I’m beginning to think there is nothing an old issue of the Beano can’t look good on, it’s a creative winner every time. That stack of old issues I purchased on ebay came in to play again this week.
A final one for the children in my life, this week’s Make was inspired by the last Craft Club of the year. The plan was to make Christmas decorations and we had 14 youngsters and one hour available.
It’s come to my attention over the years of running kids classes that sometimes they just like to kick back. They do like the messy slightly complex classes but it also turns out that sometimes they just want to simplify things a bit, enjoy making but also have a bit of chat at the same time. Now when you’ve got an hour to achieve something with 14 kids who are mostly 5 and 6 years old, in order that they go home with an effective result it is often good to keep it simple – this week we did just that.
The plan was to make Christmas wreaths for they’re bedroom doors, with the usual need not to spend any money. We already had wire, paper and beads – so a plan was formulated. Circles of coloured papers and beads, simple but effective.
They were a fantastic bunch of kids to end the year with, all in the Christmas spirit and very chatty. They loved hunting through the bead box and busily got on with the task whilst gabbling away to each other… wonderful, I love kids when they’re like this, it reminds me of when I was at school.
The resulting paper and bead wreaths were far better than the demo piece I produced and to be honest much more colourful than the version I’ve made with the Beano – how do they do it! The thought process just seems to involve picking up random colours and any old beads that don’t match and yet the results are always more vibrant than mine, clearly I can learn a lot for these little people – a constant source of inspiration.
I do like my more subtle Beano version – although thinking on it now, I wonder if it should be double with maybe and inner or outer ring… I’ll think on this and possibly adapt it for the exhibition.
So that’s it, the end of the 40′s!! Next week ’50′ and 3 to go. I’m officially off next week, I promise to do no work at all… except for that one meeting. I will be doing my Make though, obviously, and I’ve decided on a bit of photography, some quality time with my camera in honour of ‘Image 52′ in 2012. Yes that’s right there are two of them at it next year now, very exciting, I appear to have started something – Hazel Evans will be doing Inspire 52, an exploration of illustration and words. And Howard Shepherd will be doing a photographic year named Image 52… all brilliant, I can’t wait to read somebody else’s blog!
Love it! What a fab idea.
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