Saturday, February 1, 2014

Snowy Day Creativity

I am missing this blogging thing.

Especially since discovering Pinterest. So many cool ideas out there.
I have cool ideas too. I want to share them. I want to spend time creating and taking pics and "pinning" my own great ideas.
I look at these prolific "pinners" and wonder...

how they do it?

How does one make the time to make and do so many wonderful things; sew, cook, bake, craft, and then pin thousands of items to dozens of boards and blog about it all? And of course they are all mothers to at least four kids as well. Where do these super humans come from????

I am not super human and I seem to have inherited the lazy gene. But still, I do have the desire to create, it's just at a snail's pace that I do so.

I have been thinking lately of starting a new blog.
One to blog solely about my work in kindergarten.
About the learning centres and the adventure I am on to implement play based early learning through an inquiry stance in my classroom.
I may get around to starting that blog, but chances are...
I won't.

Today, I have some unexplained burst of creative energy and am bursting with ideas.
This hasn't happened in some while and yet, I am skeptical about the likely hood of this "burst" sticking around for long.

Of my long and ever growing list of things I want to do (work-wise), I have recently completed one; to make a felt board.
And since I have made a felt board, I now want to make some more felt board stories.
I have mostly felt shapes and flowers and pumpkins and apples and such, but not many real stories for the purpose of re-telling.
We have recently been reading and retelling Goldilocks and the Three Bears and so I decided to make the pieces for this story.
I am not done yet, but today I got a good start by making the bears.

It did take me a while.
First, I researched bear patterns online, google images and pinetrest pages to find the style of bear I would like to utilize.
I considered buying (via Etsy) this one that I found by Jean at The Artful Parent, until I discovered that it was no longer for sale.
And so, I used the image as my "pattern"  after which to fashion my own bears. 
I then spent considerable time drawing (and erasing) the bears, attempting to get the sizing just right. Then I cut them out and traced them onto the felt that I had bought last week.
Next, cut  the bear shapes out of the felt.
Searched the entire house for the googly eyes that I know I bought a couple of weeks ago.
Finally found them in a pile of things in the Spare Oom/Office/Craft Room.
Found some fabric samples to make the clothes out of. Made and cut out the bear's clothes.
Hot glued it all together.
And my finished product...



The rest should be easy from here.  Some bowls of porridge, a few chairs and beds. 
Oh and Goldilocks, of course.