child's play

.....and the answer is..............CRAYONS!!!!


Many years ago, I took a FIRE class at Sybil Rampen's place, before she opened the Joshua Creek Heritage centre. In one part of the class, she showed us how to gesso river rocks, draw designs on the bottom with a Sharpie and then heat them up in a toaster oven (sorry, I can't remember how long it took). When the rocks were nice and hot, you took them out carefully (tongs are good), placed them on a heat proof surface and then touched different colours of crayola crayons to the surface. The crayons melted instantly, and made wonderful patterns that flowed seeped and puddled under the bottom (the photo shows the top). We left them to cool and then polished with a soft cloth (pants, shirt or whatever!!). I love my rocks!

The nest was wet felted in a class at the Textile Museum of Canada from an instructor who's name escapes me. It wasn't originally planned for a nest, but it works well, so a nest it is!!! I didn't notice before, but do you see the ducks head on the nest? Totally planned, of course......ahem...cough.....or perhaps the inner serendipity muse at work!!!