Monday, February 16, 2009

Summer of '08 part 1

The 2nd half of 2008 was full of interesting activities and I didn't have time to post all that in the past few months.

I was in USA from 27th June till 22nd August enjoying my time with the most important person now in my life, my one and only grand daughter Amie. She turned three on the 18th August 2008. It was great fun trying out all types of art and craft with her while her parents were busy getting their new house ready.

It was raining outside and I was running out of idea when I remembered something I learnt in Thailand during a teacher exchange programme I attended in May 1988. They used to call it 'bread dough' and used real bread for making it but I improvised it and used plain flour. I also replaced poster colour and the synthetic resin adhesive Fevicol with Amie's acrylic paint.Here are the ingredients:



The dough turned out to be perfect for moulding and became hard and light when it dried. Once it became dry, it could be painted with poster colour. We made basic colour doughs, pink,blue,green and yellow by mixing white to get the desired shade.
The dough could be wrapped in foil/polythene and kept in the refrigerator for a few weeks.

I started with some of the characters from the movies/books Amie was familiar with.She immediately took interest and wanted to help me.

Amie got the books to show me the pictures of Kipper and Tiger the dogs and very soon made a squirrel and a tree from her own imagination




We made plenty of dough stuff and kept them on the shelf to dry. One morning we were inspecting and guess what? Some of the items made by us had disappeared! What could have happened? After some investigation, Amie and I wondered "could there be some invisible being interested in playing with the dough?"Since then we remembered to keep our craft items covered with glass every night and there were no more theft.....but.....I feel sad for losing the beautiful squirrel made by Amie:(

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I remember those! She still plays with them, though Kipper has lost both ears.
By the way, we found the pig Amie made behind one of the book racks we moved recently. Half chewed up. The mouse (not defunct) surely loved that "bread"!
Glad to see you online again,
M.

SUDAKSHINA said...

Thanks for the comment.We can replace the 'injured' ones this summer and definitely try to protect them from Mr.Ratatouille.
Mm