Glass Ball and Wire Cane Tops

Our garden backs onto the countryside with a small river running past, every summer beautiful dragonflies and damselflies fill every available space and when the seasons change we start to miss them. So we came up with the idea of making a small piece of sculpture to brighten the garden during the cold winter months using some of the parts from a broken mobile.

This is the broken mobile... I kept the parts as we have a passion for recycling and reusing things but the cane tops can just as easily be made with garden wire and glass balls or marbles if you fancy making some yourself.

The first thing we did was make the body of the dragonfly, my husband used a bar with a hole in to hold the wire still, but a cane works just as well. Put the end of the wire into the hole and keep winding the wire round until it starts to resemble a large spring and could fit the required amount of marbles in. We have used six marbles in total.

With the marbles pushed into the spring it automatically starts to look like the body of a dragonfly, you can then use pliers to spiral the wire at the end to finish it off nicely, leaving a little excess wire at the head end to attach to the cane. We have used a larger marble for the head.

We have made the wings with a slightly thinner garden wire because it is so much easier to shape and can be bought very cheaply. Once you have your wing shape twist the wire together to hold it in place remembering to leave enough spare wire on the underside of the wings to fix onto the body of your dragonfly.

A little detail was added using very thin wire and beads, this was wound around the edges of the wings to fix them in place and create a representation of the veining on the dragonflies wings.

Then all that's left to do is fix the wings to the body by wrapping the long piece of wire around the body. A glass bead can be fixed to the insects thorax to cover the knotted wire using hot glue or resin. In the photograph above you can see some of the other things we have made using the glass balls and wire from the broken mobile.

These garden cane tops have been made in a similar way to the dragonfly using a simple spiral to hold the glass balls and adding a few beads as a finishing touch. I have left the bottom end of the wire straight to slide into the end of a bamboo cane but they can also be spiralled to slip over the top of the cane.

Here is the finished dragonfly in the garden, the wire at the front of it's head was straightened and slid into the top of a bamboo cane, which is hidden by the bush. As the body has been made using a spring shape and it is only fixed to the cane at the front it has given the sculpture a subtle movement which has enchanted the children.

These are some of the cane tops which remind us of little moons orbiting planets and definitely liven up a dull looking cane. A small magical touch to add a little cheer to the gardens in the winter.

As there have been a few reports of fires caused by people having glass on sunny window ledges we will be using these to brighten pots in shady corners.

Happy Birthday

Today is my husbands birthday, so I would just like to pause for a second to say Happy Birthday to him, I hope your day is as magical as your presence has made my life. I love you for all time, a true soul mate xx 

a love that even time will lie down and be still for

-quote from the film practical magic

This is the birthday cake I made today, with the childrens help, of course, the leaves are to symbolise his love of nature and gardening. It is filled with the wild plum jam we made from foraged fruit and to top of the evening we had a glass of our own homemade blackberry wine. perfect.

Rock Painting

I have been thinking of ways of making the garden look a little more interesting or magical lately, to the children over the stark winter months, and also introduce some more fun crafts. This time we have killed two birds with one stone (excuse the pun). It was a really rainy day, the children were a little upset that we had to cancel our trip out so we had to come up with something to do last minute that was fun. We didn't have any acrylic paint so we have had to use normal poster paint but they loved making these little rock monsters so much that we will probably make some more when we have the proper paint. My husband sprayed them with lacquer to make them a little more waterproof.

 When they were dry and the sun was shining, we hid them all over the garden. As you can see above, some have had some finishing touches of googly eyes and the toadstool has a little hand carved stalk. But these were mostly painted and made by my youngest children aged just 6 and 2 with much love. 

Now when winter comes and the garden is bare, there will be little folk or things of interest hiding everywhere. So far my daughter has been finding them hilariously funny every time she spots one lurking. Some of them like the one above are very colourful and will brighten up a dull corner.

I spotted this lonely one playing in the dirt. We did something similar to this for my husband on father's day, my son painted a rock and we wrote "dad rocks" on it. you can see it here. can't wait to paint some more using acrylic paint. we have quite a few crafts lined up to cheer up the garden for winter and to try to make it a little more magical for the little ones.

Garden Love

    We are not lucky enough as yet have an allotment, so my poor hard working husband has to fit as much as he can in our garden. We have been blessed with some good crops though, so we definitely owe the garden a little love. One of our best croppers has been our blackcurrant bush as you have seen in previous posts it has produced many fruits, at the moment it is in the middle of a second crop. Sometimes you get surprises, the plums below were picked today from our new plum tree, which must only be three foot tall, we certainly weren't expecting any plums from it this year.

    Not only is the garden good for growing things it has excellent educational potential for our children. Right from the start they have been involved in the seed selection, planting, care and harvesting, and they have enjoyed every minute (especially the eating). We still have the "bean in the jar" science experiment on the kitchen window ledge in spring, but this is because my husband gets a little concerned if my son pulls up the beans to look at the roots.

    They also love their bug hunts, but even this has advantages when the cabbage white caterpillars are on your brassicas and someone needs to pick them off. There is great excitement in the tomato bed too, as this year we decided to grow four different kinds of tomato just to see the different growing styles and tastes, two are pictured below the plum tomato and the marmande.

   So, I'd like to say thank-you to my garden, for the bountiful crops, for the education provided to my children, for the fun times, even for the frogs and toads that jump out of the undergrowth and scare me half to death and the abundant mini beasts that I've had thrust under my nose... to the chants of "WOW, Mum have you ever seen one of these?"
    How about you? I hope I'm not alone with the garden love thing.