We are all on holiday from school at the moment because it's Chinese New Year. Not long ago, Mr Gypsy and I would be on a beach somewhere hot right now, getting tanned and wasted, but with a two-year-old and a one-year-old in tow, holidays just ain't the relaxing, carefree time they used to be! Our last trip (touring the UK in a camper van) was plagued with illness and bad weather and left us so traumatised that we literally haven't been away since. There have been three school breaks since that trip and we've elected to stay at home. Every. Single. Time.
The kids are growing so fast though and soon we'll be a bit more mobile again. I can't wait to take them on some proper gypsying. In the meantime, it's a perfect opportunity to immerse myself in some grubby indoor crafting, while the boys play with their train set.
Winter in Shanghai is not the best - even if you are someone who enjoys cold weather (which I decidedly am not). It has been bitterly cold recently and we had a stretch of five straight days this week when the pollution was so hazardous that we really didn't want to take the kids out in it. Again - great excuse to hang out at home and get craft-crazy! So I started on a project which has been fermenting in my brain ever since I saw this lady's spectacular craft blog, Liberty Biberty, and cemented last week when I stumbled on the stunning little houses here at Cinderella Moments. Swoooooon! Such beautifully crafted little houses and tiny little details and things.... Must! Make! Tiny stuff!
So I did.
Although I did tonnes of sketches over a few weeks and even made a mockup out of moving boxes, I held fire on starting the build because I don't have woodworking tools and was trying to think how I could cut the wood. If I were in England, it would be easy enough to pop into my local DIY store with my paper plans (I drew everything out on graph paper) and get the wood cut to spec. If I were in Australia, I could ask my father-in-law to teach me in his shed. If I were in Thailand, our awesome local picture-framing shop would be happy to help me out. But here in China, it just wasn't going to be so simples.
So I figured I'd take a leaf out of Mercedes' book and just "do what I can with what I have." And what I have is a LOT of paper and card.
I've used book board - the really heavy duty cardboard that is used to make ring binders etc, which I cut with a stanley knife. The pieces are joined together with cardstock, on the inside and the outside of the join, and white PVA glue. I made sure to burnish the cardstock really well to bind the two materials together as best I could. Obviously, this is not an ideal construction material and the whole time, in the back of my head was the story of the three little pigs making dumb houses out of totally impractical things.... But I figure this is my first attempt. If I can make it work- great. If not, it will have been a very useful lesson and then I can improve on it the second time around.
I've painted it inside and out with gesso and now I'm trying to decide what to do about reinforcing the walls. As you can see, the side walls are considerably bowed. I could have solved this problem by extending the upper floor out to the same level as the ground floor but I didn't want to make it too dark and poky downstairs.
I considered making a frame out of square dowel (something I could cut with a small hacksaw, one of the few tools I *do* have)... but I hadn't been able to find dowel anywhere yet and I was impatient to get started. Then I started thinking about concrete because I saw a blog where someone had used that to create texture on the outside walls and I thought that might help make the structure rigid and straight if I did one wall at a time and supported it horizontally while it dried. But I can only find gigantic industrial sized bags of it and Mr Gypsy would have my guts for garters if I came home with one of them. Ditto for plaster rendering - only massive bags. And anyway, mortar or plaster might just crack and make a mess.
So now I'm back to paper again.... I'm going to have a bash with some papier mache. If I'm lucky, that combined with the added structural support that will come from attaching the roof, might just solve the issue. Or it could make it much worse. Either way, there's only one way to find out!
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Here's a little something else I made recently for a friend's birthday.
Winter in Shanghai is not the best - even if you are someone who enjoys cold weather (which I decidedly am not). It has been bitterly cold recently and we had a stretch of five straight days this week when the pollution was so hazardous that we really didn't want to take the kids out in it. Again - great excuse to hang out at home and get craft-crazy! So I started on a project which has been fermenting in my brain ever since I saw this lady's spectacular craft blog, Liberty Biberty, and cemented last week when I stumbled on the stunning little houses here at Cinderella Moments. Swoooooon! Such beautifully crafted little houses and tiny little details and things.... Must! Make! Tiny stuff!
So I did.
Although I did tonnes of sketches over a few weeks and even made a mockup out of moving boxes, I held fire on starting the build because I don't have woodworking tools and was trying to think how I could cut the wood. If I were in England, it would be easy enough to pop into my local DIY store with my paper plans (I drew everything out on graph paper) and get the wood cut to spec. If I were in Australia, I could ask my father-in-law to teach me in his shed. If I were in Thailand, our awesome local picture-framing shop would be happy to help me out. But here in China, it just wasn't going to be so simples.
So I figured I'd take a leaf out of Mercedes' book and just "do what I can with what I have." And what I have is a LOT of paper and card.
I've painted it inside and out with gesso and now I'm trying to decide what to do about reinforcing the walls. As you can see, the side walls are considerably bowed. I could have solved this problem by extending the upper floor out to the same level as the ground floor but I didn't want to make it too dark and poky downstairs.
I considered making a frame out of square dowel (something I could cut with a small hacksaw, one of the few tools I *do* have)... but I hadn't been able to find dowel anywhere yet and I was impatient to get started. Then I started thinking about concrete because I saw a blog where someone had used that to create texture on the outside walls and I thought that might help make the structure rigid and straight if I did one wall at a time and supported it horizontally while it dried. But I can only find gigantic industrial sized bags of it and Mr Gypsy would have my guts for garters if I came home with one of them. Ditto for plaster rendering - only massive bags. And anyway, mortar or plaster might just crack and make a mess.
So now I'm back to paper again.... I'm going to have a bash with some papier mache. If I'm lucky, that combined with the added structural support that will come from attaching the roof, might just solve the issue. Or it could make it much worse. Either way, there's only one way to find out!
********************
Here's a little something else I made recently for a friend's birthday.
It's an explosion box. The map is a vintage one of China with all the different places she's lived here.
I couldn't decide whether I wanted the greeting or her name the top of the box.
In the end, I decided the inside looked nicer with her name than it did with the greeting, which was a bit dark next to the black-framed photos. Each of those four flaps opens out and contains a mini-card with messages from lots of different friends.
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