General Chat

My Guides had fun this evening. If you have kids this is a different craft they might like to do.

Last week we peeled some potatoes and cut them into largish dice. Peeling spuds and using a sharp knife to cut them up was an experience in itself for some girls.

We skewered the cubes on wooden skewers and I've had them drying at home for a week. The bits shrank and dried out and went rather black. I've been twisting them on the skewers to keep them moveable all week.......much to husband's amusement.

Today we painted the pieces (still on their skewers) with turquoise acrylic paint and a little black so they look like pieces of turquoise.

While they dried we went on a minibeast hunt on the playing field (it's National Insect Week!).

Next week we will put our turquoise pieces on elastic and make necklaces.

They look surprisingly good.

Sue
x

never heard of that craft before Sue, sounds interesting, will give it a go , but have no kiddies to place with now so will have to be for me to play on my own.

LOL

The pieces shrink a lot so cut them bigger than you want them to be. I've had the skewers stuck in pieces of foam to keep them from touching each other and help the pieces dry out.

I think I might spray varnish them before the girls thread them next week. I've got some beads so they can add a few in between the dried potato.

Sue

Do they smell at all Sue?

Sounds a great idea for the Guides to have fun with.
Hope the necklaces turn out ok.
Lizx

Well.............I'm sitting about 10 feet away from the skewers with potato pieces at the moment and I can detect a slight potato smell........LOL

I think once the girls who weren't there last night have painted their pieces and I've varnished the lot they ought to be smell free.

Bit of fun anyway!

Sue
x

...and they don't go mouldy? Interesting...

Reminds me of a craft project I did when I was a teen. I made a waistcoat made out of orange peel!!!

Honestly - it can be done.

Ok, so you need to get through loads of oranges in order to make a waistcoat (and it took me weeks to do mine) but maybe you can think of something else to make with the pieces instead.

You peel the oranges neatly by slicing and peeling from top to bottom, then you cut each section of peel into a square by chopping off the top and bottom pointy ends.

Next you make a hole in each corner of the square with a thick needle. Then you just have to leave them to dry out. They will go hard over a period of time (can't remember how long it took, sorry - but days rather than hours).

Once you have accumulated enough of the orange squares and they have dried hard you can sew them together (that's what the holes are for) to make things with.

Memory is a bit faded as to whether I varnished the pieces or not - you could experiment with a couple and see how it turns out.

My little orange waistcoat looked a bit hippyish but I felt so proud that I'd made it myself with such unusual materials.

Did anyone else use orange peel to make stuff? I seem to remember it was a little craze at the time where I lived but not sure how we heard about it. Probably something off Blue Peter LOL!

How did you hear about making stuff out of dried potato. Sue? Perhaps your Guides could use the two together, even - could use an orange square as a "pendant" for a potato necklace?

Athena

Aha

Orange peel sounds fun. I must have a go at that.
Waste not want not after all LOL

In addition to running the local Guides in our village I also run what are called Lone Guides for all of South West England. They are girls who can't get to meetings for some reason. Sometimes they are disabled or there isn't a local Guides Unit or perhaps they do something else on the meeting night of their local group.
I send them newsletters and e-mails. I discovered that 2008 is The Year of the Potato and did my latest newsletter on the theme so I sent them crafts I found online plus puzzles, information, recipes etc. I'm part of an international online Lone Guiders group so we share ideas too.

I'll tell the others about the orange peel idea!

Thanks for that

Sue
x

I reckon little ones could have a go if an adult or older child peeled the potatoes and cut them into large dice for them.

I was at a Guiders' meeting this evening and some Brownie leaders thought their girls could have a go.

Reminds me.......I went on my first Brownie pack holiday when I was 8 and I was their first casualty of the week when I cut myself with a potato peeler! Not badly but I have wondered since how I managed to do that!

Sue
x

Oh, I never used orange peel, but I did make a necklace out of melon seeds lol
Lizx