Have you seen what we have been up to lately?
Winnie studied interior decorating before moving into the crafting world, and she has stayed there ever since. She founded Crafty Corner and, over the years, has built a broad command of craft techniques, working as an expert tutor and bringing an eye for detail that catches what other people miss. Winnie has since gone on to found Upcycle, Upcycle Creative, and the Upcycle Foundation, extending her work into sustainability focused craft and community upliftment.
Mark is a technical and logistics specialist at Crafty Corner. A resin caster and mould maker, he has spent years honing his skills as an experienced craftsman, in addition to being an internet whiz and running his own web servers. Mark is also now involved with the Upcycle businesses, bringing that same technical and logistical expertise to their projects.
OUR WORK
Twenty years in, Crafty Corner has built almost everything imaginable, taught craft skills to communities, and partnered with some of the country’s best known brands. Here’s a look at that range in practice.
PROJECTS
Building the World’s Largest Solid Chocolate Easter Bunny (Duracell)
Building the world’s largest solid chocolate Easter bunny brought a number of challenges. First, the team needed to find a supplier who could deliver three tons of chocolate at extremely short notice. Through Crafty Corner’s network of contacts, Gold Reef Chocolates stepped in to help, and before long, the studio was working with a mountain of chocolate weighing over 3,000 kg.
The chocolate arrived in 400g slabs, which made building a giant chocolate bunny nearly impossible in that form. So the first task was melting those small slabs down into larger, workable blocks. The team at Gold Reef Chocolates joined the project to help, melting the slabs into solid bricks weighing 6.5 kg each and packaging them individually in strict accordance with South Africa’s health regulations. That gave Crafty Corner a material they could finally work with.
While the chocolate prep was underway, Mark Fruhauf from Crafty Corner designed a giant chocolate bunny that needed to be solid all the way through, while also meeting the strict standards required for official Guinness World Record recognition. Chocolate is naturally brittle, which made this a tricky balance to strike. The sculpture had to closely replicate the iconic Duracell bunny everyone recognizes, while also having the structural strength to stand on its own. After all, if it toppled over, that would give a whole new meaning to death by chocolate.
It took Crafty Corner three days to help Duracell break the Guinness World Record for the World’s largest solid chocolate Easter Bunny. Weighing in at 3,000 kg and measuring 3.82 metres high, Crafty Corner broke the previous Guinness World Record by a wide margin.
First National Bank
Crafty Corner was commissioned by 3rd House (http://3rdhouse.co.za/), an agency that works with First National Bank on various projects, including in-store and event displays. For this project, 3rd House asked Crafty Corner to build a wooden tree for one of FNB’s internal staff events. The brief called for a tree roughly two metres tall and proportionally wide, built from wood strong enough to hold five hundred handwritten notes from staff. The challenge was made trickier by one key detail: the tree needed to be assembled entirely inside FNB’s offices in Bank City, Johannesburg.
To meet that challenge, Crafty Corner designed the tree using a flat pack assembly system. Working with a large CNC machine at Made in Workshop (http://madeinworkshop.co.za/), the team brought the design to life. Rather than recreating the iconic FNB tree, Crafty Corner created an original design, cutting the shape from wood of varying thicknesses and laminating the pieces together to build up each component. The base, trunk, and branches were each built as separate sections, which meant the tree could be broken down, moved, and reassembled quickly at any location. This approach also solved a major logistical problem: since the tree needed to be installed on the fourth floor of the FNB building, building it in sections meant the team wasn’t restricted by narrow doorways or lift sizes.
Over a total of seven days, Crafty Corner cut, sanded, glued, delivered, and reassembled the tree in its new home at FNB. The finished piece stood 2.1 metres tall, measured 1.9 metres wide from branch tip to branch tip, had a base 1.6 metres in diameter, and weighed approximately 75 kg.
Building a Scale Model of Mount Everest
Fundi, A company involved in the financial side of the educational sector commissioned Crafty Corner to build a scale model of Mount Everest. True to form, this wasn’t a project the team would shy away from. The finished model measured two metres by two metres, stood a little over 1.2 metres tall, and weighed close to 80 kg.
The Everest model was built primarily from paper balls and paper mache, then finished with a hard coat of dental stone for durability and detail. The final piece was built to a scale of approximately 1:10,000,000.
A Rhino Mould for Saint-Gobain
For an international building materials competition in Dubai, Saint-Gobain commissioned Crafty Corner to create a mould of an African black rhino. The piece was used in the final stage of the competition’s design portion, which focused on interior construction materials.
The mould began as a sculpted relief of a rhino head, created by Winnie McHenry, Crafty Corner’s founder and now also owner of Upcycle Creative. That sculpture was then converted into a mould using fibreglass, and the final product was cast in dental stone manufactured by one of Saint-Gobain’s own divisions.
What else?
Other flagship work includes five thousand gel candles produced to exact spec for MTN, 880 35cm glitter balls produced as instore display pieces for Stuttafords, five thousand mini wire baobab trees produced for Office National, and a mall wide jellyfish display built for Brooklyn Mall.
SKILLS TRANSFER
Alongside client work, Crafty Corner runs hands on training that equips communities with real, marketable craft skills.
Trained an unemployed community in wet felting, teaching them to produce shoes, bags, and hats.
Delivered skills training in candle making to communities, building a craft they can carry forward and sell.
Delivered skills training in mosaic work to communities, using the same approach.
This work sits at the heart of what Crafty Corner believes craft can do. It doesn’t just produce objects, it builds capability in the people who make them.
CORPORATE PARTNERSHIPS
Crafty Corner has partnered with corporate clients in ways that go beyond a single product order.
Delivered team building craft activations for over 150 clients.
Run craft workshops and courses from our own studio.
Delivered craft programs directly into schools.
Whether it’s a display piece, a staff activation, or an ongoing training program, corporate clients return to Crafty Corner because the work holds up every time.
Have a project that doesn’t fit anywhere else? Want to bring craft skills into your team or community? Get in touch and let’s talk about what we can build together.