So the summer holidays have begun and we've come to the end of our crafty sessions at The Little House in the Park (*sob*). But we're still making stuff at home - and these are our latest creations. 

I had some air-drying clay in the cupboard so we got it out one morning and had a bit of a play. Matthew used some rubber moulds (from Ikea) to make fish and hearts. When the clay was dry we popped them out of the moulds and painted the hearts gold and the fish with glow-in-the-dark paint, sprinkled with glitter. When the paint was dry we glued magnets onto the back to make them into fridge magnets that we can give as presents. 

I made the thumb pots while Matthew was playing with the clay, and when they were dry I painted them with white and metallic enamel paints. 

Shiny happy clay crafts. 
 
This week's session at The Little House in the Park was all about Chinese New Year - tomorrow marks the start of the Year of the Snake. So we went snake crazy.

The one on the right is your classic paper plate snake - covered in tissue paper and cut in a spiral. This one has a separate head glued on and is tied to a stick for extra springy fun - Matthew held it on the way home and it twirled round and round in the wind in a very pleasing way. 

The one on the left is a felt bracelet snake, made by Matthew's grandma, who came with us this week (there is NO WAY I would have been able to make that one during the session... far too busy trying to prevent Claygate). I think it involved winding lots of bits of wool round and then glueing a felt face on top. Seemed to keep her happy anyway. 

The clay snake is all Matthew's own work and he's very proud of it. It's just a shame it keeps breaking into bits. His dad looked at all the pieces bemusedly and said "Oh. You made poo at The Little House today."

We made the two little pipe cleaner snakes when we got back home (obviously couldn't get enough of the whole snake thing). Just two pipe cleaners twisted together with - yes - googly eyes stuck on. 

Happy Chinese New Year! 
 
Last week's session at The Little House in the Park was all about hibernation and hunkering down for the winter. 

The spider's web is made from wooden skewers stuck into a conker, then wound round with wool of different colours. It was very therapeutic to make (I was deliberately blocking out Matthew unravelling all the other balls of wool in my peripheral vision). The spider is just four short black pipe cleaners twisted round in the middle, with its legs pushed into the wool. 

The hedgehog is made out of clay, and his little den is a cardboard box painted with shiny autumn colours and then stuffed with kapok and straw. We finished it off by gluing leaves on top. Matthew always likes it when the clay makes an appearance - I think he'd be quite happy just spending the whole session making clay hair with the garlic crusher. 

I fancy hunkering down for the winter. Wonder if the boy would be OK if I just crawled under the duvet for a few months?