We came into a mother lode of buttons a few months ago. (Thank you, Joy!) They’re plain shirt-type buttons in many colors. Eva can think of more ways to use them. She wanted to make Christmas ornaments from pine cones, and the buttons seemed the natural choice. Here’s her button pine cone. We nestled it on a branch of the Christmas tree.
Eva read The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper, for Language Arts class. Her project was to dress like the main character and tell his story. She needed props, so she made the signs described in the book. The signs of iron, stone, wood, and brass are polymer clay; the sign of water is cut from a sheet of vinyl. We tried to cast it in epoxy resin, but that didn’t work very well.
Our favorite, and the favorite of her classmates, was the sign of fire. In the book it is encrusted with lots of jewels that flash like fire. Eva cut her sign from felt and encrusted it with sequins. They flash like fire, too. She sewed a back onto the piece, and stuffed it.
I read the book, too. Eva and I had the same reaction to it. We found it interesting intellectually, and we were pleased with the ending on general principle, but we didn’t love the book.