And with a lot of this
Hoping it will make her remember to keep her legs straight if i blog this!
Amelie and i spent a long drawn out afternoon in the Fracture CLinic, resulting in good news about mending and a purple cast.
Fran decided to do a project on fashion while she was in hospital, mainly prompted by this range of fashion design kits from Fashion Angels. We sell them on PlayMerrily and in general i really rate them because although they are all about clothes etc, they’ve got some nice touches. The accompanying Project Runway range is definitely as good as some of the work i did at college on costume design and well worth a look.
We talked around it and she decided she liked the idea of working on drawing figures and looking at fashion from Victorian times onwards, with some mini-projects along the way at the historical period and what might have influenced fashion.
Ain’t this the perfect HE picture 🙂
Fran loves to colour, so Dover books always appeal and they have some good info in them and so far she has got sidetracked into the Industrial Revolution and fabric making. Alongside it, we’ve bought a few excellent books on costume through the ages and looked at them plenty, worked on drawing people and discussed types of fabric. She’s had my fabric box out to make swatches and we’ll do a John Lewis field trip. We’ve looked at natural v synthetic and pattern type and planned a burn test.
Maddy and Josie are as thick as thieves at the moment and doing loads together, particularly jigsaws and drawing.
Amelie was very keen to train as well as possible with a broken arm 🙄
Fran has been very excited to be allowed to go to extra training with the General Gym Squad this last 2 weeks and has really made the most of it, perfecting flics, round off flics and aerial (no handed) cartwheels, as well as learning and practising her routine. Her dancing really shines through in it as she finds it easy to add the extra bits in once she has music and she looks fairly polished already. Her gym moves are sometimes more enthusiasm than finesse, but she does love it. It is slightly alarming to see her manage to go over backwards and land on her feet again from a standing start!
Max decided we should stock Zoobs and bought some, resulting in a free pack for us at home and the kids have enjoyed them a lot. They are far sturdier and more flexible than i imagined they would be and work very cleverly.
Zoob Dog Dragon.
The wee was made more complicated by me needing blood tests on 3 out of 5 days and hospital visits on 5 out of 5 days; the last because the doc thoughtfully attacked a nerve in my arm with the needle causing me to to be excruciating pain that was like, i kid you not, a combination of cramp, waking up with your arm asleep under you, growing pains and labour. I was in a & e at 4am in so much pain i couldn’t actually speak. Trouble is, when you know all you have had is a blood test, it is impossible not to find that level of pain very frightening – and frightened i was. Fortunately it is all pretty much resolved now although i am quite glad i didn’t know what it could have been at the time as i was busy scaring myself with blood clots and that was bad enough.
Luckily my parents and my lovely sister had allowed us to foist the girls on them for 48 hours which did at least give me time to work my way through some of it.
We spent Saturday in the garden and i broke out some sample of plaster and plaster moulds that a supplier gave us a while back. The girls spent a lovely day painting them – i must get some better paints although not sure what is best? – as maddy is keen to do an even better job of the lizard.
And then some pretty flowers from my garden (shame about the sticky thumb print on the lens!)
This week is now improving a good bit; we’ve had gym and a play date, plus makings of costumes from the fabric box (sewing machine tomorrow i think) and time out tomorrow too if we can. Fran made her first solo lasagne which was delicious and the others all seem happy and busy.
I’d quite like a very sensible week very soon please.
are you missing a link for the fashion kits? Would be interested in more info on those, sounds like the sort of thing that could easily tick Big’s boxes 🙂 Like the zoobs too.
Damn, had to repaste it into a new post cos none of the photos worked and must have lost the link. Will replace.
I would recommend using gouache paint for the PofP models (which are beautiful btw). I like it because it’s like a cross between an acrylic and a woter colour and is versatile to use in several ways, but gives a really nice bright, slightly shiny finish. I use it for myself – when and if I do any painting – which is not often!
Have added some links back in.
Oh thanks Caroline, i’ll give that a go.