I asked my son what would he like for Christmas. He answered: “a reindeer”. A reindeer? A real reindeer? I was already seeing myself in trouble fulfilling my son’s wish for Christmas, when his reply came: “a toy reindeer”. What a relief! This is easy task my love, i said to myself. My imagination started running wild and the excitement was building with every single idea popping in.
I had a recycled fish bin I kept to make a winter sensory box . How am i going to build some mountains in it? Hmmm?! Think Raluca, think! I remembered all the recycled newspapers we had in the house. Ok, that’s a good starting point. I tried first, crumbling some. Nope, it didn’t work. Got it! That’s it! Paper Marce.
I took about 10 old newspapers and I soaked them. Then i teared them into smaller pieces and transferred some into the blender where i added about 200ml water and squeeze of paper glue. Turned the blender on low speed and waited till the content became a loose dough like texture. I removed it and used a sieve to eliminate as much of the water as possible. Then I gave it an extra squeeze with my hands. I did the exact same thing with all the remaining newspaper. The process took about two hours, together with moderating the mountains and, needed a week to completely dry.
Next step was to create a frozen lake. On a plastic folder i spread a thin layer of glue then added a drop of blue food coloring. I spread it as a thin layer and let it dry for about two days. Once completely dry, i pealed it of the plastic folder and cut the desired shape. I placed it next to the mountains.
In a bowl i mixed white flour, salt and silver glitter then let it slowly fall in the box, covering the entire surface.
It was the time to paint the mountains too so, with white acrylic paint i covered about 95% of the mountains leaving a bit of the initial gray for a more organic look. I rather tapped the paint on. At this point I was thrilled.
Using lots of white and just a bit of blue acrylic paint, on the inside of the bin lid, on the upper, back and side inner walls, i made a cloudy, wintery sky.
Out of recycled toilette paper tubes, my son helped me make a family of penguins. We had a St. Bernard stuffed toy since our winter trip in Switzerland, a wolf, a fox and a Santa on a plane. From ELC i purchased a reindeer, a polar bear and a mummy penguin with its baby. I placed them all in the box and topped the scene with some snowflakes confetti.
It feels so good to having put in the effort and can’t wait to see his reaction upon receiving his Christmas gifts.
