G and Me: Working Together!

Recently A has been very into pretend play - robots, knights, or inhabitants of other worlds. I love seeing how creative he gets and hear about the elaborate stories and worlds he envisions. With his focus on enacting and starting to write/draw his own stories, he has been more of a visitor to our craft projects this past week. That means that G and I have had fun doing special crafts together - he loves having some one on one time and working together. G has that wonderful 3 year old intense focus that I love. It makes for great creative fun.

One craft we have been working on together for several days is finally finished. G had wanted to work with clay, and brought a fresh pack over to me. We decided to try a variation on the texture stones we did a few months back and make jewelry!


We first rolled out our clay (we used an air dry clay, but you could easily use super sculpey) and using metal cookie cutters, G cut out hearts and stars. We smoothed the edges a bit and left them on a tray. We went outside together and clipped leaves and herbs (dill flowers, sage, raspberry bush leaves, lemon balm, oregano, thyme). We then gently rolled/pressed the plant into the clay to make an impression. I then held each piece as G poked a skewer through each one. We let them dry for a few days.


Yesterday we sat down to paint them. G picked a gold metallic acrylic. He carefully painted each piece.



When finished, he handed it to me, and using a moist sponge I brushed some of the paint off to give it a burnished look, and spread the paint around the edges and on to the back. He painted a whole tray of shapes!


After letting them dry we brushed a water based varnish over the top and let that dry. From there all we needed to do was loop a leather cord through and we were done.


We have made 3 into necklaces so far - the boys look super cute in their leather corded stars and I love my sage leaf. They turned out great!