12 month chip

It is now 12 months since my favourite James has played Minecraft. I promised him a 12 month chip.

I got some coloured card. I drew a grid on the back of the black card with a silver pen (so I'd be able to see it). Then I coloured in the squares I want to keep to make a creeper face, and I cut it out.

I cut two circles from the green card and one from some corrugated card, all the same size.

Then I sandwiched the corrugated card between the green circles with glue and I stuck the creeper face to the top.

Then I finished the piece off with some red string and a felt tip pen.

Paper Stars

The other day I was fed up. I was bored and to make things worse couldn't be bothered to exert any energy on anything. It's difficult to stop being bored when you don't want to do anything.

Lucky for me, my friend Helen had given me a birthday present - a make your own paper star kit.

It's made up of lots of sheets of pretty paper; on the back of each sheet is a template to cut out.

I cut them all out.

Then I folded them where the marking told me to. The kit comes with these little clear stickers to stick the bits down.

Then it says in the instructions to put a pencil down the legs to make them 3D.

Then I have to put thread through them all. It comes with a needle to make the holes with.

Then, the hardest bit, I had to tie a knot at the top, but so that the bits would all be squashed together.

Done!

Then there were small templates for two little stars. Same process, really. The only difference was that you fold the sheet in half to cut out two stars at the same time, like so:

Done it.

Aren't they pretty?

And then I was in a much better mood. So I learned that when I can't be bothered I still need to find something to do, but it has to be something that's quite relaxed and that I can do whilst sat in front of the TV.

Mark is a Duck

It was my company's 5th birthday. We had a party. The bosses had this idea for every team to nominate at least one member to wear a costume and the best costume would win their team some vouchers. My friend Mark wanted to go dressed as a duck - a Mallard.

First I had to make a white collar for the band around the neck. Simples.

Then I made a simple dress. Just cut two slits for arm holes in a sheet of fabric so it would fasten at the back. They have a brown shape on their belly, so for this I cut out a shape from a dark brown fabric and glued it on to the front.

I darted it at the top to fit the collar and then folded the collar over the top.

Then I made a tail. A sort of tutu thing, but just at the back so his tail would stick out. And I glued another panel of fabric onto the dress at the back to make the tail.

I put an elastic hem on the main panel of the 'dress' - puff dress style, to give it more of a duck body shape.

Then I painted it, because Mallards have a lot of grey colouring as well as browns.

Then I had to make some wings. I cut out a load of feather shapes from spare scraps of fabric. I sacrificed these fairy wings:

And I cut them up and bent them and glues them onto the fabric like this:

Then I waited for the glue to dry a bit and I cut them out and glued the 'feathers' to them so it looked like this:

When I got to Marks, I pinned two pieces of elastic to each wing so they would fit around his arms - one just below the shoulder and the other just above the elbow.

Nina had given him some foam for his feet and he cut out the shapes. We cut a cross shape into it so he could get his feet through and the 'feet' sat on top of his shoes.

Jack painted Mark's face green and Louis made the beak for him. It's made from those foam sheets you get in kid's craft stuff, and he's drawn on it with felt pens.

So this is our duck: