There will be radio silence for the next week as off on holiday (to the British seaside, God help us! Macks, wellies and windbreak are packed!) Here’s a parting creative snapshot of the kids doing face painting – this activity absorbed them like two little cherubs for over half an hour of serious concentration. First [...] Read more...
Top tips from mosaic school
Here are some of mine and Nathalie’s (fellow course member) top tips from the West Dean course (there are many more!): 1. Put PVA glue in fridge to make it gloopy enough for sticking on 3d surfaces 2. Tumble gin bottles (or other waste glass!) to make beautiful tumbled glass for mosaicing 3. Use a [...] Read more...
Slow progress
Back home and so happy to see the kids and Neil. Lots of hugging especially from Toby who jumped all over me! Very very wonderful. On the mosaic front, frustrating but fruitful. As I lay in bed last night I had the idea of repeating a similar swirly shape in the top right of the [...] Read more...
Mosaic School Day Three
End of day three Can you see what I did today? I added a whole line of vermiculatum round two elements of my image. I am following the new rules of thumb – which includes doing one outline at a time (so tomorrow will start the third floaty leg you see!) and if I carry [...] Read more...
Making mosaics with children – mosaic in a frame!
Activity Four A technique discovered by Isabella last week as she made a mosaic for her Godmother, Charlotte, to take with her back to Sri Lanka! Start with a blank picture frame. Remove the back so that you can see through the glass. Pour a thick-ish layer of PVA (white craft) glue into the frame [...] Read more...
Mosaic making with children – shapes
One of the things about making mosaics is that you need definition to the pattern or edge of a picture you are making. This is normally done using the edge of different colour / texture tiles and the line created by grouting which gives mosaic its distinctive flow or ‘andamento‘ (the technical term!). It is [...] Read more...
Materials for making mosaics with children
In this series of posts, I am hoping to show a progression of activities that can help young children have fun and get a grasp of the basics of mosaic making. Before I talk about Activity Two, here is a list of things you can use as ‘tesserae‘ (this is the mosaic term for the [...] Read more...
Making mosaics with little children
I am exploring with Isabella (3 1/2) and Toby (2) ways of making mosaics with little children – slightly different to school age and older children as their fine motor skills are still developing and there are materials and tools that they can’t yet have too much access to for obvious reasons! Activity One – [...] Read more...
In praise of slow…
Life has really slowed down for me in the last couple of weeks. I’m days off being 40 weeks pregnant (waiting, waiting…..). I have been on maternity leave for just over a month now and it feels fantastic to have used the first 3 weeks of my maternity leave to put to bed household projects [...] Read more...
