Hot! (and cool) Colour

Hot tie dye for a dragon's tail. We are having a carnival at school. Each year group has a country, and ours is China. We are making dragons for a dragon dance. We have been given very little time to prepare, so have been making speed dragons. A large box, painted red, covered in pva glue, painted with yellow and red patterns, decorated with shiny stuff. If you say to a small child, ''Do you want to come and stick some shiny stuff on the dragon?'', most of them will say ''yes!'' Tomorrow the tails and faces will go on, Tuesday we will rehearse, Wednesday we won't do anything because Wednesday is 'transition day' when the kids from nursery go to visit Reception, and all 90 Reception children come to visit us! Fun, but noisy and hectic. Thursday I am striking, and Friday is the big day! No time for stage fright then!

Some of the beads came out interestingly dyed themselves. A few of the children helped me put the beads and elastic bands on the fabric. I would have dyed it at school but our washing machine is annoyingly broken.

More colour, from a mobile I made. I used to make mobiles in the nineties out of stripped electrical copper wire and things I found on the Thames (a different piece of beach to where we go now-and closed to public access about five years ago) I picked up loads of lovely glass pieces the other day and thought I would try to use them straight away. It is now possible to buy a beautiful and cheap selection of coloured wire in craft shops, which makes mobile making easier than it used to be! It was quite quick to do and looks beautiful in the sun.

The hoop is from a job lot I got years ago and have not used until now. I may make some more for my shop!

Lastly some cool colour-a buddleia branch and discarded purple lighter on the beach today. So pretty with the sand and the sage green of the leaves. Someone had had a huge bonfire but the branch had escaped the flames.