Merry Christmas!!

A little late, but... well here in Spain Christmas holidays last until January the 7th which means we're almost in the middle of these days. Still a lot of things to do, parties to prepare and presents to buy (we celebrate the Three Wise Men better than Santa)... uff!!

Anyway, have fun wherever you are and I really hope you have the best Christmas ever!!

Love and peace

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Presents (I)

I made these two bibs as a present for a couple of friends that are expecting their first baby. They live in another city, so we decided to visit them and bring them our presents. They don't want to know if the baby is a boy or a girl, so I chose two unisex colours. About the pattern I took it from the wonderful site homemade by jill.

I know the first bib is a bit twisted, but it was the first try, in fact, I wanted to redo it but time's been running out lately.... And the photo is a bit dark because is my new camera and I didn't know how to use it yet... ^_^U

Back to school- Stencil tote bag

My husband is going to start studying for a contest to become a Secondary teacher, so we decided to better get ready for long days at the public library and classes at the academy.
Yesterday we went to Ikea and bought a 15€ tote bag. As he wanted it to be something "personal" -and he really loves any kind of ape-, I decided to stencil a monkey and some flowers on it. You can see how it's made by following the instruction I gave on the post before this one. The patterns are too from Stencil 101 by Ed Roth.

It was quite difficult to keep it in place as you can see, there was some "low lines" and the paint went to them all the time even though I tried to keep the brush as dry as possible.... Now I'm trying to clean out the excess with cotton swabs.

Stencil T-Shirt (mixing colours)

I made up this T-shirt from a very cheap one I bought at H&M. The quality of the fabric wasn't really good, but as it was a try I didn't care....

This technique is really easy but let's go step by step. You'll only need:
- A T-shirt.
- Fabric paint.
- Stencil patterns.
- Stencil brushes.
-Iron.

First, you stretch you T-shirt with a cardboard inside (this way you'll prevent painting through to the back of the T-shirt as well). Don't stretch it too much, just as if it was just ironed.

Second, you'll place your stencil pattern. The stencil patterns I used were from the Stencil 101 (by Ed Roth) book, but it can be handmade as well. So, you place the patern where you want it to be and secure it in place with weights, tape, spray adhesive (but wait until it dries)...

Third, you paint it, But remember that stencil is a quite dry technique, so don't overload the brush (or the foam). If you are going to use spray, be really careful to protect the T-shirt with papers so you don't spray outside of the stencil pattern.. For this T-shirt, I used an ashtray as a palette and mixed some colours (but not too much or you end up just with brown ^_^!). Then I started stenciling deciding which colours I wanted for each part of the picture.
Once it is finished, remove the pattern from the T-shirt.

Fourth, you have to iron the T-shirt if you like the result. If not, you just wash the T-shirt and the stencil disappears, but if you want to keep it, turn the T-shirt inside out and iron the area you painted for one or two minutes and 2-3 iron heat point.

Hope it's clear enough; if not, I'll write more post about stencils, so don't worry.

The itsy bitsy spider....

....went up the water spout...

Nearly a year ago I went to an end-of-school trip with my 6th grade (12 year-olds) students. The trip was kind of a camp so the monitors let us almost nothing to do- but we did, after all, they were our children and wanted me and my colleague to have fun with them.

Those days, specially one that was raining, we did a lot of crafts (some of them I'll show you someday ^_^), but the craft I'm showing you today wasn't one of them. The thing is that the trip coincided with my colleague's birthday and the monitors decided to prepare her a craft as a present. I guess they thought it was rude not to give me something too (???) so, the did this lovely spider I still keep in my guests' room.

It's soooo easy to make, that I decided not to make a tutorial of it. You'll only need:

- A styrofoam ball

- Two funny doll eyes

- Some pipe cleaners (eight in different colours for the legs and one more for the hair).

- One barbecue stick/skewer

- One felt-tip pen.

- A little imagination and that's it!!

Mother's day

We've just finished our Mother's day craft... I'm soooo tired!! But it was worthy.

Well, we did two things actually: a poem-book and a recicled flower bunch (see photo above).

About the book...well I'll show it page by page someday but I couldn't keep a sample since my children had to take them home.

And now, let's talk about the bunch: I found it on the internet time ago, but I couldn't put it into practice till now. I got the idea from here. You just need a toilet paper roll, a pair of scissors, school paints and a stick (BBQ skewer). It's really easy and you can do it really fast (you have to wait for the paint to dry though). The pencil holder/ vase was a colleage's idea made with coloured card.

Hope you like it.

Saint Patrick's day mobile

I know it's a bit late, but I never know when I'm able to write so I've decided to write the posts as they come to my mind. I'll tag them afterwards and that's it!
So.... let's do a Saint Patrick's day craft!
This craft is aimed to a 6-year old class. First, you have to look for some colouring St. Patrick's drawings. I choose these: shamrock, leprechaun and rainbow. After a little explanation (so they can understand what they're doing) I show them the mobile. This way, they could see what I wanted them to do and they do their best to get their mobiles exactly as their teacher's. I've never thougth I'm very good at crafts but these children just make you get your self-esteem back!!

Well, after colouring the pictures, you cut them up, glue the rainbow to a cardboard and with a sheet drill you make a hole on both the "characters" and three on the rainbow.

To finish up, you tie three threads (I just made a tongue twister!)and that's it!

Rose Window

Here I go again. Sorry, I'm a bit lazy and I've been really busy last month.... I'll try to post more often.

Today I'm going to explain how to do a rose window for Primary School children. We did this craft at our craft seminar (course, if you prefer) when dealing with European crafts.

For this craft we needed card paper, pencil, glue, scissors and this kind of paper - I don't know its name- that is transparent/translucent, shiny and coloured. As you can see the materials are really easy to find in a school.

To start with, I googled a rose window pattern and printed it. We coloured it, cut it up (the holes as well) and turn it upside down over a newspaper. The, we started to glue pieces of this shiny and translucent paper I told you about before, the more colours, the best.

More African crafts

Some days later than what I'd have liked, I will show you more pics about African crafts. I think they're so easy to understand that words are useless. Most of them are suitable to do with 4 years-old children, but they would be very easy for children older than 11-12.

-Bottle covered with a string: using glue. You can colour it afterwards.

- Papier maché objects:

-Doll made with a mop:

-Picture made with coloured salt (coloured with chalk)

African mask

Well, let's go!

Last school year the teachers had the chance of carrying out a crafts course aimed to work with it across cultures, you know to help integration. Well, the subject is so huge that we decided to separate crafts by continents.

The day we worked on Africa we did a lot of crafts but one of my favourites was the mask. It was very easy, but I recommend you to work on it from 1st grade (6 years aprox.) on. We took some photos so it would be easier for us to remember the process.

First of all, on a big black card we drew a mask we found on the Intenet and we decided to focus on the eyes, nose and mouth. These woud have cotton glued on them fitting the shapes.

Then, you cover the cotton with a bit water and glue-wet crepe paper (is a kind of solf paper, like a hard tissue but coloured). The colours depend on how you want the mask to be.

To finish, once the glue is dry you can aply a coat of veneer (varnish).

Hope you enjoy!

Introducing myself

Here we go!!

As I say in the subtitle, I'm a Spanish teacher. I live 30 min. by car far from Madrid, near the mountains. I teach and I study as well: Social and Cultural Anthropology at university and Finnish language at Madrid's Language School and as far as crafts are concerned, I guess I always thought about it but I didn't start practising till last year...so now I'm "in search of lost time"

I planned this blog to show wherever you are what I'm doing (or at least trying to do). And, as my mother tongue is not English I'll surely make linguistic mistakes so please, forgive me. You will see that if I'm not sure if a word or sentence is right I'll write it in italics font.

I hope you enjoy and please, if you have any questions, suggestions...let me know emailing me diylearner@gmail.com