Finally, the Paverpol culture vultures and course dates and times

A bit later than expected due to a dead computer but here we go...

Susanne will be holding a weekend of Paverpol classes this autumn for children aged about 10 or over with a mum, dad or other adult. Yippee! It takes some concentration but is great fun.

Paverpol course dates: Saturday 12 and 13 September
Price: one day DKK 400 per person
          two days DKK 650 per person

Sign up by mailing her at sussdesign@gmail.com

Here are some beautiful ladies made by one of Susanne's friends.

Here are our finished vultures!
And below, you can see how we made them.

Silver foil, an old wire frame from a dead pot plant (very apt), an old sheet from
Halloween, masking tape and garden wire are some of the things we took along
for a two-day course with our friend Susanne. 

And while jake was making his Sith Warrior figure, I began trying to figure out
what on earth I was going to make 

It took a lot of wire winding, two branches and some tape to start
 holding it together. 

But something was wrong. This was far too elegant for my garden.

So I started giving the bird a hunch back. That's better.
Susanne explained that you have to try to fill in the bulk of the sculpture 
before swathing it in strips of sheet dipped in Paverpol.

I used some old cables. Suddenly I caught sight of a microphone on the end of one - once I'd firmly knotted it into place. It said 'Creative' on it, which rang a bell. Hmmm that was a programme installed on one of my computers. One of the ones you can't remember what it's for - a camera? A free game? Well, now the mystery was solved. Too late to save it now though. 

I look like Obi Wan strangling a Star Wars chicken. 

The second day Jake had finished his and went to play with his dad,
so I had to rig up a stand to hold my birds while I slathered them in Paverpol - without getting any on the floor.

And here they are. Complete with drawer handle eyes. Of course now the drawers in my office are not complete but that just means that getting into my drawers is even harder :o). 

And here is a far more appealing Kiwi bird too, made with seaweed.

Here is a doll given a new lease of life in the garden.

Another bird but MUCH BIGGER than ours.

Playing with Paverpol glue with our friend Susanne

Here is the Star Wars Sith Jake made.

And here's how he made it..

As well as the garden (Bonzai) wire to make the figure's skeleton...

You'll need an old sheet, silver foil, a 1 ltr tub of Paverpol.

The rest of the stuff was used on
my vultures, which will be on the blog next week

First Jake and Susanne made the body out of wire.

Then Jake padded it out with silver foil.

When that was done, he cut strips of old sheet up - about 2 inches wide
by six inches long (though I've lived with centimeters and the
24-hour clock long enough to mix up measurements and end up with a an unhappy medium).

Luckily Paverpol is not an exact science.

And then he dipped the strips of sheet in the Paverpol liquid glue,
scraped off the excess and
wound them around the wire frame.

In between layers, he used my hair drier to help speed up the process.
My hair drier will never be the same but it was all in a good cause.
And my hair does what it wants, regardless of hair driers, anyway.

It took two to put on the cape.

Sith still. 

Then come the ticklish bits. Jake built up very small layers
of sheet to make eyebrows and a nose.
The spikes are tiny twigs. They are called something cooler than 'spikes' but Jake has gone to bed, so I can't refer to a higher authority.

The light sabre is a longer twig.

And then he wound some sheeting round a wire fixed to a base that
Susanne had prepared in advance. Cool!

And the finishing touch was to add some silver paint. It took about 4.5 hours altogether and is an excellent present for Jake's big brother, Alex, who is also a true Star Wars fan.

NEXT WEEK
See how my vultures took shape :o). See what sensible people made.
And see when you can sign up for a parent and kiddy Paverpol fun day with Susanne in the autumn. (She hasn't quite finalised the dates yet).

Flea markets - pimp that mug

You will need:

A mug

Nail varnish

A fairly big old tub (from ice cream, perhaps)

NEWSPAPER

These mugs were only DKK 15 for four at our local flea market. 

Great. But being exactly the same, they were far too easy 

to muddle up. And there's nothing worse than getting a mouthful of someone ELSE's cold tea, complete with soggy biscuit dunking dregs. Yuck! 

Luckily I had some old nail varnish, and Louis was visiting. Yay!

We didn't have an old plastic tub so we used a plastic bag in a basket.
First we filled the bag with warm water - not right up to the top.
Then we dripped some drops (or dropped some drips) of two similar
colours of varnish into the water.
THIS WAS WHERE WE REMEMBERED THE NEWSPAPER
just in case.

Now hold onto the mug carefully at the top - by the handle works well -
and dip the mug down into the water.
The varnish sticks to the sides of the mug and makes pretty patterns.

They dripped more varnish into the bag before each new mug.
It LOOKS like Jake is dipping his fingers in the water
but that would be a dippy idea. 

And this as the prettiest mug we made.
Of course they have to be washed by hand but as there's
no dish washer at our old summer cottage, it doesn't matter!
Anyway, the boys earn pocket money for flea markets by helping wash up.
At least then their hands are clean :o)

HOPE YOURS WORKS!

Make a cosy hedgehog house

You'll need
- a pallet
(we got ours for about £3 from a local plant nursery. Just plain wood, with no paint or surface treatment that might be poisonous for hedgehogs)
- a hammer
- nails
- cold water
- a plaster
- off-cuts of wood
(or use a big pallet and cut it in half and use the bits from the extra half)
- plastic sacks
- paving slabs (not too big)

About this size, in fact.

First they took two plastic sacks, wrap the ends on one side and nail them onto
 the pallet as a roof. That will stop rainwater dripping inside.

Now they found pieces of wood to fit three sides of
the pallet and nailed them on VERY carefully. 

This piece of wood was perfect for the base. You'll even see it has breakfast
in bed for its hoggy owner if you look closely enough

The last side was going on when...

OUCH! Poor Louis. Poor thumb. Put it in cold water.
The bit of a log beside his hand made a great way of blocking
half the entrance. You can see that in the finished house.

With Louis taking a break (not literally, thank goodness, it was only bruised)
it was Jake's chance to shine.
The base wasn't quite big enough so we added another strip of wood.

And when all the sides were done leaving an opening as a door,
and the top and base were fixed firmly in place...
the boys found a good spot away from the lawnmover and in
between our garden and Tina's so she can see hoggies too.

Actually her living room is closer than ours,
which is right around the other side of the gallery AND the cottage.
But the secret garden where we put it is far away from the road and that's
more important than anything.

We made a base of slabs to help stop the wooden base from rotting.

Six slabs fitted perfectly.

Jake lowered the house on top, plastic roof up, naturally.
Mind your fingers!

We put some slabs on top so Mr Fox can't flip it over.
And then covered it up with sticks and other stuff for extra insulation.
Last of all we put  old dry leaves, straw or strips of newspaper inside it as cosy bedding.

Do you think any hedgehogs will find it while we're away? Can you?
It's not in the woodpile because that's too close to a tree that's leaning a bit
close to the gallery and needs to be cut down. (We've planted four trees, so don't worry).

Thinking about it, that's rather an attractive pile og twigs and stuff. In fact, there could already be at least three families of hedgehogs already living in that pile, but we've never seen any.

Fingers crossed!

Hedgehog muffins!!!

500	For about 40 muffins, you will need gram	flour
100	gram	butter
500	gram	sugar
8		eggs
4	dl.	milk
6	tsk.	baking powder
4	tsk.	vanilla sugar
		sweetie eyes and noses
		Topping:
240	gram	Butter
200	gram	dessicated coconut
500	gram	brown sugar
1	dl.	milk

If you want fewer muffins, get your child to do some useful maths (division :o)

Muffins
Whisk the butter and sugar together well. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well. Mix in the rest of the ingredients.

Fill the muffin cases about two thirds of the way up and put the cases touching so that they come out square and you can use one corner as the nose. Bake in an oven at 200 degrees centigrade (400 Fahrenheit or mark 6) for about 16 minutes or until a skewer poked in comes out clean.

Topping

Melt all the topping ingredients in a saucepan while the cake is baking.

Take out the cake and put the topping on two-thirds of each muffin (see below). Leave a nose poking out. 

Bake for another 5 minutes. Add sweetie eyes and noses glued on with cake gel/icing sugar.

NOW put pictures on Facebook, tag each of your friends as a different hedgehog, sell them for a bit of profit (we're selling ours for DKK 5 each), and send any proceeds to the Danish hedgehog society. 

Reg.nr. 9570 og Kontonummer 9069755
Giro konto >01 og gironummer 9069755
MobilePay, mobilnummer 30141662

Don't feel bad about just making the muffins for birthdays etc. and putting out water for hedgehogs during the summer. We'll be making a hedgehog house in a week or two.