A crafty evening

Arent these the most beautiful angels?

One weekday evening a week, we stay at home and craft stuff like a nativity set, pomanders etc. instead of going to the playground. It gives me some time to facilitate some delicate crafting, which Anjali is the right age to start. We do more open ended art and crafting on Saturday mornings, so the weekday crafting is more goal oriented. 

It began on Wednesday evening, when Anjali saw a photo of an angel doll in a crafting book. I usually get crafting books out of the libray as inspirations for myself and for the girls. There is something different, especially for the girls, when you see a craft in a book, as opposed to me seeing it on a website and facilitating it.

It was also interesting that given the resources, how each kid came up with her own choice of materials to make the same angel and how the angels that were made looked similar and different as a result.

Anjali chose to paint her wooden peg doll with water colors - orange for the body, black for the hair and purple for the hairband. Sophia chose to make her angel hair with black yarn, which I helped her cut to length and which she glued.

Then I cut out some organza. This was a challenge for Anjali, because she had never sewn four layers of fabric together before. ofcourse, this being a doll, it was not so important that the stitching be even, but I think she did a great job

While Anjali picked out beads for decorating the fairy skirt, I helped Sophia sew hers. Sophia's stitching was rather uneven, but then she is three and a half, so uneven stitching is fine. Now, I wonder what would happen if I stretched golden organza over a hoop.

Here is Anjal's angel, painted and skirted

Then I dug into the fabric scrap stash. I still dont get what the girls have with golden shiny fabrics, but thats all they wanted - golden fabric for the fairy blouse. Honestly!

And some silver fabric tied up at the back for wings.

While we waited for the setup to dry, the girls came in to help me knead olives into the focaccia dough

Doesnt it look pretty?

And then they decided to put artificial flowers on the fairies. I cut some out of the flower boquets around the house. I am slowly going over to replace all my artificial flowers with real ones and live plants, but dont want to throw the fake flowers, Maybe we will make fairies out of them anyway

And they are done.