foam craft | Today We Did

While A was painting her Christmas wreath I decided to use a foam cone and foam ball to make a Santa Claus figure.

I wanted to use the cone for the body, so I painted it red. I later added a black belt with silver buckle about midway up the cone. For the head, I used the foam ball, first painting it white. His hat was made from a red felt triangle, and the fluffy edge and pom pom on top are both made from cotton balls, as is the beard. Once all that was dry, I started to add facial features, but I didn’t get any further than placing two blue dots for eyes. I found I really liked the way it looked without a nose or mouth.

Attaching the head to the body was a bit of a challenge, I tried using a long pin inserted into the apex of the cone, and the bottom of the ball, but it wasn’t strong enough. I fiddled with this for ages, using glue and pins, but still the head fell off. I really didn’t want a spontaneously decapitating Santa, so I used plenty of craft glue and attached a pop-stick as a support rod from the body to the head at the back. I had it lined up so the head was in a good position, and I left it to dry, which took ages, but it worked.

With the head finally attached, I cut two red pipe cleaners in half, and used one piece for each limb. I just stuck the sharp point of the pipe cleaner straight into the foam, and then bent them to give my Santa knees and elbows. I thought my Santa was perfect, but Big L said it looked like something out of Tim Burton’s The Night Before Christmas, anyway, I still like it! And the kids liked him too. He sat up on top of our TV throughout the Christmas period, watching to make sure we were all being good 🙂

Our first project using items from the Riot Art & Craft Christmas Showbag was a wreath.

The 3D foam wreath shape.

Painting the wreath.

A painted her foam wreath using red, green and blue paint. She wanted to have coloured sections, so while she painted the majority of the wreath, I helped her by painting smooth edges for each section. Once the wreath was dry, A turned it over and painted the other side to match. the paint dried quite quickly, and we were soon able to come back and decorate it.

First we wrapped one of the Christmas ribbons around and around the wreath, and secured it with a couple of metal pins. I put the pins in because they were sharp, and a bit fiddly for A to get in straight.

Adding glitter glue.

The gaps between where the ribbon lay seemed a little boring to A, so she decided to use silver glitter glue to enhance it. She put great globs of glitter glue of each part of the wreath that wasn’t covered in ribbon, and then she used a paint brush to spread it out. We finished it off by adding a piece of ribbon to the top of it so that it could be hung up. A very proudly hung it on the front door.