Granddaughter's Jubilee cakes

My 10 year old granddaughter wanted to make cakes.   She made these from start to finish.  Gluten and dairy free cupcakes made with her favourite salted caramel icing sugar.

She then made the frosting (dairy free buttercream) under my guidance, learning how to make sure it was light and smooth.   She then divided it into three, and colored one tub red, one blue and one white using Sugar and Crumbs Colour pop colours. 

I showed her how to feel an icing bag, and gave a quick demonstration on how to use the nozzles we chose.   I left her to it.    Didn't she do well?     My favourite was the cake below - which I think looked like a crown!

 

Crafting with a Granddaughter

My youngest granddaughter came to craft a few days ago, and I thought I would share this tote bag she painted of a frog and mushrooms.

She also did some tie-dyeing of some silk scarves for her mum and grandmother for Christmas.  (Apologies or the poor picture, but we forgot to take a photo of them before she wrapped them., but hopefully you can get the gist of the designs.)

They were died using the microwave method  - she really liked how quick it was.   The last time she did tie-dyeing was a few years back on holiday, when she did the technique on a T-shirt and we had to leave it in a plastic bag overnight to "prove" before rinsing it.   One and a half minutes in the microwave was all it took.   Downside - I had to iron it for her! - lol!

.... and on that note of Christmas presents,  I would like to wish all my readers the greetings of the Season - whether you say Happy Christmas, Happy Holidays or whatever.   Stay safe.

Granddaughter's card for her Aunt

I had the grandchildren over the weekend, and the 7 year old wanted to use Craft Artist.  She made a card for her bff, and also a birthday card for her aunt.  This was the front of that card.  She also made an insert and designed a paper for the back (but I didn't take photos of those).

She knows her aunt loves owls.   As she normally goes a bit OTT when designing cards, I thought the simplicity of this card was lovely.

Dream Catcher

My 6 year old granddaughter had a dream catcher in her comic the other week, and I was asked to help her make it!   Well no way could a six yer old have done it - even I struggled - mainly because the ring was plastic and the embroidery threads  threads kept slipping.  I think I went slightly wrong in one bit, but it doesn't notice and she loves it - thank goodness for a touch of pva glue!

Pumpkins

Sorry I have been awol from blogging for those that follow regularly - sometimes life gets in the way.   As it is Halloween today, I thought I would share the pumpkins my grandchildren made.  All their own design and work - I am not a pumpkin carver - not in my remit - lol

Fortunately for them I do have the necessary tools to do the carving - also if they do it at my house, I get the job of clearing up!

The 6 year old had help from her eldest sister, but she did all the cleaning out herself - she wanted a puking pumpkin - so I helped her make a tongue.   When I asked what colour she wanted the tongue - I was thinking green or something - the reply was "white Nanny - he is dead"  - well that told me!

12 year old's pumpkin

9 year old's pumpkin

6 year old's puking pumpkin.

As haven't done anything with a pumpkin this year - I thought I would re-share my pumpkin from last year though.

Grandchildren's Cakes

My three youngest grandchildren decided they wanted to make cakes with their Dad at the weekend, and I would share their efforts.     They went out with him and bought all the ingredients, and "toppings".  On Sunday they all descended on me so that I could supervise the icing   (or was it more that they could mess my kitchen up and I could do all the washing up  - lol!)  I wasn't really needed apart from initially showing them how to use a spatula to apply the icing.   The rest was up; to them.

Here are some close ups of the cakes.   

Lemon sponge with poppy seeds
(I think this would make a good Christmas cake idea)

You can't see the buttercream underneath, but she did a pattern on it with a fork
and a knife drawn through it to created a "feathered" look

The six yer old needed a little hand operating the nozzle on the chocolate icing as
it was a little hard for her - so I pressed and she guided - at least she managed some leaves. 

Even my son made a cake for a friend's birthday.

Now do you think I can get them to make and ice the family Christmas Cakes this year ?

Space Project

Today I am sharing one of my 6 year old granddaughter's effort - her space project for school.   She came up with the idea of what she wanted to do - and her father came up with a way of illuminating it.

This was nearly all her own work.   She made the planets from Hearty Air Dry Clay, and painted them with watercolours following a chart from the internet.  Making them as as realistic in size as she could - though Jupiter and Saturn should be a lot larger in comparison, but had to be realistic with the size of box she was working in (one from her own shoes).  She threaded the planets on some black fishing line (courtesy of a friend of her mother).  She painted the shoe box with black sparkly paint  for the night sky and added a few drops of glue and some and some glitter for even more stars. 

The sun was created from some old packaging, which she paint with clear gesso and alcohol inks.

She needed a little help creating the holder for the torch, which was created from some more packaging; and she needed a little help from her cousin and me to wield the hot glue gun to stick it to the box ..... and to cut the hole in the box with a stanley knife. For safety reasons, I think that is allowed.  (The torch shines through the side of the box and the sun.

Note the rings on Saturn - created by cutting out the shape in clay with two bottle tops!  Also the Earth has its moon (confess an inspiration of mine in the middle of the night to use a map pin - and her aunt came to the rescue with one!)

I hope you agree that she had made a brilliant job of it.

Grandchildren's craft - Air Dry Clay

I had the grandchildren unexpectedly the other day for  couple of hours.   They had been shown how to make roses the previous day by a friend and wanted to show me what they had learned. Out came the air dry clay and some cutters as well, and this is the result of their efforts over a couple of hours.

 

I wasn't too sure about letting them loose with acrylic paints - so they used watercolour paints.   (I did prepare the round plaques with gesso for them, and the black canvas was a prepared black one.)

I gave them a few more hints on how to make the roses (what I call marzipan roses) which are just made by hand.   I think they did very well.

New Baby Cards

As I mentioned previously I had the youngest grandchildren here for a few days, and whilst here they learned that their Aunt has given birth to a baby.   Needless to say they wanted to make some cards.  So here are the results of their efforts:

They were given free reign of Craft Artist and each did their own thing, including the inserts (albeit I am not sharing those, but the wording was lovely and individual, and all their own ideas.)

9 year old's card

12 year old's card

6 year old's card

The six year old put her card in an envelope and sealed it before I had a chance to take a photo, so the image is above is from Craft Artist which is the programme they created their cards in,  It was mounted on white scalloped card. similar to her sisters' ones.

Card I created to send from their Dad and me

As I don't have a lot of baby files on my Craft Artist programme, I think we did fairly well in producing something different from all of us on a pink theme (although as I was last to create mine, I was running out of images to use - lol!)

Clay Modelling with the grandchildren, and a visitor's watercolour painting.

 It has been half term week, and I have had the youngest grandchildren here for a couple of days and they wanted to do watercolour painting and clay modelling - so we combined the two.   The first day was spent modelling with air dry clay.

6 yr olds apple with legs and a fairy door

Fairy door

9 year old's "Daddy & BBQ"

12 year old's mermaid on rocks.

This was all their own work (I had been hoping to do something myself, but I was too busy supervising!)  I did get to coat the boards with the texture mediums for the sea and the grass for them, so that they could dry before they got to paint them, and I helped with the initial shaping of the apple, and made suggestions for the painting of the apple.

My Wilton people molds, that I must have had for nearly 40 years came into their own for the heads and bodies, and the Fairy Door was a Sugar Buttons mold.

As I didn't dare risk them painting with acrylics, they used watercolour paints and some goache, which worked quite well  The 12 years old did use some of my metallic Posca pens for the mermaid's tail.

I think they did extremely well.

On the second day, when they were painting, their Aunt (my daughter) called in, and she wanted to try a watercolour painting.  So under my guidance (that's a joke really, as I am only just getting to grips with learning how to do it) she produced her first painting.

Misty Dawn

She wasn't too happy with it, but what a difference when we took the masking tape off - I think it is brilliant for a first effort on linen watercolour paper, with my new Matthew Palmer brushes, and just my guidance.   (At least I had a video recording of a demo to follow when I did mine!)

Nanny to the rescue!

Phone call:  Nanny have you got a box we could decorate to put the presents we bought Mummy in?  

Answer:  Yes I have a shoe box, although I was going to save it to do something with myself, but you can have it!

..... and also can we decorate it at your house when we come over for lunch?

So .... here are the results of their efforts.    Originally they were going to stamp or draw on copy paper - but we realised it would be too short.    So they raided my stash of 12 x 12 card.   It took a while to decide which designs they would like.

 I also have one of their craft boxes still at my house, and there was loads of tissue paper in there - so the inside (containing bath bombs) was sorted.

We also found some paper flowers, a little crochet flower and some ribbon in my stash, and I showed them how to create tag from some of the paper.

We then found some peel-offs to decorate the tag.

Hopefully their mum will like it, and it has made a little inroad into my craft stash.  They also made a birthday card for her in Craft Artist, but I forgot to take a photo!  (My excuse I was helping to get their tea!)

Grandchildren's Craft

Cat Transformer Superhero - Front

The youngest two granddaughters asked to come for sleepover over the weekend as their elder sister was at a friends overnight.  Mainly because the 8 year old had some homework that required her to raid my craft stash!

She had to design a superhero and make a model of the hero or one of his/her "tools/accessories.  She had chosen "Cat Transformer", whom we later named Annie.

Our first job was to find how much of my Cloud Clay was still useable as they hadn't used it for over a year and some of it had dried out.    Fortunately the Black was workable, which was the main colour she needed.   She used the smallest of my Wilton people molds to create the figure.   Using a toothpick to do the marking on her boots.  I showed her how to create hair, and she soon got the hang of that.  I gather her mum is making her an actual costume to wear - so she created the cat ear hairband, and painted the face.   We discovered a clay butterfly in my stash that we had made some time ago, so that was added to her back as obviously being a superhero - she should be able to fly!   A brad was pushed into her front as a motif on her jumper.

Originally she drew whiskers on the face, and then I had an inspiration and cut some stamens to create the whiskers - certainly was the finishing touch!

.

Back

Obviously her younger sister wanted to work with the Cloud Clay too - She wanted to make an owl for her aunt for her birthday.

Inspiration struck me and I found a polystyrene egg in my stash - which at least meant she didn't need quite so much clay.  I think she did quite well, with a little guidance from me on how to create the shapes.  It was duly present to her aunt who said she would put it on her office window sill!

On Sunday they made a birthday card for their aunt in Craft Artist.  Also some masks, and some pictures of animals with their own faces superimposed on them, but I forgot to take some photos!  duh!   They are loving using Craft Artist and are gradually learning all the various effects they can get with it.   Obviously the 8 year old used computers quite a bit at school, and the 5 year old is catching her up.   I love to see them being so creative with it.

5 year old granddaughter learns to use Craft Artist

Front

Back 

Insert

I have already mentioned that I had the grandchildren over the weekend, and that the 5 year old created a picture for her Dad that I forgot to take a picture of.   Well on Sunday, having seen the card her sister made for a friend she wanted to have another go and make a card for her Mum and fiancé.    With the help of her 8 year old sister this is what she created in Craft Artist.  and I promised to put it on my blog.   (I should add here that they have three cats and a dog - thus the theme).

I love that they want to learn to use all these skills, and will always encourage them.  (Obviously the 5 (nearly 6 year old is just learning to work with computers at school now.

They all also enjoy colouring, so the colouring books, pencils and alcohol pens were all out on the table over the weekend.   All they were too young to do papercutting - we photocopied a couple of the designs, and the youngest two coloured them in instead!

I had intended to introduce them to the messy art of paint pouring - but we didn't get that far ...... so that is saved for another day!

Clay plate

Some time ago I posted pictures of some clay projects the youngest grandchildren had done.   At last the eldest of the three has managed to paint her plate.   (Mainly due to the fact that she was off sick from school and with me for the day).   It was a lovely afternoon yesterday, so as she felt a tad better we sat up in the Den in the sunshine, and she completed her project.

She fell in love with my Cosmic Shimmer iridescent shimmering watercolour paints, and wanted to use those.  I wasn't quite sure how they would work on clay, being water colour, but they worked fine.

I think she has done a lovely job for a 10 year old.

Fabric painted bag (the other side)

You may remember that I attempted to do some fabric painting on a bag the other week; well I purchased some new stencils, the other week, and the finally arrived.

As you may recall, I wasn't happy that the owl on the other side, and didn't feel it "popped" enough, so this time I created a white background.

I placed the mask on the bag, and then placed masking tape around it to outline the size of square I needed.  Removing the mask I painted the square.

The mask was then put back, and the tape moved to hold it in place.

Finally with a stencil brush, having removed the mask, I randomly stippled the blue outline.

close up

and just to remind you - this was the first side.    (I think I might use the stippled edge idea, and add to this with a white stippled edge - that should make it "pop" more.)

the first side

I had intended to spend the day yesterday with a paintbrush in my hand, after stenciling the owl, but unexpectedly I had to look after my youngest granddaughters, so I though I would share what they got up to to prevent me from doing "my thing"!

Obviously it involved stencils! but I played it safe and they used card and water-colour paints.   They also raided my stash of flowers etc.

The 7 year old's cardboard bag - 1st side

and the reverse side

The 4 year old's stenciling and collage

another by the 4 year old - but she was getting tired by this time - lol!

This is what it was!

A Planet

A back to school space project with No.3 granddaughter a planet.  Fab isn't it - she did a grand job.

Papier mache over a balloon, and then some crumpled serviette added for texture.  Painted with black gesso, and then she let rip with the Pebeo DYNA iridescent colours.  Base colour we blue/green and green/blue sponged one, and then with the scratchy side of a kitchen scourer she add the highlights to the "wrinkles" in the serviette layer with a bit of I think every colour in the range.  

When dry we tied some stretchy silver "ribbon" around it.

Planet and satellite

Her Dad and older sister (aged 9) helped her  create a satellite from a pringle tube, some kebab sticks, kitchen roll tubes and some kitchen foil - another brilliant project.  Photo doesn't really do the satellite justice - but it looked really effective.

Good job Nanny is a crafter and has a stash of bits and bobs for grandchildren to craft with.    

All three children then started to make some "sputniks" with polystyrene balls and cotton buds, but the first layer of paint wasn't dry so we couldn't take any photos.  Hopefully weather permitting we shall finish these next time they visit.