Summer Sparkle!

Over the past month I've been teaching and assisting with quite a few kids craft classes as part of the summer spark program, so this post is to show off a few of the things we've been up to. A lot of these are sea themed to coincide with our current 'By The Sea' exhibition at Walford Mill Crafts. One of the first was this 'jumpin' jellyfish' workshop that I led:

These were made from the plastic dome lids of fancy smoothie cups, decorated with coloured tissue and glitter, with scraps of fabric, ribbon and yarn for tentacles and strung onto a decorative stick with elastic to make them jump up n down!
Another workshop I ran was a hand sewing workshop for 8+ year olds. Although I'd never done this before and had some reservations about how it would work, it went really well, the kids were fantastic and really enjoyed it and also made some fabulous felt sea creatures:

I gave them stencils to cut the patterns out from, but the rest of the work was all theirs! I was really proud of them because they worked hard and had great ideas, like using the buttons to decorate the turtle shell and mermaid's tail. This was definitely one of my more successful classes and I hope to run some more of these soon with a different theme.
One of the classes I ran last week was 'Painted Nautical Pebbles and Shells', for which the idea was to paint a tiny scene onto a pebble or shell and create a mini work of art. Some of the kids 'got' this idea more than others:

But even the lesser-decorated versions came away looking pretty nice:

So all in all it was another successful class! Kids can sometimes do really cool looking arty things without even trying too, like this mixed up paint pallet:

Another little activity I set up for our exhibition was this kid's corner:

 I painted / collaged the under sea scene and put together some materials for visiting kids to add fish and other creatures to it. So far there's been a few contributions:

I'll try and remember to take another photo when the exhibition ends in september. Although I'm enjoying all the different crafty activities I've been doing, teaching is very tiring and I've got a newfound respect for anyone who can manage it full time! 'Real' teachers must be made of steel!
That's it for now, more updates soon!