Samurai Warrior Costume

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Here’s another make you can do at home. To find out how to make it, go to to my DIY page  and download the instructions there.

Have fun!

Make Your Own

Samurai Warrior Costume!

 

 

Easy make. Some help with stapling and cutting from a grownup required.

Suitable for ages 5 and up.

If you are educating at home, then use this fun activity to do research into Japan and Japanese culture. Here’s the Wikipedia link to get yopu going. Have fun and learn LOTS!

 

Just to let you know, there were women samurai warriors too. Go girls!

 

 

 

 

 

Make Your Own Eggbox Puppet

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Make Your Own

Egg Box Hand Puppet & Mini Easter Egg Holder

This is a super-easy make for ages five and up – even doable for younger children if grownups lend a hand. Make sure if you use scissors or a stapler that an adult helps you 🙂

Create a frog, owl, lion, hippo hand puppet (whatever animal you like!) from an old eggbox and basic art materials. And if you fill it with mini chocolate eggs it makes a great Easter present!

Materials

An eggbox

Felt tips/Coloured Pencils/Crayons

Poster paint – optional

Collage materials: Fabric, Coloured and patterned paper etc

Glue – PVA, pritt stick

Thin card/strong paper

Tools

Scissors

Glue gun (optional)

Stapler and staples or sticky tape

Method

1 Decide what creature you want to make your eggbox into

2 Draw a simple design onto your egg box

3 Paint (if you’re using paint) or colour your eggbox with pencils and felt tips

4 Then get sticking! Glue on cutout fabric and papers for the skin/fur/feathers, and add details like eyes, beaks, ears and wings last of all

5 Cut out a strip of strong paper or thin card about 3cm wide x 24cm long to make a “handle” for your puppet

6 Staple or sticky tape one end of the strip to the inside edge of your eggbox creature

7 Loop your paper strip over the top of the eggbox

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8 Attach the other end of the strip to the other inside edge of the eggbox, making sure you can fit your hand in between the strap and the top of the eggbox. Cut off any excess strip.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9 Fill with chocolate eggs and give to your favourite person!

 

Puppets in Exeter

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I was very lucky to get the opportunity to sit in on some undergraduate puppetry sessions at Exeter University recently. Led by the brilliant Cariad  Astles, I got a real insight into performing with puppets and working out what makes a good performance and puppetry piece.

Really interesting, and extremely useful for a kids puppet show project I have got on the bubble… I managed to sketch some of the students rehearsing with their puppets, great body poses and faces. Here they are, and pictures of the puppets they were using.

Print & Collage Pictures

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This is a lovely, accessible way to make beautiful prints, and used by a lot of illustrators to create fascinating and bold images.

Using simple materials: black poster paint, corks, bubblewrap, sponges and corrugated cardboard, we printed onto A4 paper creating beautifully patterned sheets. After drying we cut the paper into shapes to make people, bird, insect and flower images. The results were lovely, well done guys!

Printing & Collage
Printmaking

“The White Frontier”

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This was a really interesting piece to work on –  a monoprint based on the Inuit exhibit at Exeter museum – it’s part of  group entry with Double Elephant Studio for a show there. The exhibit is pretty small, but contains amazing things like waterproof parkas made entirely from seal gut, plus toys and artefacts made by Inuit people in the 19th century using tusks and bones. Nothing wasted!

Doing more research online I came to understand the ultimate impact of contact with European traders and explorers which the print I made is based on. The Inuit have lost so much, especially in the past 100 or so years.

The White Frontier – monoprint
Dog sled wooden to
Sealskin toy kayak
Inuit seal-gut parka
Inuit dolls
Inuit artefact
Sealskin boots