Duncan the Dragon!

I would like to introduce you to Duncan the papier maché dragon!

I made Duncan using only rolled up newspaper, flexible wire and lots of masking tape!

When all the different shapes were made separately, everything got three layers of papier maché before it was time to put everything together using a drill with various sizes of drill bits and a hot glue gun. 

It was then time for a final two layers of papier mache and many, many layers of poster paint!

Making Duncan was probably the most fun I have ever had while doing a college project! He has since been very popular with any class of children that he has visited! He is a brilliant prompt for lots of Drama and English activities! 

Surprisingly, no children have been scared of him yet! :O

Hand-painted shoes!

I always love to have original or personalised things to wear, but they are always so expensive! 

I had seen beautifully painted shoes floating around on the internet, but they were selling for as much as €300!!

There was only one thing for it, I decided to create my own!

The shoes that I used were plain white canvas slip-ons that I bought in Topman on sale for €8! 

I painted these shoes using acrylic paint that I mixed with a fabric medium so that the paint would not fade or bleed if the shoes got wet.

I have been wearing these shoes non-stop for a year now, and they are still as good as new! The shoes will give out long before the artwork does :) They have been a huge hit in the classroom over the last year. All the children seem to love them, from the sixth class boys right down to the tiny junior infants who love to follow them around.

These shoes were, without doubt, the best €8 that I have ever spent!!

Leaping Koi mask!

I made this mask in 2012. This project was really fun, and not too difficult either!

I chose to use a cardboard opera mask as my base. I then made and attached the tail and applied plenty of papier maché (my favourite!!) Next I added foam pieces to create textured scales, and then even more papier maché!

After that, all that was left to do was to paint it! I mixed some beautiful gold iridescent paint into my colours to give the fish a lovely sheen, as if it had just leapt out of a pool! I then attached some ribbons in different colours of blue to represent the water.

The colours in this mask were inspired by The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which I was reading at the time. This explains the "Katniss" t-shirt!! 

All for the love of music!

One of my favourite projects this year was creating my own illustrated storybook.I made this book completely from scratch.

For the story itself, I chose to use a story that I had written with my Dad when I was twelve. It's one of our favourites so it seemed like the perfect choice! :)

I laid out all of the text on the computer and printed the story of very good quality acrylic paper. Next came the fun part: drawing all the pictures!! This took a long time, but it was a labour of love :)

For the binding, I added stiff card to the front, back and spine of the book and sewed all the pages together with strong thread. I then covered it in beautiful red material and attached the cover illustration.

I am so pleased with the finished book, it is a beautiful and very sentimental piece that I look forward to having for a long time. I can't wait for an opportunity to tell my classes about Rasher the Sunburnt Pig!!

"The Golden Ticket" stop-animation project

This year in my elective art module in college, one of our largest projects was to create a set and a plasticine model for a stop-animation movie! Just think Wallace and Gromit!! 

This was a group project, but everyone got the chance to design and make their own set and character. For my set, I chose to make a magical sweetshop that was inspired by all those wonderful shops that you always see in children's movies, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or "Honeydukes" from Harry Potter!

I handmade everything in this set, including the outside of the shop and I used some real sweets to decorate it! For the windows I got to experiment with papier maché, my favourite!!

For my character, I created a dark and sinister man called Viktor Licorice who owned the sweetshop. He played the villain in our movie and he certainly is a little creepy!

My partner for this project, Rebecca, made the beautiful fairy that you can see in these photos!

My 1920's inspired headpiece!

Recently I designed and made a very intricate beaded headpiece. The headpiece was inspired by the style of accessories that were popular in the 1920's and also by the costumes from the film "The Great Gatsby"!

I had loads of fun making this one, but I don't think I have any fingerprints left after sewing on all those tiny beads!!

Peacock puppet!

Here is a cute little finger puppet that I made out of felt and some sequins. 

I would love to make a whole set of these. Maybe I could make a big Noah's Ark? :)

I couldn't resist including a picture of him in his "natural habitat" ;)

"Wizard of Oz" felt puppets!

During my final teaching practice, I was working with a wonderful 1st class using the classic storybook "The Wizard of Oz".

I decided to make a set of felt puppets for us to use in our lessons.

The kids loved them (even more than Miss Brown did!!) and they really helped in our English, Drama, Music and Art classes.

I would absolutely make a set of these puppets again as they really created another world for the children and allowed them to become part of the story. 

It was really amazing to see how the children believed in everything that the puppets said!!

Tie-dye trousers!

As part of my art module in college, I got the chance to experiment with tie-dye! 

It was a very quick and simple process that gave brilliant results. 

My tie-dye trousers have been a staple item in my wardrobe all summer!

Short comic strip!

This is a small section of a comic strip that I drew about two years ago. I no longer have this piece (my college kept it!) so this is the only photo I have of it. Please excuse the poor quality photograph!

This was a really fun piece to draw, I used waterproof pens and watercolour paints :)