DIY Craft: Rhubarb Concrete Stepping Stones

Hello!

I have a DIY concrete craft for you today: rhubarb concrete stepping stones.

I have by no means come up with this project. I've just seen it done so many times and wanted to make some for our backyard and I'm sharing our experience.

It's sumer here! I am so happy the weather is warming up which means we're heading outdoors much more as a family on our one acre block. There are always jobs to do (so many weeds- ugh!) and big projects to work on that Jimmy has started. We are currently working on some crazy paving using slate in a new fire pit area. We have an electric cement mixer here (which I dubbed Jimmy's thermomix) and I decided to steal some of the mix so the kids could be outside alongside us working making stepping stones.

We laid out some plastic sheeting on an outdoor table and the girls picked some large rhubarb leaves from the garden. (See Jimmy, rhubarb IS useful for more than just apple and rhubarb pie :D)

The leaves have lots of cool veiny texture which captures really well in the concrete.

We had some pretty tough wire that we used for reinforcing (which you can see in the bottom left hand corner above), which Jimmy cut with a grinder. You will need some sort of wire to reinforce the stepping stones, if you need to cut by hand just use the thickest wire you can manage to cut by hand.

The girls then took handfuls of the concrete mix and slapped them down onto the leaf. You keep adding them till you reach near the edges. I get them to wear kids gloves as you don't want skin to come into contact with concrete. 

(For a nice strong concrete mix I like to use 1 part grey cement, 2 parts fine sand, and 1 one part coarse sand and a cement additive (optional) to packet instructions. You can also find suggested mixes on the sides of a bag of portland cement.)

We kept in from the edge of the leaf an inch or so, and shaped our leaves into heart shapes. Once we had one layer of concrete on the leaf, we placed our wire reinforcing in, then added another layer of concrete. Our stepping stones were around 1 1/2- 2" thick. 

The girls tended to make their edges a little thin so I needed to remind them to build them up to make them the same thickness as the centre of the stepping stone.

Once shaped, we let set for 1/2- 1 hour then came back and covered with plastic. I kept them damp and covered for one week to let them cure for extra strength. (A minimum of 3 days would be sufficient.) 

24 hours after they've been made you can peel the leaf off and neaten up any rough edges with a chisel or rasp. 

The kids had fun peeling pieces of leaves back! :) They were really stuck in there, but they come out easily when they're all dry.

I love how they turned out and want to make lots for all around the garden! Jimmy thinks the rhubarb has earned it's keep (he thinks it pointless keeping something that requires a tonne of sugar to do anything with.)

I hope you enjoyed our DIY craft rhubarb concrete stepping stones experience, please drop a comment if there's anything you'd like me to craft out of concrete. It's such a versatile product, and it lasts a long time as art in the garden. Affordable, and no kiln needed! 

Enjoy,

Jules :)

Kids Craft Project: Painted Dream Catchers

Hello Creativity Lovers!

I'm sharing a craft project that we kept busy with one day over the school holidays.

We had some of our kids' friends over for a whole day, and they are art and craft lovers, so we thought we'd come up with a special project for them to complete while they were here. 

Painted dream catchers! 

I got the fabric circles and wire loops ready before our guests came over. I cut circles of calico, a little smaller than the wire circles I made, sewed around them leaving a gap, snipped around the edges then turned out to the right side. I pressed the circles with an iron, then topstitched close to the edges all around, sealing the opening.

I gave each circle a coat of gesso and let dry. Check out my desk, one of my kids has written "ART!" Haha.

I suggested each kid think of a theme for their dream catcher, and we printed off some pictures from the internet for inspiration. I also suggested we each thought about our colour theme, and whether we wanted lighter or darker colours. One of my girls thought a colour palette scheme printed from the internet would be a good idea, so we did that.

Once the kids were in the studio, they chose fabric to wrap around our wire circles, sealing the ends with tacky craft glue. 

Then the kids got to work painting their chosen themes. We used student grade acrylic paint, and one kid chose to add some pen to the top of their dry painting (we used a hair dryer to speed up the paint drying), and another chose to use some stamps to embellish her piece.

The stamping was done by painting acrylic paint onto the stamp then pressing onto the fabric. You need to quickly wash stamps after doing that, before the acrylic paint dries into grooves.

Contrast works well in paintings. I suggested a darker background here to make the cat stand out. Of course, I'm not strict about it all, if someone chooses to go against my suggestion, then I'm all for letting their own individual creativity and ideas shine!

Then came sewing our paintings into our wire loops. To make it easier, I used a hammer and a chunky nail to make holes around the edges so the kids could easily sew their chosen wool colour through the edges of the paintings. We used tapestry needles for the sewing.

We found it easier to loosely sew the calico circle in, then go around fixing the tension of the wool later.

Busy, crafty, fun work!

The kids then chose from ribbons, fabric strips, ric-rac, wool, and beaded strands to "flourish" their dream catchers. (Flourish was a word used by one of the kids- love it!)

They also discovered my supply of resin flowers, and so some of them got added to their paintings as well. I made wool loops to attach to the tops for hanging.

Then, the dream catchers were all finished, and our proud guest artists went home with a unique piece of art to hang in their rooms and catch all their wildest dreams!

I hope you enjoyed seeing the process of our latest kids craft project.

Jules :)

Plaster Wall Hangings

Hello Creatives!

I've just had a mini Etsy shop update, where I have finished uploading some of the plaster art wall hangings I've recently made. I now have birds and hearts in the shop.

They are made from plaster (so suitable for indoors only) made from a silicone mould that I made myself. I cast them in plaster, then clean them up when set, and paint them in acrylic paints.

They are coated with a gloss acrylic sealer. Each one is one-of-a-kind and totally unique.

You can find them in my shop here!

Jules :)

Creative Life Round Up

Here's a creative life round up, where I show a bunch of random shots from my crafty, arty & creative life.

Here I am testing out my new (but old) rug hooking tools. Which I guess are more like punch needles. They have quite a big opening in them so that I can use them with wool. I love the texture of hooked wool, and I love using wool with variations of colours within the ball.. it gives extra textural interest. And, this craft is fast! Which is great for an attention deficient crafter like me :) This effort is from one evening in front of the telly.

A bunting in progress upcycled from a thrifted wool scarf. I've also made some little upcycled tassels to use on this bunting too.

Hanging some of my collected lampshades up. I still have more to hang. I thought it might inspire my husband to get them hooked up electrically when they're all just hanging there from string and thumb tacks. Maybe!

Not being able to find an affordable jacket I like (in Australia) that is also warm I went and ordered a copy of Ottobre Magazine which has some jacket patterns in it. I'll get my Mum on the case when it arrives. She's an excellent sewer. I'm planning on getting her to make some lined jackets for me so that they will be nice and warm, plus how cute will patterned fabric for the lining be?

She also better get ready to sew some dresses for me. I have ordered this dress pattern designed by Dottie Angel. How awesome are they? Hoping to have some made up in time for spring when some warmer weather will be welcomed with open arms.

It's school holidays here now, and our first creative project saw us making some iced cookies. Check out how bad great they look! ;)

We eat more along the paleo/ healthy lines here, and I am yet to find an icing recipe that is easy to make AND use. I cannot master whipping coconut cream (I have ruined quite a few batches) and even this one I could not get to work. It was so clumpy to use but still tastes good I suppose. Looked nothing like it looked in the cookbook! This icing was made from cacao butter, coconut butter, honey and nut milk. 

The search continues! 

Other creative and crafty projects that we would like to do on the holidays include finishing some previously started projects and starting some plaster animals that will appear as a tutorial on my blog in the near future.

My final MATS illustration project has begun, which is a crazy eclectic mix of icons inspired by collections (I chose a quirky doll collection and beads). Right up my alley! I love that for the last project we get to go a little crazy. I will post the finished project here when done.

Miss 8 recently entered the Young Archie portrait prize. This is her mixed- media piece. I helped her with the planning but every step was completed entirely by her. I suggested a plan of attack: 

-draw your portrait in pencil on plain paper

-create some decorative papers to use for collage

-paint/ fill your background on your good paper (watercolour paper)

-glue your collage pieces onto the background

-transfer your portrait drawing onto the background using carbon transfer paper

-render the figure. She used acrylic paints and coloured pencils for the figure. 

The last step was to sign and varnish. 

The only thing I helped with was reassurance along the way, enlarging her drawing to transfer onto the watercolour paper, and some colour mixing tips when she got stuck. I believe having a plan & breaking it down into little steps removed some of the overwhelm of trying to create something good to enter into a competition. That kind of pressure is heavy!

That's it for now. 

If you've enjoyed these pics, I do the most sharing of my creative life in picture form on Instagram. Come join me there!

Yours creatively,

Jules :) 

Creative Life Round Up

This post is one of those bits-n-pieces blog posts. Here's me and my girls before a recent outing :)

Did you know it took about 30 photos to get a decent one!? Kids! They get a camera lens in front of them and they go silly.

My girls made me some flowers for Mother's Day this year.. I'm happy they won't be dying any time soon!

Something I'm working on at the moment (one of the many hundreds of things) is a mixed media painting for the MATS online illustration class I'm taking. (Read about my journey so far here.) The first task was that I had to gather some bits and pieces before I started the artwork. 

As it happens, my eldest is currently doing mixed media art in her art enrichment program at school (a program where kids showing talent get to do extra specialised art classes- she's so excited she got to go!). She had a sick day last week and we did mixed media art together in the studio. I have to be careful not to make sick days too much fun! (The iPad is definitely off limits.)

Her work so far. This is a background she made and she wants to draw and paint a portrait of me over the top. 

Now for some creativity in the kitchen. Last week one of the mornings I was up super early making seed balls (my own recipe), banana bread breakfast muffins, peeling a pomegranate, popping out our homemade fruit juice gummy lollies and picking oranges from the backyard. And incase all that makes you feel guilty, that is definitely not a standard morning. I do try to get up earlier usually to squeeze in an extra hour or so tasks before the kids rise, but many days I keep hitting that snooze button until the very last minute!

These seed balls I made up was from frustration of never having the ingredients for particular bliss ball recipes. This one is totally customisable to what I have in the pantry, and is nut free so school safe. And yummy :) I just have to be careful not to snack on them all day.

I hope you enjoyed that round up. I'll be back soon with more fun stuff for you.

Jules :)