Well today is a special day... I'm delighted that my favorite bloggy friend, Michelle from Molly Moo, is guest posting on Curly Birds. And if you head over to her blog, you will find a Curly Birds tutorial!
Michelle is a wonferfully talented Irish blogger whose work is colorful, fun, quirky, and always beautifully presented. Enjoy...
May the light always find you on a dreary day,
When you need to be home may you find your way,
May you always have courage to take a chance,
and never find frogs in your underpants.
Bighearted, sensitive, loving, with a delicate touch and natural eye for detail and all things sweet is how I think of Helen. She was one of the first creative moms I found and followed just over 2.5yrs ago, when I joined the ranks of mommy bloggers. Over that time Helen has become my friend, a dear friend and confident, a fellow mom and kindred spirit, both overwhelmed by the love for our daughters. This July we meet for the first time, in Ireland - there will be much hugging for sure :) We will sit and natter and watch my 7yo Molly and Helen's gorgeous curly birds, Nola and Kira, play together amongst the dunes and hedgerows in the south west corner of my native Ireland.
I am all kinds of delighted to be blog swapping with Helen today and sharing one of my crafts with you. What drives me in what I do is creating unique crafts that inspire play, accessible crafts for children to make on their own and with their moms. I love colour, character and humour. My favourite medium is papier mache but I've recently learned how to make a felted bead.... so lets see where that goes :) I hope you can join me on my journey…
Even frogs come in pairs
Materials Needed: paper craft cones, newspaper, cellotape (Scotch tape), paint, wall paper paste, and PVA (white craft glue).
You can, of course, make the cones by curling semi-circles of cardboard.
Where to begin: roll newspaper into a ball and secure the balls with cellotape to prevent them unraveling. Place the ball atop the pointed end of the cone and use plenty of cellotape to secure the ball of newspaper to the cone.
Roll three smaller balls of newspaper for the eyes and the nose and again tape well to the head as shown.
Repeat this for the froggy feet, taping four small balls to the base.
Time for the messy part…
Tear strips of newspaper along the grain, to give you full length even strips, then tear these strips again into three and leave aside.
Make up your papier mache paste. My preferred paste is made from a few spoons of wallpaper paste with some added PVA, mixed into a really smooth flowing consistency.
Roll up your sleeves and add the papier mache layers (two layers was all I needed to apply for my frogs as the craft cones are really very strong, you might need to add a third layer depending on the weight of board you use if making the cone yourself.) One by one let each layer dry completely before adding the next.
Tip: Getting the paper into the little spaces around the eyes, nose and feet is a little fiddly but if you really seal in the paper and massage out any air bubbles with your finger tips you will have one really tight and secure frog, one whose ‘bits’ don’t fall off when launched across the room to see how high frogs can really jump!!
Leave your frog aside to dry – tick tock, tick tock…
While the frogs are drying, why not get the kids thinking about painting? What colors are they going to use – and what about patterns? Polka dot frogs, stripy frogs, splatter paint frogs or just simple green frogs called Kermit…… let their imagination guide them.
Ribbit!
Remember to visit Molly Moo and see the craft I made for Michelle's daughter Molly.
You can also find and follow Michelle here:
MollyMoo on Facebook
MollyMoo on Pinterest
Thank you Michelle, see you soon!
