Iris's Stickman Family

Just before Christmas Iris had to make a stick man as part of her family "Cool Time" (homework), she was really looking forward to doing it but wanted Nanny specifically to help her, she being, in her mind, the lady what has got all the exciting stuff with which to do it!

Well, as you can see one stick man rapidly became a whole family and I will admit to cheating a bit, because we were really meant to go out and gather sticks for the project, but after all the rain we'd had they were really quite sodden and therefore not all that receptive to being glued and embellishmentised...... so I got some Christmas twigs from Wilko instead  ....... Lord forgive me!

However, said gluing still didn't turn out to be as easy a planned with such small, uneven areas to work on, so in the end I opted to use my glue gun, with Iris telling me exactly where she wanted me to blob it and then, after allowing the glue to cool a little, she popped on whatever embellishments she had chosen, rifled from my drawers.

The eyes were first stuck on to a small piece of cardboard as they were impossible to attach to such a narrow piece of twig. The tiny moustache, tie and dickie bow on the gentlemen were stickers from Paperchase, something I seem to have had forever. I also particularly like the way everyone, except Dad, has a strategically place leaf (The Works) to cover their erm, dignity .........

....... and Mum has an acorn cup for a handbag!

I thought that was it until Madam decided she wanted to make a scene for them to stand in ...... so an Amazon box was rescued from the bin and some air dry foam clay put at the back of it to hold a small copse of trees. Iris was in full creative flow now, as was the glue, with more bits and pieces filtched from my drawers to create the very wonderful woodland floor and snowy background.  The acorns have been sat  sitting in a box for two/three years now, collected during a weekend in Dawlish, but I knew one day they would come in useful!

My favourite part has to be the little wooden plaque on which Iris has written "family". A totally priceless and whimsical cold and wet winters afternoon that you can never repeat, but where memories were made. I expect she got a star for her efforts, but just doing it together was worth much, much more ..........