I am absolutely exhausted, I am also elated and inspired by the children’s wonderful creations. I am amazed, as always, by their boundless energy and their fantastic potential. It is really incredible how creative children can be when we teach them new art forms and allow them to use mixed media.

I wish schools would put more emphasis on art and incorporate it as a main part of the curriculum. Every single child can create, and whist some are more creative than others, all children should be given the opportunity to express their outlook on life through art.
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Day 1 - The color wheel and the flower canvas

Without light, there would be no color. Color is all around us, surrounding our every day life with beauty. To understand the color theory, I felt that the children needed to understand light and discover the 2 additional colors of Magenta and Cyan that they do not usually learn about at school. So instead of talking of the conventional 3 primary colors (the RGB world made of red, green and blue), we talked about light and the 2 additional colors of Cyan and Magenta and made our own color wheel using those 5 colors.

We then learned about the wonderful tints we can create using the mixture of a color with white. It was very amusing to hear the girls debate whether white is a color or not. You will be pleased to know that they agreed, unanimously, that white is not a color

Once we played around with colors and mixed so many secondary color variations, we moved to creating our main art project for the day: the flowers!
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Jada concentrating on her creation

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Sacha and Jada loving the color red and all its shades

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Each of the girls used their color wheel as inspiration and created abstract flowers inspired by colors and light. Here are a few: Aren’t they simply gorgeous?
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Sophie is a fabulously talented little girl!

I give her drawing classes once a week and she never ceases to amaze me. She is an absolute joy to teach and is an inspiration to me. Her drawings are wonderful and such a credit to her artistic abilities.

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Sophie is a fast learner (surprisingly so) and  within only a few lessons, she was able to demonstrate an understanding of perspective proportions in drawing and the relation of the whole to the parts…She really is a very cool girl and I genuinely believe that, if she keeps on drawing and painting, she will become a very inspiring artist.

Here is some of the drawings we have been doing together. Each of these was completed in one session…How cool is that?!

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My daughter Sacha is the Cupcake Queen Extraordinaire!

She loves baking cupcakes for her friends at school. Last night, I bought her this gorgeous pack of 100 mini cupcake cases (you can buy them HERE - at Sainsburys’s), and when I picked her up from school, she immediately informed me that she simply must start baking…

While I think this is such a sweet thing to do, imagine my delight at this messy weekly occurance…Ok, picture this: split milk, crunchy sugar granules beneath your feet, flour covered work surfaces, a butter covered fridge door, blobs of cake mix on everything in sight including all items on the shelves and the garden glass panneled door (note to all mothers: do not allow the kids to use the electric mixer and watch them giggle as they experiment with its speed settings)…yes, it really is like that!

Once the cupcake mix is done and poured into the cupcake cases, it’s a question of popping it into the oven and starting the never-ending journey of clearing the kitchen from Sacha’s delightfully messy cooking experiment…

Sacha, in the meantime, sits by the over door and watches the cupcakes rise slowly and screeched with delight as they do so…

oh, I do love children, they are so full of magic and teach me every single day how to love life’s little treasures…like mini-cupcake making!

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Making Invitation cards for a little girl or boy’s birthday party is one of the most enjoyable aspects of my Cool Mummy business…With each Arty Party which is booked in advance, I offer these lovely cards as a complimentary present to be sent out to friends in advance of the party date.

Each Arty party organized by Cool Mummy is usually for 12 to 15 children. So I tend to make 12 to 15 cards in each batch…What I love the most is that they are a present from me to the birthday girl or boy and I take such pleasure in wrapping them with tissue paper and a gorgeous satin ribbon, then popping the package in the post to the attention of the child whose party is coming up soon…I love to hear of the how happy and surprised the children are when Mr postman delivers a package to their attention (not mummy or daddy) and of how they take such pleasure addressing each handmade invitation card to each of their little friends.

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My handmade cards are made out of vintage and organic cotton fabric on 250 gsm card-stock. The wording is designed using Illustrator and Photoshop CS3 and printed on a laser-jet printer. 

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These cards may be time consuming and require plenty of attention to details but they are a joy to make and that’s why I love making them :) 

This batch below was made for a little girl called Bailey whose will be celebrating her 5th Birthday in a couple of weeks.

I will post this “card making” tutorial on my Big and Little Artist blog. So visit me there and let me know if you enjoy making your own cards.

Nothing should go to waste is my mantra and what a fun mantra to live by! It means I have to continuously think of clever ways to recycle everything.

♥ ♥ ♥     Recycling the quality street wrappers     ♥ ♥ ♥

Sacha, my witty 9 year old daughter, loves “quality streets” and Christmas is the one time of the year when we buy a box of those delightful little chocolates (we have stick to xmas, otherwise Rob Sacha and I would descend into an uncontrollable frenzy of chocolate nibbling)…Over the years, she has taken to saving the wrappers and flattening them between the pages of her books. We got them all out and made these delightful Christmas tags that we hung on the tree. We will also use them as name tags for our Christmas lunch to indicate who sits where.

This one is for Sacha’s step-grandmother, Liz. What we did, is manipulate the chocolate wrapper foil to spell the person’s name and then glue it onto red card stock, finishing off with a splash of glitter and stars…pretty!

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We made these gorgeous name tags for each member of the family. Each tag is folded in half and hangs on the tree with a little cord handle. Inside, we glued a handwritten secret message especially for the person whose name is on the tag. finally, we cut out little Christmas trees and attached them to the card and splashed the lot with a dash of glitter and stars

♥ ♥ ♥     Recycling twigs, garden wire and old beads     ♥ ♥ ♥

I posted a detailed picture tutorial on my oh-so-fabulous Tutorial blog. If you fancy making those lovely little decorations, then click HERE, where you will find plenty of pictures and step by step instructions on how to make this ornament. My favorite bit was wrapping up in woolly scarfs and warm hats to venture out  into our local park collecting bits of wood and twigs.

Have you recycled anything lately? oh I would love to hear from you. Let me know what lovely things you’ve made and send some pics.

By the way, my tutorial blog is http://www.coolmummy.co.uk/bigandlittleartist/

I made this striking and bold necklace entirely out of recycled material

Vintage men’s shirts have always been an obsession of mine. I love the way old washed fabric feels, the way the cotton and linen yarn takes on a soft smooth finish with a subtle sheen. I love the repeat pattern prints, the shaded stripes and plaids, the beautiful textiles and for many years, I have browsed endless flee markets and vintage fairs in search of men’s shirts.

What do I do with them? I wash and press them, cut them into scraps of fabric and make all sorts of things out of them: bags, wallets, purses, aprons, children’s dresses, and my all time favourites which are the fabric flowers.

When I heard of the Sue Ryder Upcycle Christmas competition on Folksy, I thought I have to enter for two reasons: because it is in aid of charity and because it gives me the opportunity to create something fun. The competition criteria stipulates that the item needs to be made entirely out of recycled material, which is right up my street

I played around with ideas and in the end I decided to make a fabric necklace which started life as a pair of Lycra leggings, some glass beads, a toddler’s linen top and scraps of red fabric taken out of a man’s shirt.

I will be posting a full tutorial on how to make this lovely necklace on my Big & Little Artist blog, so make sure you sign up to my blog with friends connect (left corner) to get the updates on all my free tutorials.

Anyway, making this piece of jewelery was great fun and if you like it as much as I do (insert cheeky grin with dramatic sigh here), then visit my shop page on folksy and vote for it by clicking on the “favourite this item” button.

I love making Christmas cards, there is something so magical and jolly about Christmas and all the preparation leading up to it. Sacha and I are very excited this year because we will be visiting my parents back home and we just can’t wait. My mother has always been big on xmas and as Sacha rightfully points out to me almost every day at breakfast :”mummy, nana gets more excited about christmas than santa himself”

So I made some Christmas cards with vintage fabrics picked from my stash. I used lovely white card-stock and some embellishements like buttons and thread. My favourite bit is drawing the design on thin paper (I uually use baking sheets) and use the pattern to cut straight onto the fabric. I then fuse the fabric to the card using spray adhesive and machine stirch on some of the cards…oh, it’s so much fun to do, i love it!

Here are some of the cards I made. Remember, you can buy them in my Etsy shop (in $) or Folksy shop (in £) or you can just email me via my website and ask for some cards to be made just for you.

“It was Christmas eve, and Tinsel Town sparkled with flagrant extravagance…”

Do you remember when you were a kid and the best thing ever was to see a puppet show? the opening line has always been my favorite, and I would sit through the whole show mesmerized and thinking that one day, some day, I would like to make puppet theatres and write magical tales of far away lands…

30 years on, I find myself designing and sewing Puppet Theatres, and leaving it for the children to write their own magical tales.

This is a quick, late evening blog, because I am super pleased that cool Mummy’s puppet theatre is featured in the spotlight list of www.mumsrock.com

It seems someone out there likes puppet theatres just as much as I do

Oh…I almost forgot…if you DO what to find out what REALLY happened on Christmas eve in tinsel Town, you’re just gonna have to get in touch with me and I will send you the full fantabulous story

The pillowcase dress

The fabric flower

DAY 2:

The fabric flower is always a hit  project to do with children. They are always bemused by the way we cut and gather the fabric, and once the flower starts taking shape, their faces light up with excitement and they are beside themselves at what they managed to create.

On day 2, we spent the morning cutting and pressing fabric remnants. The children picked the fabric for each of the 5 petals and used a glass cup to trace their circles on the fabric. They then learned to handle dressmakers shears (scissors) on fabric and cut the circles as neatly as possible and press them into halves and quarters using the iron.

Each of the fabric flowers is made of 5 petals which have been pressed neatly into quarters, then stitched together by hand with a long running stitch. The children gather each of the petals by gently pulling the thread then stitched the last 2 petals closed and forming the flower…I love the expression on their faces when they hold their finished flower and screech with delight “this is soooooo cool”. finally, each girls chooses the button which will be stitched onto the dress as the centre of the flower.

      Gathering the petals           Stitching the flower to the dress     The gorgeous flowers

DAY 3:

I laughed so hard when the girls looked at me  in total shock when I told them to choose their pillowcase and a measuring tape. “A pillowcase? but…but…I thought we were making a dress!!!”

The girls were paired up learned how to take body measurements. Based on their finished dress length, bust and armhole measurements, they proceeded to pin and cut the pillowcase accordingly. We then started to machine stitch the top the dress and the armholes to make the casings for the elastic and the satin ribbons. 

Feeding the elastic through the casing    &    Machine stitching

The girls found it somewhat frustrating to feed the elastic into the casing. We used a safety pin, and it took them sometime to get the hang of it. They got there in the end, and stitched the 2 ends of the armholes closed (catching the elastic to prevent it from sliding back into the casing). We then chose the satin ribbons for the dress shoulder straps and hand stitched the fabric flowers and button onto the dress. the smaller girls opted for a dart at the front and back of the dress to make it fit better (none of them were keen on an elasticated front, they said it looked “baby-ish” - which made me giggle a lot!)

Happy little seamstresses wearing their lovely dresses

Finally, here they are, the proud seamstresses in their gorgeous dresses which they proudly completed on their own with only a tiny bit of help from me whenever needed.

"Tree of Life" - Mixed Media: paper collage & acrylics on canvas - Sophie, 11 years old

I just love the Half term breaks!

These weeks are are always very exciting times for me because of the Art workshops that I run in London. Not only do I get to teach children exciting art forms and drown in a wonderful world of paint, fabric and glass tiles, but I also get to spend plenty of time with my daughter Sacha who attends the art sessions.

This October half term workshop is proving to be truly magical. The kids, whose ages vary from 7 to 11, are very talented and continue to surprise me with their creative minds. They prove to me, once more, that if they are empowered to be active in the creative process the result of their artistic endeavour is deeply inspiring.

During those 5 days, I decided to keep a diary to show you what we have been up to every day. So here goes:

DAY 1: COLLAGE ON CANVAS

On day 1, we ventured into the world of mixed media and explored various traditional visual art mediums. We worked on a canvas using paint, ink and paper collage to create a themed “painting”. Firstly, we talked about colour and composition as well as the importance of self-expression whilst creating. Our brainstorming session saw the kids bouncing ideas at each other and exploring the limitless possibilities of what they could create. These collective ideas were further developed individually by each child and reflected in their final canvas creation. 

Once each child sketches their idea and decides on the color scheme, they lightly draw the outline of their picture directly onto the canvas, this allows them to visualise their final artwork. Next came the painting bit where the children decide which components of their artwork are be painted, they mix the acrylic paint to their desired colors using the primary colors and proceed to paint their canvas.

Sacha painting her background in blue and purple using acrylic paint

While the canvas were left to dry, we started the messy part of our collage: the paper ripping! we had a pile of magazines spread acorss the floor and a dozen or so empty plastic containers. The children  tore papers and placed the appropriate color or pattern in its allocated container. I find that this works best with kids, as it allows them to get the bulk of the paper cutting out of the way and gather hundreds of torn pieces of each color into neatly coordinated buckets.

Sticking the torn paper onto the canvas & Tearing magazine and sorting them by colors & patterns

Acrylics being such a fast drying medium, the children were now ready to start their collage. I mixed a batch of glue (50% PVA = 50% water) and gave each child their own glue container and set of glue brushes and left them to create, have fun and explore the endless possibilities of paper collage.

With very little help and plenty of encouragement, they created superb canvases that I personally  would  love to display in my house…Children are such wonderful creatures aren’t they?!

"Night Sky" - Mixed Media: paper collage & acrylics on canvas - Sacha, 9 years old

"Peace & Love" - Mixed Media: paper collage & acrylics on canvas - Roniyah, 11 years old