I actually made this bird, again inspired by Christi Friesen’s new Birds book, by each stage in around 50 photos. I have a plan to animate these into a film of how it was made, but the photography wasn’t great and post production may take a while!

I’m an enormous fan of Christi’s work and have all her books which are without doubt right up there with Maureen Carlson in terms of accessible and achievable projects. Christi also has a website where she displays ideas and downloadable projects.

This particular project comes from her Under the Sea book and i had to make it after seeing a version by a 10 year old that was so good that i was completely put to shame!

I’ve since found that some of the new Studio by Sculpey colours are really spectacularly suitable for using with these projects. We sell a full range of Fimo and Sculpey at BeadMerrily and all the beads came form very simple beading kits made by The Bead Shop and Fashion Angels.

This is a Fimo and glass beads Cleopatra that i made after my 8 year old (her with the frog!) told me my original, made for a project with the kids) wasn’t good enough!

Fimo is such a great way for the family to do something together; we read a book on Cleo, then everyone had a go at modeling her. The things we talked about as we modeled assure me that the girls will remember the project for a long time!

This was created by my 8 year old daughter using a book by Christi Friesen . She really does some fabulous books, we’ve loved them.

More soon, this blog is now a top priority after the last couple of years of frantically just trying to sell Fimo to other people!

My first attempt at such things, made especially for my friend Kirsty. Enormous fun to do!