Festival blog

memories of grandad

I wanted to capture some of my memories of Grandad, and as someone who loves to be creative, a memory cube was a natural way to do it. This is how I made my 6” x 6” wooden memory cube.

Step 1. I painted all 6 sided in a cream acrylic paint which I watered down to 2 parts paint:1 part water.

Step 2. The base. I printed out a small dedication to my Grandad and stuck it on with glue. I left it to dry before moving on to step 3.

Step 3. The draughts board. I repainted this surface white, cut out some black squares and once the paint was dry I glued on the black squares to make a

chequered board design. I cut out 3 black circles and 2 white circles for draughts pieces and attached them with glue.

Step 4. The Crab. Using navy blue archival ink I stamped some seaside images in the 4 corners. Using children’s stencils and orange paint, I stencilled in the crab, when dry I glued down the googly eyes. I left this facing up while the glue dried to stop the eyes from slipping off!

Step 5. Fuzz. This side was lightly brushed over with gold paint. The letters F U Z Z and a heart shape were cut out and glued down. Go have a cuppa while you wait for this side to dry.

Step 6. A Declaration of Love. I cut the photograph down to size and using black archival ink I inked around the edges of the photograph. I cut a piece of red card slightly smaller than the size of the cube. Using double sided sticky tape, I attached the photo to the red card. I took 2 green plastic bottle tops and 2 paper fasteners, painted them with black gesso then covered them in a silver ink. I made a hole in the centre of each bottle top and attached the paper fasteners. These are my dustbin lids!! I printed out the phrase “A declaration of Love” onto card, cut the card to size and inked the edges with black archival ink. Using a hot glue gun I attached the dustbin lids and the words.

Step 7. The Bonfire. I made a cylinder out of cardboard, this gave me the basic bonfire shape. Using a hot glue gun I stuck down lots of scrunched up bits of newspaper. I then layered around bits of twigs I’d collected. I stuffed the cylinder with more paper and using lots of hot glue stuck the base down. I stuck a few more twigs here and there until I was happy with the look. The fireworks: I cut out 6 small rocket shapes and 9 pieces of wire ( 3 long and 6 shorter pieces). Using double sided sticky tape I sandwiched 1 long piece and 2 shorter pieces of wire between 2 rockets, repeated another 2 times. On the long pieces of wire I dabbed on lots of glue and threaded on sequins. Once dry I stuck them in the top of the bonfire with hot glue.

By Louise Wood