create perspective later.

The teacher was worried that the pictures wouldn't be good enough, but I knew they would be fabulous. And they were!

 If a child finished their picture early I encouraged them to draw some extras for the scene, whatever they wanted. I got some lovely birds, helicopters, dogs, the hand of a buried person and a cute table that I ended up placing on side as I couldn't fit it on the sand.

The children really enjoyed doing their drawings and several told their parents that they HAD to buy the class picture as they'd done such a good drawing for it!

I spent a long time carefully cutting out and placing the self portraits on the scene before glueing them on and framing the picture in an Ikea frame. I was so pleased with how the picture turned out. It looked good from a distance and there was loads of gorgeous detail to look at once you got closer.

The auction was great fun and raised several thousand dollars for the school. My picture raised the second highest amount, over $600, so I was thrilled with that.

I wonder what the class and I will make next time!

Bowls and rugs from scraps

In a departure from my usual sewing of clothes, I've had a brief foray into homeware. I saw these rope bowls popping up here and there and thought I'd give one a go. Rather than using plain or dyed rope, I raided my remnant bin and found some bits I liked. I tore or cut the scraps into strips about an inch wide and wrapped them around the rope as I sewed. The rope is 100% cotton, approximately 7mm in diameter, from Bunnings.

I used a zig-zag stitch for the sewing, the longest and widest on my machine. I began sewing a spiral and just shaped the size of the base and the shape of the bowl as I went. As I came to the end of a wrapped strip of fabric, I just overlapped the next one slightly and carried on. The stitches hold the wrapping in place.

I like how the torn and frayed edges add texture to the bowl and I also like the bits and pieces of sparkly fabric I included as they catch the light.

I have this sitting near my computer and currently use it to store all the ear phones that used to disappear up the vacuum cleaner. I find myself gazing at it often. It's not perfect, but it makes me happy.

The other things I've been making are patchwork throw rugs.

Look at those jewel colours and lovely fabrics. 'They must have cost a fortune', I hear you exclaim! Well no they didn't because look!

All free upholstery samples that are no longer needed by the fancy shops. What's more, they are already grouped in coordinating colours and like fabrics and cut into rectangles ready to stitch together! I got these samples from Remida creative reuse centre in Perth.

I'm no quilter and this is supposed to look rustic (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it). I just arranged the colours in a pleasing way and sewed them together, first by sewing strips and then sewing the strips to each other.

The larger pieces in the sample packs tended to be darker colours and I used these for the back of the rug, just piecing, then trimming, until I had the right size. Next I did stitch-in-the-ditch quilting along the front stitching lines to hold the front and back pieces together. Finally, I cut wide bias strips from burgundy corduroy and used that to bind the edges.

This throw rug, my second and better attempt, was tied up with a bow to form part of the present I gave my parents for their recent golden wedding anniversary.

Here is the first rug I made:

This one looks lovely in my house and feels very nice to sit on.

It goes well with my bowl too!

Romeo and Juliet

Things have been a bit crazy around here lately. We had to move all our downstairs furniture out so we could have the floors sanded and varnished, a job that was well overdue following our recent plumbing problems. On top of that we had to move out to my parents' house (half an hour away) for two nights while it was done. 

We arrived back home three days later to find dust EVERYWHERE even though we'd covered everything with cling wrap and drop sheets. Cling wrap keeps sawdust out really well BTW. Worse still, there were gaps between the floorboards that looked terrible. I rang the sanders and they said they would fill the gaps and do another coat of varnish the next day. OMG more sanding and another coat of varnish when we'd just moved back home and I'd spent the entire day cleaning up sawdust.

I couldn't face moving out of the house again, so I devised a plan involving a ladder up to our balcony so we could climb up to bed! Needless to say, the boys thought this was the best idea ever!

The ladder actually worked fantastically well, although it was a bit precarious climbing over the balcony railing, especially in the dark! I also lost count of the number of times I told the boys they were not allowed to go up/down it right now. Later the next day we were able to walk on the floors again and, after a busy weekend, we are almost back to normal.

Unfortunately, the moving to my parents' house and general excitement about the ladder played havoc with the sleep patterns of JJ (almost 7 years old) and he woke me up numerous times at night while the general chaos of the floors was taking place. I eventually had a Serious Talk with him about it. A bit later, he gave me this:

He was slightly puzzled by the teary-eyed, very squeezy bear hug he received in response.

Now, there's just one more Serious Talk I need to have...no more of this now the floors have been done!!

Finishing touches for a boy's bedroom

This is part of my

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Following my recent tutorial on making a canopy for my son's bed, I thought I'd show you some of the other things we've made and found to decorate his room.

I made this star with stripes cushion by following this tutorial by Fleece Fun. I made mine from Ikea cotton fabric and denim, instead of fleece. I also added the distressed denim 'J' applique before I sewed everything together.

The gorgeous space themed quilt was from the op shop. That was a good find :)

There are three paintings in the room. This large one done by me. It's a copy of a page in a favourite Zigby Zebra story.

This gorgeous penguin painted by JJ, aged 3.

And this banksia flower and boomerang, also painted by JJ, aged 5. The banksia painting was done with my Mum who is an artist. She paints mostly Australian landscapes and flowers. You can find her paintings here.

For any non-Aussies who may be interested, this is what a real banksia flower looks like. They are quite amazing, large cylindrical flowers with a woody centre. They come in all shapes, colours and sizes.

Source

Then, of course, there is this 'treasure chest' which I've mentioned previously. Being guarded here by Spike the sock monster. I had originally planned to do a makeover on the chest, but I have grown to like it in its original state.

It's fun to have handmade and treasured finds in a child's room. OK, it doesn't look like a room out of a magazine, but the items have meaning and their own special value. What child wants to live in a magazine anyway - well maybe there are some, but certainly not my boys. They want to relax and be creative and wrestle and make forts and throw the football around and bounce on the bed. And I can say 'yes, but please clean up afterwards'. And once in a while they do :)

Simple bed canopy tutorial with 'no sew' option

This tutorial is part of my

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After we refashioned JJ's bed from a standard single into a child-size single, I made this canopy in the hope that it would further encourage him to actually sleep in the new bed! I'm pleased to say that he loves this canopy. It's light enough so that when it's pulled closed, air can still circulate inside making it safe to sleep in.

This was really easy to make and took less than an hour.

What you need:

Two sheer tab top curtains (mine were on sale in Ikea, $5 for the pair).

A hoop, available from toy shops.

Some ribbon or fabric tape to hang the hoop.

Metal rings and a ceiling hook.

To start with, sew the two curtains together side by side. If you don't have a sewing machine, you could just leave them separate.

Cut the hoop with a saw...

...and thread the curtains on to the hoop.

Tape up the hoop.

Cut two lengths of ribbon approximately twice the diameter of the hoop (length will vary depending on how high you want this from the ceiling).

With the curtains spaced evenly around the hoop, loop the four ribbon ends on to the hoop and pin in place. Sew or use safety pins to secure ribbon. You may want to sew the ribbon near the ring to stop it sliding around. I didn't do this and should have done :)

Attach the ceiling hook and you are ready to hang your canopy.

A cosy hideout.

This cool 'treasure chest' was spotted by JJ on the verge during a council clean-up. I was ordered to stop the car and collect it. It needed a good airing out, but it's great for storing light sabres and Nerf guns and, I must admit, it's got character!