Hear ye, hear ye! “Once Upon A Time” exhibition and workshop event in Brisbane

A fairy tale exhibition, with 30 local artists is coming to Brisbane's West End. 

Illustrators, fibre artists, painters and sculptors will all exhibit and sell work with their unique interpretation of the fairy tale genre. 

The ten-day event will open on Friday 16th Aug from 6pm in aid of the Make-a-Wish Foundation. There is opportunity to enjoy an evening of wine, art and fairy tale magic; and let your creative juices flow in one of their fabulous workshops - suitable for children as well as adults. Click here for a list of all workshops.

Arzu of zuzu&me, a fibre artist and craft educator from the Sunshine Coast Steiner school ~ Noosa Pengari, is leading a class in how to make these beautiful floating fleece fairies or needle felted toadstools ~ but places are limited. please contact Arzu on zuzuandme@gmail.com. For a sneak preview of some of the pieces she is exhibiting, visit http://www.facebook.com/zuzuandme

 

See you there?

From little things...big things Bloom. Making Peg Dolls - the book tour continues!

This post brings me such delight. Two years ago, maybe a little more, I recieved a comment on this blog which read something along the lines of "I have an idea. Please email me". The author of that comment was Margaret Bloom of we bloom here, her idea was a swap, a peg doll swap. In the months that followed I made a firm and treasured friend and my house slowly but surely became home to dozens of tiny peg dolls...

In the years since, our family collection of tiny peg dolls has grown beyond the walls of the little doll house they first populated. They now peek out of bookshelves, stand tall on windowsills and dance upon tables. I find them in baskets and tiny boxes, in pockets and bags... in the bathroom and in beds. They never fail to make me smile.

And then, one day Margaret told me she was writing a book. A book to be filled with the little people and sprites, gnomes and creatures that were filling her house too! Over what felt like an eternity she fed me with little morsels and pictures that made me croon. I can't remember a time I was so restless with anticipation.

From the very beginning my favourite was the Michaelmas dragon; I can't explain why but I LOVE it. For me there was no question, it was going to be the first doll I made when I had my hands on the book.

And then it arrived :) The book feels great in my hands. It is weighty and bursting with colour and cuteness! There are step by step instructions to make over 60 different dolls - dolls for every season, dolls for festivals, story telling and sheer sweetness. Patterns made to follow exactly or inspire new ideas. Doodle pages and painting tips, snippets of stories to make you want to read more. All things to make you smile.

I am so gratified to be part of Margaret's Making Peg Dolls blog tour (tho it is very likely I would have sulked and refused to answer emails if she had not invited me). I hope to do her creativity and cleverness credit with this little story crafted from a few wooden peg dolls, a bit of paint, felt, silk and just a little twist on the patterns in her book.

Tell me a story - The Paper Bag Princess

 by Robert Munsch & Michael Martchenko

Once there was a beautiful princess (Elizabeth). She lived in a castle and had expensive princess clothes. She was going to marry a prince named Ronald.

Unfortunately, a dragon smashed her castle, burnt all her clothes with his fiery breath, and carried off Prince Ronald.

Elizabeth decided to chase the dragon and get Ronald back. She looked everywhere for something to wear but the only thing she could find that was not burnt, was a paper bag. So she put on the paper bag and followed the dragon....

 

...Finally Elizabeth came to a cave with a large door that had a huge knocker on it. She took hold of the knocker and banged on the door. The dragon stuck his nose out of the door and said. 'Well a princess! I love to eat princesses.....'

Elizabeth is a resourceful and clever princess and the dragon is a bit of a flaunt - 'is it true, said Elizabeth, 'that you can burn up ten forests with your fiery breath?' 'Oh yes,' said the dragon....

At this point I must abandon my story telling because I don't want to ruin the middle or the ending! It was not my intention that you would read this post and immediately sucumb to the overwhelming desire to buy two books - just one! The Paper Bag Princess has a most fabulous and unconventional ending and can be found free and well loved on the shelves of your local library. Making Peg Dolls by Margaret Bloom on the other hand is so new it is nowhere near a library shelf and will be so well love by you and yours, you would never want to return it anyway!

You can get your very own copy from one of these places -

• Amazon
• The Book Depository
• Barnes & Noble
• Waldorf Books
• Powell's
• Booktopia

You can get more sneak peeks and treats by browsing the official blog tour -


February 4th:  The Crafty Crow
February 5th:  The Magic Onions
February 6th:  The Toymaker
February 7th:  Clean
February 8th:  Anna Branford
February 11th:  Red Bird Crafts
February 12th:  Art is a Way
February 13th:  Softearth's World
February 14th:  Chocolate Eyes
February 15th:  Rhythm and Rhyme
February 18th:  Wild Faerie Caps
February 19th:  Sacred Dirt
 

 

Almost time... turn your volume up and whistle along

At the end of the month you could have your very own copy! Want one? Have a little look here

Tadpoles

I would have thought, well I did think, that raising a few tadpoles would be a relatively simple, fun task. Well I am here to tell you it is a bit stressful.

They are quite fragile, they can turn canabalistic and they grow legs and jump (right out of the box.. to who knows where...maybe the cat knows. I prefer not to think about it).

Add in that I really, really don't have any desire to raise cane toads. This means hours of googling and peering at computer images and then into murky creek water contained in tall glass jars trying to work out colouring and if that tadpole has eyes on the side of it's head or more toward the middle.

They are quite cute tho right? and Autumn means tadpoles - loads and loads of them in seemingly every water pocket nearby. I love frogs... this adds to the stress of pinching frothy foam (frogs lay in clusters of foam, toads lay eggs in gelatinous strings) for childhood curiosity (science) the guilt when one invariably dies is weighing heavily on my mind.

They eat wilted spinach - how about that? They will also eat each other we discovered to our horror if they run out of spinach... this has lead to solitary confinement for one; who my big girl declared instantly as a cane toad, nothing else could be so wicked! (I think, well I'm pretty sure, it is a frog tadpole).

His eyes are on the side of his head right?... Paranoia is settling in.

Aromadough

It finally dawned on me today that the wee girl is of playdough age - big enough to knead and create but not so small she would just eat it up... With a bit of encouragement from my big girl I hunted through my collection of recipes and found the basic one I was looking for.

I have adapted this recipe and method to make it my own but it was originally written out for me on a scrap of cardboard by one of my homebirth clients at an antenatal visit. She had three children then, plus one growing. She homeschooled; I remember their big long table full of the children's daily work, our visits were always a little noisy and full of fun - I made a point of bringing my big girl (who was then quite wee) with me to those visits because their home was so welcoming and my client had a daughter of the same age with the same name... on the day in question they were playing with playdough; I had never made the stuff so she shared her recipe* with me; with my adaptaions it is so simple the little ones can help make it too.

You will need:
1 cup fine salt
2 cups plain flour
2 tbs oil
4 tsp cream of tartar
2 cups boiling water
food colourings as you fancy (we used yellow, pink, purple and blue to make those colours plus red to make orange)
essential oils (we used lemon, orange, rose geranium, lavender and jasmine)
air tight storage containers with lids

Put the salt, flour and cream of tartar in a bowl and use a whisk to combine them;

Add the oil and the boiling water (adult bit) and stir to bring together - as it cools, use your hands and begin kneading it in the bowl.

Tip it out onto your bench top and knead it a bit more then roll it into a log and divide it evenlyish into the number of colours you intend to make; roll them into rough balls.

Now the little ones can join in. Flatten out one of your balls to a disk and put a few drops of food colouring and a few drops of essential oil into the middle. Fold the edges in and give it a quick knead to bury the worst of the colouring - then pass it along the bench to some keen little hands whose job it is to knead/blend the colour through the dough. Add your colouring carefully, if you need to you can always add a few more drops of colouring... but you can't take it out!

Continue adding colour and essential oils and kneading with the rest of the plain dough balls til you are heady with the divine scents. It stores pretty well, if I remember rightly, and when your aromadough loses its scent add a few more drops of essentail oil, knead it again.

Fish out the bag of playdough implements that haven't see the light of day in about six years (brush off the dried clumps and powder of ancient play dough and chuck out the dodgy looking stuff still in tubs) sit your wee ones down to create whatever their hearts desire and make yourself a cup of tea - you will get to drink the whole cup, hot and undisturbed and you will feel marvellously relaxed which might have something to do with the lavender, rose geranium and jasmine...

*the original recipe did not contain any essential oils and made only one colour. To convert it back; omit the essential oils and add your colouring to the boiling water, stir and then knead.

Wednesday Craft Group - Fleece Birds

Today we made these beautiful fleece birds - my nephew took them for a fly around the neighbour's garden when we got home...he liked the yellow one best.

Once a little bird went hop, hop, hop,

And I said, "little bird, will you stop, stop, stop."

I ran to the window to say "how do you do?"

But she shook her little tail and away she flew.

Want to make one? here I'll show you how - tis child's play


You will need a thin length of wool roving no longer than from your inside wrist to your inside elbow, a thicker piece about a third to half that length, a bit of crochet type cotton, a scrap diamond shaped bit of felt, a stick of some kind and a sharp needle.

Take the long bit of fleece and tie a knot in the centre, don't pull too tight - that is your bird's head.

pull out a super skinny bit of fleece from under the knot and wrap it around under the head to form a neck

open up the two halves and put the short segment between to make your wings (my big girl wanted to add colour so she fluffed out a bit of yellow too)

then pull out another skinny bit and wrap it behind the wings in the same way you did the neck; this will form your body segment.

Thread your needle and knot the end of your cotton. Put your needle in under the neck segment pulling gently to bury the knot and come out in the head segment where you want the beak to be. Poke your needle through the centre of your piece of felt and back in again and pull the beak close to the head

put the needle back into the head where you came out and come out again around the centre back - this will be the balancing point - tie it to a stick and you are done.

see child's play!