Monday Makery - Tissue Paper Flowers

On Sunday 1st July Sessi woke up and was six, just like that. We had been doing a countdown following our birthday traditions, making numbered paper chains, sticking home made lined envelopes on the bedroom door filled with special messages, wishes and notes, we had celebrated Sessi's last day of being 5 and with so much anticipation of the big day the day itself was finally here. As part of the birthday celebrations I had been secretly making giant tissue paper flowers to hang all over the house. Hiding them wherever I could so as not to be seen until her birthday morning.
Birthdays are a big occasion here, and so there is always plenty of decorations and surprises. We hung the birthday bunting across the sitting room and the kitchen was full of cheeky characters from a selection of Japanese paper balloons. There wasn't a place in the house that wasn't full of colour and joy. 
So, on Sunday Sessi woke up to discover giant flowers filling her bedroom, the sitting room and hung all the way down the hallway. 
I love all their bright colours and the transformation of the home was beautiful.  Two weeks later they are still hanging, only now as requested they are mostly in her bedroom.
As with all our Monday Makeries they are simple to make and they're great for any occasion, be it rich colours at Christmas, co-ordinated party colours, birthdays, Easter or even just to cheer up a room. 

Here's what you'll need:

• tissue paper
• scissors
• string

Here's how:

1. Take your chosen coloured tissue paper and stack a pile of them together one sheet on top of the other. I used 10 sheets for the large flowers and 6 for the smaller ones.
2. Fold over the shorter edge about an inch and press firmly along the fold. 
3. Turn over the pile of paper and fold back again another inch. Keep going creating a consertina of folds until you reach the end.
4. Take a piece of string and tie the folded strip together in the centre to create the centre of the flower.
5. Cut a curved petal shape at the each end of the paper.
6. Open up one end creating a fan and then pull up each sheet of paper creating the layers of the flowers.
7. Do the same for the other end until each fold of paper is opened like petals.

You can vary the size and shapes of each flower by using different lengths of tissue paper, by folding along the shorter or the longer edge, by cutting curved or pointed ends, and by how many layers of tissue paper you use. I made some into fully rounded flower balls and others with a flat back.

You can choose colours to match a theme or all of your favourite colours together. You can layer different colours in the flowers by staking alternate colours together, or create a different coloured centre with a few sheets of stronger colours at the beginning. To hang them from the ceiling I used cotton thread tied around the centre with various lengths then used sticky tape to fix the thread to the ceiling. They look epecially beautiful hanging above the girls beds and they both love going to sleep with a hanging garden above them.

Have fun and Happy Making!

As well as our weekly Monday Makery we have also compiled a list of 100 ideas for Summer fun no matter what the weather: great for printing off, sticking to the fridge ready before the 'I'm bored' has a chance to be spoken! Take a look at our Summer Fun here.
If you'd like to see yourselves here on our blog why not think about where your favourite place is. We're writing about you and all your favourite places in our new blog Around The World With You and we want kids to get involved too, and of course if you'd like to host your own Monday Makery you can send us your ideas and pictures to : info@sistersguild.com.
We also love to see your pictures of the Monday Makeires Made so do keep in touch, send them in and share your imagination and creativity with us and everyone here.

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This is part of our weekly Monday Makery where we bring you a recipe to bake or a craft to create. Visit our Monday Makery when you're in need of inspiration for something to do on a rainy day or to use as interception of the words 'I'm bored', or just because being creative with your children is something you all love to do. Our other popular blogposts include 'The story behind our collections', 'Tell us its Tuesday' , An A-Z of Sisters Guild, The Art of Living posts bring you all the things we are passionate about and the things we discover in our lives as mamas, and our 'Once upon a week' gives you a glimpse into life behind the scenes at Sisters Guild. 

www.sistersguild.co.uk

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Monday Makery - Making Music: A Percussion Posse

Its seems that the girls have makery's in the molecules of their being. They now see an empty can, a cardboard box, toilet roll tubes and scraps of this and that as objects with new potential. The recent cans washed ready for the recycling sat tempting their imagination. I like their new found resourcefulness but it does mean that things take a while to make it to the recycling bin as instead they pile up to become robots, mouse houses, science experiments, collages and here they become musical instruments.
Sometimes it the simplest of crafts that bring the most joy and you can see from Oona's face how much she loved the transformation of what held boring kidney beans and lentils into far more exciting bongo's, shakers and guiro's.

Here's what you'll need:

• empty clean tin cans - be sure they do not have sharp edges. The tins with the ring-pull were perfect.
• balloons
• scissors
• dried pasta or lentils or rice
• a chopstick for playing

Here's how:

1. Once you have your clean and dried topless tins you are ready to create your first instrument.
2. First we made a shaker as this is the first idea Sophia had for a percussion instrument. We filled the tin halfway up with the shells of pistachios, though dried pasta, rice or lentils would make a great noise too. You can have fun creating different sounds with different things inside.
3. Then we chose our balloon colour, snipped the neck of the balloon off and stretched the larger rounded part over the top of the can. If the balloons don't fit snugly around the tin and you think they might slide up and off, you can put an elastic band around the edge and that will stop it sliding...........That's it! That Simple! 

We followed up with another two tins both empty. One was used as a small bongo as the taut balloon over the can made a great drum noise, and the other as a guiro;  a percussion instrument like a 'washboard' (which I had to look up the word for) where you create a sound by sliding a stick or bottle cap up and down the ridges of the instrument. It was fun to think of ways to create sounds and like the chicken and the egg question I learned the half-full/half empty dilemma. When I asked Sophia (it's always interesting to see what side people fall into) whether the tin was half full or half empty she said it was half full because we were putting the shells in. Apparently if we had been taking them out then it would have been half empty! Love it! 

Having a stack of toilet roll tubes we wanted to see what we could make and so hunted some little bells and fabric and created our 'tube-o-bells'. 

Here's what we used:

• 2 cardboard toilet tissue rolls.
• a scrap of fabric, though tissue paper, wrapping paper and even newspaper would work just fine.
• needle and thread
• scissors
• miniature bells
• PVA glue

Here's how:

1. Cover your tube with PVA glue.
2. Roll it over your decorative covering and fix any extra length with further glue, tucking in the ends with a dib dab of glue.
3. Double thread your needle and stitch each of the bells around the top edge of the tube. Its worth a few extra stitches for each bell to make sure they don't come flying off mid music session!
4. Once you're happy you have enough bells secured take your second cardboard tube and cut down one side to open it up.
5. Then, roll the cut tube up to fit it into your decorated 'tube-o-bells' to create a stronger structure. If you feel it needs it use sticky tape to keep the new join of the internal tube in place.
6. Get shaking! 

These instruments were such fun to make and the girls are getting so much fun musical play with them. They call themselves the 'lentil girls'!
The bongo/tom-tom, shaker and guiro can also be made using plastic containers such as large yoghurt or soup pots, or large cardboard tubes. It will all depend on the size of the balloons you can find. These were made using your standard supermarket balloons, but some jumbo ones would be great on a biscuit tin!! 

the 'lentil girls' first performance!

Have fun!

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This is part of our Monday Makery series, where each week we bring craft and recipe ideas and inspiration.

Each week we bring new ideas to our blog through different blog series; Tuesday has previously brought the 'story behind our collections' and now brings 'tell us its tuesday' a fun interview with our favourite creators, designers, bloggers and imaginative extraordinaire's. Wednesday we woo you with new treats in the collection of our boutique. Thursday will leave you inspired through the 'art of living' and Friday we finish with 'once upon a week' where you can see what's happening in the lives of the sisters of Sisters Guild.
For more behind the scenes photos of Sisters Guild we have the gallery of the A-Z of Sisters Guild here.

If you would like to share some ideas as a guest blogger on the Monday Makery we would be very excited to hear from you. Use the contact form on our main website here.
www.sistersguild.co.uk

Monday Makery - How To Catch A Dream

Both my girls a big dreamers. I'm not talking about wanting to be ballerinas or to marry princes  (obviously both complete realists!) but rather those dreams that visit our sleep. Sometimes their dreams are terrifying and they wake in the night distraught, hot tears running down their cheeks, inconsolable about being chased by giant yellow ladybirds!

Perhaps its a sign of a vivid imagination or an overload of information that is desperately trying to be processesed while they rest, but regardless I want to protect their sleep and help them through troubled nights.
So, I've been teaching the girls about the native american dream catchers and their protective charms and we decided to make some for ourselves.

Sophia had so much fun searching for the perfect stick for the hoop

Before I begin let me first share the story that has been passed down from parent to child for countless years. It is the story behind the origins of the dream catcher.

Once upon a long time ago the children of the North American Objibwe tribe were recounting bad dreams that haunted their sleep. The dreams spread to other children throughout the tribe like a sickness of the night.
Their worried and concerned parents went to the shaman in search of help. The shaman listened. In order to help, the shaman would first need to enter the dream world to seek an answer that would end the terrifying dreams.
When the shaman entered the dream world he met the four elements: Air, Earth. Water and Fire.
Air, having already heard the cries of the parents had carried their message on the wind to the other elements.  The spirits in the dream world dreamed together with the shaman for a long time.
Then, finally the shaman began to understand the power of the four elements and how each could play a part in protecting the children's sleep. Air could carry the children's dreams, Earth could hold the dreams within her grasp, Water could wash the dreams separating the wanted from the unwanted and Fire could use the morning sun to burn the unwanted dreams that were caught in the earths grasp.
But what could Earth do to grasp the dreams as Air, water and Fire carried them away? How could Earth capture the dreams? The shaman and the elements could not find a solution.
However, a wise spider had been listening all the while. "I can help just as you help me. I can weave a web to catch the dreams." So she did, and the first dream catcher was born.

The spiders web caught the dreams.  The web allowed the good dreams to stay and pass down the feathers to the sleeping child, whilst the bad dreams, caught in the web were not permitted to pass and in the morning the air blew the bad dreams into the morning sun where they were burned away.
The bead so often seen within the web represents the spider that spins the web, and sometimes more jewels are strung into the weave to represent the good dreams that have been allowed to stay within the bawaajige nagwaagan (dream snare). We kept the 'web' quite simple with the idea that we would add more webs with each dream, adding a little something that represented the dream that visited Sophia's sleep.

So, here's what you'll need:

• A bendy stick, we found ours underneath a willow tree. If you can't find a stick anything circular will do: a paper plate or plastic lid with the centre cut out or a wire coat hanger bent to shape.
• string or wool
• beads
• feathers
• scissors

Here's how:

1. Bend your stick into a circular hoop and tie together by looping string around the join. Dream catchers are quite often tear shaped so don't fret if your hoop isn't a perfect circle.
2. You can chose as to whether you'd like to wrap your hoop in colour or leave it in its more natural state. Here we wrapped our hoop with a turquoise wool; Sophia wanted to incorporate the colours she thought were true to her dreams and chose each colour accordingly. To begin I cut a length of wool and tied it to the top of the loop. Then Sophia was better able to wrap and wrap around the willow. When the length of wool came to an end I tied another piece on cut off the loose ends from the knot and let her continue until the hoop was finished.
3. Now it's time spin the web. Take another length of wool or string and wrap around the hoop. To make the star that we made follow the guide above. I found this was the easiest way for Sophia, having drawn the guide onto paper and letting her follow the numbers like a dot to dot. 
4. to add the spider to the web simply thread on a bead at step number 6 on the guide. If the bead sits a little too loose on the web you can always thread the wool through the bead and then back through again to fix it.
5. Now you can create the paths for the dreams to slide down. Take a length of wool or string and cut to the desired length. Tie one end to the feathers and then start threading the beads. We used the largest bead in our collection so the hole was able to fit over the feathers ends and make them secure and neat. 
6. Once you are happy with your beaded paths you can tie them to the bottom of the hoop.
7. To hang simply cut a length of wool or string tie it to the top of your dream catcher and make a loop in the other end.
8. Now hang above the bed in a place that allows all the good dreams to pass down the feathers onto the sleeper.
9. Sweet dreams.

I have found various stoires retelling the legend of how the dream catcher came to be, this is the story that seemed to satiate Sophia's curiosity for their beginnings and their protective power. However I do love the retelling in this way here

Here is a list of the powers and spirits held in various feathers:

Crane - wisdom/knowledge
Dove - offer love
Eagle - protection
Goose - draw love
Hawk - Protection
Ostrich - truth
Owl - instill wisdom
Seagull - travel
Swallow - good luck
Wren - safe voyage
Woodpecker - used by a Shaman

Though pigeon feathers are abundant in London I'm not sure of their meaning! Perhaps being similar to the dove it offers love.  I asked Sophia what she though it held and she said it offers food! 'Food and playtime in the park.'!

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We have more Monday Makery craft & recipe ideas here.

If you would like to share some ideas as a guest blogger on the Monday Makery we would be very excited to hear from you. Use the contact form on our main website here.

For behind the scenes photos of Sisters Guild we have the gallery of the A-Z of Sisters Guild here.

www.sistersguild.co.uk