A crafty thingmy-bob

In my quest to become Mother of the Year (yeah, you can stop laughing now), I took a last minute decision to get crafty with Monster #1 one afternoon. While he was tiring himself out at nursery, I nipped into town to pick up some fun art supplies so we could have a relaxing afternoon decorating paper plates nana H had donated.

We already had a fair amount of craft bits and pieces but its always nice to expand one's collection with bargain buys from the Pound Shop. I had the idea we could make birds and faces so I stocked up on googly eyes, feathers and foil shapes (dying to call them sequins but this was a manly craft day.....grrrrr).

"mummy you forgot the gloopy glue!" *note the manly pink craft box*

I suggested we make some birds so we could use the feathers and googly eyes but Monster #1 had his own ideas as to how to go about doing this. The plates morphed from parrots with bright feathers......to clown birds with pompoms stuck on their backsides.........to some sort of feathery clown fish as apparently the sequins foil shapes were scales and finally it was decided they needed smiles not beaks. So there you have it.....our crafty thingmy-bob. Still wonderfully creative, don't you think? 

feathery clown bird creations

We had a go at faces too, who knew sticking pipe cleaners to a paper plate could be so difficult?! The glue stick wimped out, couldn't handle the fluffy texture, so we tried the gloopy glue....layers of the stuff....it was barely man enough for the job. I had more of the pipe cleaner stuck to me than to the plate by the end of it! Persistence paid off and the, now completely sticky, pipe cleaner held on for dear life.....just don't touch it!

My skills amaze me sometimes

The Monster eventually got bored of picking glue off his hands and wandered off to play with cars and make a lot of noise crashing them into each other. It was as if he had to be extra aggressive just to balance out from the slightly prissy afternoon we had just had. 

Anyway, as I was tidying up I came across his colouring book and remembered how I used to enjoy filling the pages of mine when I was wee. I grabbed some crayons and pencils and got lost in the pages. It was surprisingly therapeutic, I'm not sure how long I sat there doing it but I finished five pictures and stayed within the lines....mostly. I felt completely relaxed after it, my head was emptied of all the usual crap mum's have floating around in there.

no scribbles here!

 I think the next time I'm feeling a bit like a coiled spring I'll grab the crayons and take ten minutes to myself to get lost in the smell of wax and pencil sharpenings.

x