Cover Girl

Family members of course know Sally.  Many friends will too.  My craft friends will know her as the designer of the ‘Sally Cat’ that has been used by several papier mâché contacts across the world.

‘Sing Up’ is a motivational theme that is operating in Primary Schools throughout the UK.   It is to encourage music and particularly singing.  Sally has always done a great deal of music in her teaching but has really warmed to the stimulus this offers.  She has taken her large choir to the Albert Hall and the O2 arena and now she and her school have been given a Platinum Award for their high level achievement.

Here she is on the front cover of the latest issue.  Inside are two articles she has written and lots of photos of the children from the school where she works in St Ives, Cambridgeshire.

Pandas galore

It started when Gilly's friend Clare, domiciled in Paris for some years, sent a picture from her daughter's magazine of 1600 papier mâché pandas, thinking it might be of interest to me.  Yes, I said 1600.  It was!!

Here is a picture, by the photographer Franck Charel.

Yes, they are really there.  It is not a digital mock-up.  I was determined to find out the story behind this because just making one papier mâché artefact can take a long time, the whole idea of making 1600 was mind blowing.

Slowly I gathered the pieces together, made contact with the designer and wrote the story.  You can see this on

http://www.papiermache.co.uk/articles/1600-pandas-in-papier-mache/

My last article on this site (about the very exciting subject of paste!!!?) has had over 75,000 visits in three years, so this one, being of a far more interesting subject, might even get more . . . will you be one??

David

A small rebuild

At the back of the house there was a small extension, built at the same as the main house in 1914, serving as coal storage, later a toilet, later a small utility room.  We decided to rebuild it, adding one metre of wall and with mainly glazing to match our existing conservatory.

This is what it looked like

and now . . . . bird feeders hang on the tree just outside the window and the garden seems to surround us.  Strangely the rain sounds loud on the plastic roofing of the main conservatory but under the double glazing of this roof it is almost silent.  This roof is heat resistant so it keeps a mainly really good temperature.  We were able to reclaim the sink from the old room, even though it was bedded in concrete.  It cleaned up amazingly well.  I made the drawers and the worktop, which is 32mm oak (gee it was heavy!!)

A visitor to the garden

Well, we really get lots of visitors, human, birds, insects; not so many butterflies as yet.  Among the birds there has been a rare thrush but several goldfinches, mainly in threes, chasing around the garden for hours.  It must be the new kids on the block!
Quite spectacular was this Hunter Dragonfly, seen here on the Acer Negundo Flamingo that displays its beauty in the middle of the garden.

Summer colours

So many people who live on the west side of the Atlantic believe that England is constantly wet.  They should be here now.  We have had mainly two months with barely a sprinkling of rain, the least being on our eastern side of the country.  In fact the weather reporters say that it has been four months with only 4mm.  Australians who moved here to experience lush pastures are moving back!!  With so much sun and warmth we have benefited from early summer flowers.  Here are some from our garden to share with you.

Keyrings r'easy in polymer clay

I thought that keyrings would be a useful way of using polymer clay.  Previously I had tried coating some part eggs that were made with papier mâché techniques (my article on http://www.papiermache.co.uk/ on 'Using eggs in Papier Mâché has had over 50,000 hits!) to make something like large cabuchon pendants.  They were too big in my opinion and not particularly well designed but what to do with them?  Embedding a piece of copper electrical wire to provide a loop to hold the key ring chain was very easy.  They are a bit big but useful for those keys you want to find fairly easily.  The one on the right was left over from the bookmark experiment (see earlier blogs).

For pocket size ones, simple modelling works well.  The one in the middle is actually donut shaped - like a stone with a hole through the middle, though it doesn't show in this view.  On the right . . a mouse of course!

A birthday double challenge

Well, Gilly (our eldest daughter, Gillian)'s birthday was coming up mid April.  What to give her as a present?  Viv, the able knitter, settled on a jumper, with variegated wool.  Her challenge was to match the bands of colour across the various parts and seams.  Not easy but all worked out well.  I was to provide a pendant to go with it.  Ideas do not come easily.  I made three different ones but was very unsatisfied with them.  Suddenly an idea came and I got to work.  Ultimately Gilly seems to have been well pleased.