Mrs Maker's Projects

Happy Holidays! I forgot to mail Christmas cards this year, so here is one via email and/or social media to all our friends and family! Why waist your money on buying printed cards, when you can ask your children to draw a unique design! You can teach your children to use Gimp (or other graphical design programmes) to make the layout for the card, too. Very useful project. 

Tonight, my oldest (age 6,5 years) drew some Red-bellied piranhas. Here are his fresh comments:  ”Red-bellied piranhas have snapping mouth, because they like to eat all the time. They are too hungry, because they have small sharp teeth. It means that they are fishers who are dangerous to small fishes. This means they eat small fishes. So, when they are too hungry they need to find small fishes or sometimes they eat fish eggs. Noin ne tekee oikeasti . That is what they are doing really. Now you know about Piranhas, the fishers. In some countries, these people who live in rainforests, they use piranhas for scissors. That helps rainforest people to live.”

Boys made Bad Piggies contraption today out of an old wooden box and three broken Alvar Aalto stools... Notice also the small wheels attached to the wooden box. Notice the handbrakes on both sides of the device which, btw, travels on land quite fast!!! Priceless! Bad Piggies is popular puzzle video game developed by Rovio Entertainment.

In downtown Helsinki (Liisankatu 11 D 19) we had a masonry stove (in Finnish kakluuni ) in a building, which was constructed in 1906. In Finland, the masonry stove industry flourished at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. After the First World War, various new heating systems replaced stoves.  One day I decided to cast 3D impressions of some of the figures using mould making and casting materials I bought from a distributor of dental products. Sounds weird, but it was cheaper than getting the materials from an arts and crafts shop. The project was easy and fun.  I ended up making casts, that I used to decorate the surrounding of the ceiling lamp and the space above the windows in the living room.  Adding little paint, the figures looked like they belonged in the room there as they were repeating the figures of the stove.  Dragonflies around the ceiling lamp. The original colour of the stove was ivory, but someone had painted it with a silly brown paint. I aligned and glued figuri

We needed some coat hooks for our children to hang their clothing in the vestibule. To solve this practical problem, I and my hubby spend some time on the Internet looking for an invention that we could turn into our own innovation. The Charles and Ray Eames designed coat hanger called “ Hang-It-All ” looked just right with its' colourful balls. Here's how you too can make you own whimsical coat hooks. Find some some cheap wealded steel hooks with wooden balls. We found some from Biltema .  Initially our idea was to replace the wooden balls with Angry Birds plastic figurines, but with lack of those we ended up using Ikea’s SÄTTA knobs that come in assorted colours. First remove the wooded balls. Then make threads. And screw on the knobs. Why have ugly screws showing when you can hide them with additional knobs? Cut the thread on the anchor to the right size. Ugly screws hidden behind a knob Fun and functional coat hooks final

Take one light with broken shades, and Ikea Ordning -cutlery holders   Make holes in the cuttlery holders' bottoms Getting there...  and voilà... the shadows are quite nice

My 4-year old son wanted to make some art, so I gave him an old scruffy shirt and a pair of scissors. With my guidance, he then carefully cut out the back piece of the shirt. Then I g ave my son a set of bullet tip fabric markers. He first wrote his name, then draw himself, mom , da d and his older brother .   He also draw our house with few windows , a door and steps upstairs, along with a slide and the sun and  some grass and flowers. Our 2012 season greetings cards – a reconstruction of the above painting – received a warm welcoming from family and friends.