Mmmm, Jumble & Pearls!

What a wonderfully enticing name for a vintage and designer fayre.  We were sold on the name alone without knowing much else about it and although we're not quite jumble, we like to think that we put crafty pearls of inspiration into our work.

Do we want to try our hand at taking a table there?  Goodness, if it gives us a valid excuse to spend some time looking at jumble, try keeping us away.  

I live in an area where many of my children's friends have beautiful houses where there's a place for everything and everything is in it's place.  Sometimes I daydream about living in such a palace, how easy they must be to clean for a start… my reality though, is a house distinctly displaying the signs of 3 young children, and my own love of 'stuff'.  Nina Fox's house is very much the same (though she has more nice 'stuff' than me - at the moment…)  (I say 'at the moment because we're SO going to Jumble & Pearls.)

Some of Nina's jumble treasures:

Being at Jumble & Pearls is going to be a day where both of us will need to bring a large bag and lots of restraint.  We're thoroughly looking forward to rustling through racks of musty smelling clothes or casting our eyes over table tops filled with 'things that are nice to look at'.  Millinery and independent designers to boot, we cannot wait!

I don't really remember ever buying Nina, nor her buying me, what normal teenage girls might deem 'cool' presents.  Over 25 + years of friendship we've given each, amongst other things, bits of pottery, old clocks and Victorian tiles.  I'm pretty sure we'll both find plenty of birthday gift potential on Feb 8th...

And being closely followed by Valentines Day is a timely excuse to buy the Mr Fox's gifts of items we think they would like to see in our houses (ahem)… 

We've also tried to 'love up' just a few of our wares, although loving somebody is surely reason enough to find them a unique gift of any kind.  

Our Fergal has acquired a love heart.

For children, we'll be bringing little craft kits and beautiful room accessories.

For those of us aged 12 and over, our room accessories are still suitable and we'll be bringing our very own Make Your Own Fergal Fox Kits.

Nina Fox has been busy needle point felting gorgeous little creatures, the likes of which are easy to fall in love with.

We will also take advances on commissions, should we run out of anything or should something be just what you want, but not quite.

With many more traders selling equally unique goodies, Jumble & Pearls will have something for everyone; vintage - art - bikes - interiors - independent designers - jewellery - crafts - hats - dresses - sweets.  Be you a child, a teenager, a lady, a gent, a yummy or a slummy mummy, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a husband or a wife, you are sure to find something to your taste or the taste of somebody you love.  Why ever would you not go?

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If you go down to the woods today….

Whenever this song comes into my head, it's always my dad's dulcet (well, I'm feeling generous) tones either humming or singing or trumping it.  He says it's a great tune to play when learning to master the trumpet because of the notes it uses and how they travel.  And I can never think of bears without that tune coming into my head.

So yes, bears… this craft started as a polar bear for our January Crafty Box on account of it being the heart of winter but in actual fact, we think these puppets look good in any colour, so your bear could be white, brown, orange, green or multicoloured.  He can be whatever takes your fancy, you could even draw clothes on him.

For your bear puppet you will need;

The template - CLICK HERE

template
scissors
card or heavy paper
tape
glue
barbecue sticks
brads or string
paints or felt pens or decorative paper

Instructions;

Download our template, print and cut out the 3 bear parts.

Draw around your 3 templates onto the card (or heavy paper) and cut them out.  If he's going to be a polar bear and the templates have been printed onto white paper, use the template parts, i.e. the white leg and head parts, body and back legs.

Using tape, attach the sticks to the lower part of the front legs and head and the back legs.

If you want him to be coloured or patterned, now is the time to transform him with paint or patterned paper etc.  If your bear is going to the picnic, perhaps you will want him to wear a hat and a tie.

Apply glue to the back side of the leg templates and stick them to their corresponding shapes – so sandwiching the sticks between the card and paper.  Stick the body part to it’s corresponding card body part.

Take a pen and press through where holes are indicated with dots.

Pushing brads through the holes you have made, attach the legs and head to the body.  If you don't have brads, you can use string and tie knots to hold it all in place.  We tried this and it works as well as brads and looks just as nice as you can see from the bear below.  

Take your bear to the picnic or make up another story for him to star in. 

*N.B. You can make this using just one side of card with the sticks taped on the back but we found that the sticks were more secure sandwiched between card and paper and the bear less flexible.  We used one side card because he moves better if he is stiff and paper is easier to print on.

* Also N.B.(!) You can use 2 sides of card or 2 sides of paper and/or decorate both sides differently so that your story can contain more than one bear character.

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Handmade Christmas Cards - Part Two

The first Christmas Card shows a scene of a family raising a toast to the Holiday Season

Our modern Christmas cards can be traced to a card printed in December 1843 by Sir Henry Cole, the first Director of theV&A.  Sir Henry found it time consuming to write greetings and best wishes to all his friends and family at Christmas and so he commissioned John Callcott Horsley to illustrate a card with a single greeting: 'A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year To You".  Sir Henry had also been involved in the introduction of the penny post in the UK three years before so he had something of a vested interest in the success of this new form of holiday communications.  His print run of 2050 cards sold for a shilling each (a weeks wages) and only 12 of these cards remain today.

We of course love the hand-made variety.  For the last few weeks we have been churning out hand-made Christmas cards at a phenomenal rate. The exchanging of Christmas cards can also be traced back to the "Christmas Pieces" made by children in the early 18th century.   Children copied out texts at school in their best hand writing and decorated them to give to their parents.  Intended to show parents how well their children were doing at school, these are some of the earliest examples of children's art.

Very much in that tradition Little Una Fox used her new sewing skills to create this lovely card for her Uncle David in Canada:

You Will Need:
5 or 6 different buttons
needle & thread
card & envelope
pencil, pen &/or  letter stamps

Instructions:
We first wrote "Merry Christmas" along the bottom of the card - we used our letter stamps but you can simply write this in colourful letters in your best hand writing.

We decided where the buttons would go and then drew the lines and bows onto the card in pencil first to get the spacing right.  Then went over this in black pen.

We then carefully, with needle and thread, sewed each button into position with just a couple of stitches, knotting the ends of the thread at the end.

Last month's Mrs Fox's Crafty Box contained card blanks and envelopes so that our crafty little foxes could make Christmas cards for friends and family.  They are also included in our Bumper Christmas Crafty Box that includes a whole host of Christmas crafts and is available for £15 +p&p.

The little foxes came up with so many designs for Christmas cards that we've been posting all last week with ideas for hand-made Christmas cards, we’ve also put together the best of other people’s ideas on a board on our pinterest site.  So with oodles of inspiration at the click of a mouse, we would love you to send us some pictures of your creations, we could add them to the gallery.

For loads more Christmas craft ideas including more designs for handmade Christmas cards CLICK HERE

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Handmade Christmas Cards - Part One

This month the first of our Christmas Craft Boxes go out.  They contain; child friendly craft kits including materials and instructions to make;
6 hand-made Christmas cards,
2 Christmas trivets,
pom poms,
hand-made gift boxes,
concertina Christmas trees,
and a Father Christmas from a loo roll.
There is also a recipe for Christmas ginger cookies.

So, this November's Crafty box is filled with things to make for others and the hand-made Christmas cards have really caught our imaginations and that of our little foxes too.  It seems that their fascination is to be the expected, in fact Nina Fox has been telling me of her discovery on the origins of Christmas cards:

"Our modern day Christmas cards were almost certainly based on the 'Christmas Pieces' made by children in the early 18th century.
School children would write affectionate, often rhyming, messages to their families on special paper with an engraved border and then decorate them further before taking or sending them home.  These engraved Christmas papers were designed to show parents how well their children’s handwriting had improved over the past year, and are now rare and extremely sought after examples of children's artwork."

We hope that our suggestions and papers help our crafters to create sets of cards with a cohesive theme where the colours compliment, no matter how different the designs and shapes used are...

Those familiar with us will know that we do our upmost to ensure that everything in our monthly boxes that can be, will be, used somehow within the crafts.  We relish our self set challenge to recycle as much as is possible.  We tell our crafters that anything left over should not be thrown away as it will come in handy for future crafts and November's 'making Christmas cards' craft is a perfect example of how to use up remnants of paper snips too beautiful to have gone directly into the recycling.

If you have any card, thin cardboard, heavy paper or even last year's cards and some wrapping paper, you and your little one's can have fun making all the cards you need this year.  You will be recycling, having fun and reminding people that you think of them and love them, all rolled together in one fun activity.

We will be running a series of posts explaining how we made our designs (see below) with instructions so that you can make beautiful cards using materials you will probably have at home.

For even more ideas check out our "Handmade Cards" pinterest board.

http://www.pinterest.com/mrsfoxs/handmade-christmas-cards/

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Crafting in the Garden

It was a funny old day yesterday wasn't it?

There are the little foxes at the beginning of the day, yes, those are snails all over her hand:

And here we were at the end:

All hard at work testing the crafts for this month's kid's craft box that we are due to send out soon and available for pre-order on the website here.

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To the moon and stars... and back downstairs again...

Any familiar readers will know that we've touched on rockets before when discussing how kids often think they're not good at arts and craft, yet when they get down to it, can create works that they're deeply proud of.

Our Crafty Box subscribers will also know that we have had a little focus on ‘things that fly’… our 3^rd Crafty Box was centred around animals that fly and we included crafts for making different types of birds, flying fish and and a bird house.

Our latest Crafty Box is about man made ‘things that fly’ and we found ourselves looking at rockets again.  We've both made plastic bottle rockets with our kids before so we wanted to try a different version and came up with a kitchen roll rocket.  You can also make these rockets with toilet rolls but we've been told that schools and nurseries may not be able to use toilet rolls for crafts due to health and safety… should you feel comfortable with toilet rolls, go ahead.  Our little foxes make lots of things with toilet rolls so we keep lots in a box!

For the kitchen roll rocket you will need;

• A kitchen roll
• Foil
• Glue and sticky tape
• Scraps of paper
• Paint
• Light card or heavy paper
• Scissors
• Our template for rocket fins
• Tissue paper or bright coloured ribbons or raffia string

Paint your kitchen roll.
While it dries, (check pic below) draw a circle with a roughly 5cm radius and inside this, a circle with a 3.5cm radius.
Cut out your circle and make snips from the outside to the 3.5cm line and one final snip to the centre of the circle.
Fold the circle into a cone and glue or tape together.

Take a 17ish cm strip of foil an fold both long edges in to give your strip a nice tidy shape.

Copy our template below, cut out 3 rocket fins from your heavy paper.

Fold them down the middle and glue the larger parts together leaving the outer strips glue free.

Now that the painted roll is dry, put your cone on the top of your kitchen roll and bring the frilled edge down so that it attaches to the roll and hold in place with sticky tape.

Cover your cone in foil and then wrap around your straight edged foil strip where the foil from the cone overlaps the kitchen roll.

Your fins will need to be attached approx. 5cm apart around the tube and you can either glue them to the outside then paint in the same colour as your rocket, or, cut 6cm snips upwards from the base, 5cm apart around the base and slide the fins into place. 

Cover the protruding parts of the fins with tin foil. 

Paint or draw on your windows and rocket name/initials.  Alternatively, make these from scraps of paper and stick them on.

Stuff the tissue paper inside the rocket so that it spills out like flames

For the plastic bottle rocket... 

...you will need;

• A plastic bottle
• Foil
• Scissors
• An egg carton
• Tissue paper or coloured strips of paper
• Scraps of paper
• Sticky tape

1. Cover your bottle in foil
2. Cut out 3 or 4 cups from the egg carton and cover in foil
3. Make a door and windows and cut out initials for your rocket’s name and decorate your rocket
4. Using sticky tape, attach your foiled egg carton cups to the bottom of the rocket
5. Again, use tape to stick your tissue paper ‘flames’ into the egg cups

The bottle rocket is certainly one which younger hands will find more fun, they get to squish and press the foil, it's a very tactile craft.  My young fox had been certain that he could never make anything look as he thought it should look but at 4 years old, this rocket changed everything.  He was proud as punch with this one and we stuck it to the bedroom wall under his giant foil moon and stars.  Every now and then, he would thunder up the stairs and come running back down with shiny rocket to show it off to any friends and family who had not yet witnessed his NASA craft.

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Crafting with Boys

Today the other Mrs Fox and I have been slaving in the studio, in the hot summer sun, getting our next Crafty Box ready to head out the door to all our little crafty foxes.  Last month's theme was flying and we came up with so many ideas that we decided to split the box over two months.  So, last month was Flying Animals this month is Flying Machines.  Purely by accident this month's craft box is very boy friendly.

I can't be the only mother who has noticed the difference between girls and boys when it comes to making things.  Little Una Fox will sit and draw, paint, cut, stick, sew, knit, model, string beads, collage with flowers... the list is never ending.  And when she is a little bored she usually asks me, "Mummy, what can I make?"  And I know that Little Eve Fox is the same.  

My son, on the other hand, who is not a particularly 'boy-ish' boy, loves to get messy when he crafts. That is basically his criteria for a good time.  But that good time seldom lasts all that long.  He get's bored quite quickly.

Last weekend in the midst of the heat we pulled the garden table out of it's position under the pergola and set up an outdoor studio for the little foxes.  With tables and chairs, cushions and carpet, their crafting box with paints, scissors, glue etc and their easel.  We put them in old swimming costumes which were quickly shed, so that they could make as much mess as they liked.  They spent the whole day in the garden occasionally jumping into their paddling pool.  It was the most focused I have seen Louis when painting.  He was extremely proud of one particular picture and insisted on taking it into school on Monday to show his teacher.

I think that being outside and allowed to really make a mess gave him a real sense of freedom.  From little Louis Fox there was a lot of chat about cars, and garages with wheels and boats that could take cars on board, he really let his imagination run riot.  He painted picture after picture, sketching some of his ideas in pencil first, enjoying mixing the colours, and layering the paint on thick and fast.

It was great to see him really enjoying himself and crafting with zest.  He's asked to paint every day this week.  So, I am pretty chuffed with this month's box, lots to get him interested in crafting.  For from this month's crafty box we will be making; planes, catapults, 3D kite and hot air balloon pictures, flying saucers, helicopters, rockets and paper planes.  

Loads to do for the summer holidays!  It will be going out to our subscribers imminently.  If you would like to purchase one for a little help crafting with your boys this summer hols they are £12 (+£4.50 p&p), to pre-order  click here.

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The Princess And The Pea

One of Little Una Fox's favourite fairy tales is The Princess And The Pea and her favourite version is the one by Lauren Child and Polly Borland.

"'What a beautiful bed', gasped the girl.  'Oh, I am sure I will sleep like a real princess in this bed.'  And up the ladder she climbed. We'll see, thought the queen"

Lauren Child's text is, of course, great but it is her and Polly Borland's illustrations that I really admire.  They remind me of my favourite Fairytale book from my own childhood, which my mother unfortunately did not keep.

Each page was illustrated with posed dolls in 3 dimensional sets.  This is an idea that I keep thinking I would like to try my hand at.  If I ever get around to making the dolls, the sets and taking the pictures it will be a miracle but I am not ruling it out altogether.




Because this is our favourite it was natural, when Mrs Fox's was asked by a friend for a princess themed party for their daughter's 4th birthday, to turn to this tale.  Mrs Fox's created a Hunt the Pea party game, (we made felt peas and pea pods), place mats with the missive; "Give peas a chance" and one of my favourite Mrs Fox's crafts, our Make your Own Sleeping Princess.  This is a craft activity for the party that doubles as a party bag for the little guests to take home, along with a packet of sweet pea seeds.

For the make-your-own sleeping princess craft I attached a patchwork pocket to the front of a natural cotton bag.  Our princess was a blank rag doll each made up with a different hairstyle.  The patchwork pocket on each bag is for the dolls to 'sleep' in.  At the party the children designed their own sleeping princess, with fabric pens.  It was a huge success, and you can see what an impressive party bag it was too.

I made Una her own sleeping princess doll for Christmas that year, you can see her at the top of this post.  I make each of the little foxes at least one Christmas gift each year.

This weekend I was working on updating the, very simple, instructions for this craft as we intend to sell it on our website as one of our crafty boxes.  We even have long-term plans to make two versions, one for children that can sew and could make the patchwork pocket themselves.

While I worked and as we chatted about my old fairytale book and the pictures I remembered from it.  And the usefulness of shoe boxes when creating a four poster bed.  Una began fashioning various items for her own sleeping princess pictured above.  Who seems to have a rather severe case of jaundice!

I just couldn't keep out of it.  I was soon, secateurs in hand, fashioning a ladder and we were picking fabrics to make bedding.  I admit this is a rather niche craft, but, this is how we made the Princess Bed for our sleeping princess.  Just in case you ever have need of such an item!

YOU WILL NEED:

First we decorated the shoe box and it's lid with patterned paper and paint.  While it dried...

We measured the bottom of the box and cut out two rectangles of each of our fabrics to these dimensions.  We used other scraps of fabric as the wadding for our mattresses.  With the wadding between each piece of fabric we sewed round the edges.

The lid of the box is the bed's headboard and to this we attached some netting (off cuts of old net curtains from granny's house) I sewed these onto the lid, you could glue or staple them.

To make the ladder I cut up a thin bamboo cane and tied the steps on with garden twine.

The pea is a green felted ball.  You could just use green felt rolled into a ball or paper scrunched up and painted green.

Our Sleeping Princess Crafty Box is available on our website for a very special price at the moment only £6 +p&p (£4.50). Each Sleeping Princess is unique, with their hairstyles and the patchwork pocket on the bag hand-sewn and so each different from the next.

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