The weekly round-up and The Crafting Hall of Shame

Hello and welcome... to the weekly round-up. 

If you are reading this post:

a) you are obviously trying to avoid something more important that you should be doing

b) you have spent the morning bidding on unnecessary ebay items and needed a circuit-breaker to stop yourself bidding on a faux fur gilet from China

c) you like the idea of being a crafty parent but actually spend more time on the internet 'researching' "craft activities for kids" than doing them. (In the course of your research you usually end up on Pinterest looking at aspirational pictures of children's bedrooms imagining that one day your kids' bedrooms will be stylishly dotted with  funky objects d'art and neat pots of pencils.)

or

d) you googled "nude ladies" and somehow ended up here instead. You must be really disappointed and I'm sincerely sorry

However you ended up here: please be welcomed to the weekly crafters round-up.

This week in craft I earned myself a prominent place in the Crafting Hall of Shame when I attempted to make grassheads. (See below if you don't know what grassheads are.)

Please note: these are not the grassheads I made

My first mistake:

• thinking I knew better than the people who had done this before and posted their triumphs online

My second mistake:

• not reading the very detailed and useful instructions posted by the people who had triumphed in the making of grassheads

My third mistake:

• pre-emptively blowing my own trumpet and telling the Kidspot content producer, Lauren that my grassheads were going to be "totally awesome!" (She's very busy and I thought speaking young person's language would really give me 'cut through.')

My fourth and final mistake:

• going slightly off-piste, getting a bit creative with it and deciding to use alfalfa seeds instead of grass seeds 

For those of you not already in the know, alfalfa seeds do not sprout in the same way grass seeds do. (i.e. with small upshoots that will break through a stocking wall: I know that now)

When I checked on Mr Alfalfa after three days, he didn't seem to be sprouting any hair.  He did however appear to be developing a suspicious tumor-like growth and some unfortunate whisker work on the side of his face, (which incidentally reminded me of an elderly gentleman I used to know, may he rest in peace.)

Here is what he looked like when I first created him:

Mr Alfalfa

Here is what he looked like three days later.

"It's not a tooma!"

And just for context, here again is what grassheads are supposed to look like:

Proper grassheads from cassandraben.blogspot.com

I considered faking it by poking holes in the stocking to make the alfalfa stick out like crazy alfalfa hair (the way I had imagined it in my crafting dreams) but then realised it could result in an angry mob of crafters turning up to my house and pelting me with their failed grassheads.  (Some people take their crafting very seriously.)

So I decided to do some snowflakes instead.

Click here to watch the snowflakes video


This was all part of my winter craft extravaganza. (Not to be confused with my Autumn Leaf Craft extravaganza which incidentally resulted in my other entry into the Crafting Hall of Shame: see just add banjos and a trailer park.)

If you are here for craft and activities, here are the rest of the videos in my highly anticipated winter crafting series:

How to make a Knitting Nancy
How to make a kite
How to make a seashell windchime
Make an indoor teepee

And that is this week's round-up. See you next time Crafters (or nude lady gogglers as the case may be.)