acquiring the art materials for this challenge so brought me back to the first week i lived in boulder, colorado, in 2002. i went to whole foods without my own reusable grocery bags (the horror!) and got reception that was… well, not unlike jack mcbrayer’s recent guest appearance for the grocery bag sketch on portlandia (who else thinks this show is brilliant??! click text above to watch the sketch.) so, yeah… i related to jack’s character when we scored these paper bags from whole foods last week. i wanted to shout, “it’s for art’s sake, people! we’re upcycling!”

we set out on our paper bag art adventure without knowing the destination (er, product.) N wanted to “paint the bags like huge canvases.” so we started there.

she created large blocks of carefully selected colors on them with large sponge brushes and paint rollers.

it was like a rothko study in our play shed where they hung to dry.

after the paint was dry, N decided she wanted to make a weaving. before cutting up the paper bags, N wanted to color on some of them with her metallic creamy crayons.

we cut the bags into strips which were about an inch thick and 16 inches long. then N laid them out in the order she wanted, horizontally, and then vertically.

she chose some ribbons to use in the weaving, as well.

together, we wove. over, under, over, under. N practiced at lifting every other piece of paper and guiding the next one through it.

the finished weaving was so vibrant and lovely!

we decided to frame it in an ikea ribba shadowbox frame, size 20.5 x 20.5, without the mat. i put a few dots of glue between some key parts of the weaving to hold it together, and used double-sided tape to adhere the weaving to white cardstock/posterboard. this piece is such a fun addition to N’s colorful bedroom!

check out my other blogger friends’ paper bag creations around the web:

Imagination Soup, Hands On: As We Grow, Child Central Station, Putti Prapancha, Irresistible Ideas for Play-Based Learning, Teach Preschool, The Chocolate Muffin Tree, Nurture Store, Small Types,Make Do & Friend, The Imagination Tree, Toddler Approved, Red Ted Art, Kids in the Studio, Rainy Day Mum, Glittering Muffins, Sense of Wonder, Mom To 2 Posh Lil Divas, Come Together Kids, My Creative Family, Kitchen Counter Chronicles, A Mom With A Lesson Plan, Angelique Felix, The Golden Gleam, Clarion Wren, Living at the Whitehead’s Zoo, Let Kids Create, De tout et de rien, PlayDrMom, Creativity My Passion, paint cut paste, Kiwi Crate, Tinkerlab

if you’d like to share in the paper bag creative challenge fun, YOU are invited to join the linky below with you and your kiddos’ paper bag creation!

also, you can enter to win a $100 VISA gift card and three-month subscription to kiwi crate. to find out how by visiting this link over on tinkerlab or the kiwi crate blog. (pssst – the contest involves the beloved pinterest, so you know it’s gonna be fun!)

the other night, while sorting through the stacks of catalogs, i said to my daughter, “i wonder what we could make out of all of these extra magazines…” with christmas undoubtedly on the brain, she immediately responded, “ornaments!” but of course! she said she wanted to rip them up and glue them to balls. sounds like a plan to me — so she got right to work on the ripping that evening (thus the dark photo. my apologies: it’s a casualty of wintertime blogging.)

the next day we took a trip to michaels and scored these brown paper ornament shapes for 60 cents each (which turned out to be even cheaper with a coupon – love it.)

later (and again after a mad-early sunset,) N got to work mod podging her “magazine confetti” (as she termed it) onto the ornaments.

once they were covered (and she was kind of bummed by the white look of wet mod podge initially) she said she wanted them to sparkle more, and asked for glitter. [artsy-mom guilt-producing confession: i so HATE loose glitter.] while i knew glitter would be a lovely and festive addition to something for our tree, i shuddered when N asked for it. then sighed a bit of relief when i realized quickly that we didn’t have to sprinkle it onto the ornament. i suggested stirring the glitter into the mod podge and painting another coat of glittery mod podge onto the ornaments. she was sold - phew!

we hung the ornaments to dry (which only took about an hour actually – not bad in terms of fairly instant gratification.)

and they are super cool, colorful, and sparkly on our christmas tree!

thank you, rachelle, for including us in this challenge!

check out all of the other amazing bloggers below who gave their junk mail a second life:

• tinkerlab (our lovely hostess!)
• kids in the studio
• teach mama
• the imagination tree
• childhood 101
• teach preschool
• hands on as we grow
• the artful parent
• a mom with a lesson plan
• toddler approved
• kiwi crate
• art 4 little hands
• red ted art
• the chocolate muffin tree
• imagination soup
• michelle’s charm world
• messy preschoolers
• mommy labs
• putti prapancha
• sun hats & wellie boots

visit each of their amazing projects on the linky below – so many fun ideas! there’s a second linky at the bottom where you can join in the fun and add your own upcycled magazine ideas, too!

add your own ideas here:

i could have spent alllllll day there (and then some) drooling over amazing finds and dreaming up new ways to use these treasures, but with the little one in tow, we lasted about an hour. it started to sprinkle when we were there (first raindrops we’ve experienced since may!)

sweet aqua sink (i mean, if it were clean.)

my intention was to purchase a farm house window, and that’s this place’s “bread and butter” as they put it. they have a HUGE stash of windows and doors. the windows that are in condition to be reinstalled start at $20 each for an 18″ window, and they increase in 6″ and $5 increments.

THEN they have the section where some of the windows are broken or not suitable for installing in a home and ALL OF THOSE ARE $5 REGARDLESS OF SIZE. perfect for the artist or decorator. score!

there is a huge indoor warehouse part with odds and ends, furniture, pieces of furniture, books, electronics, housewares, etc.

random stuff stored in distressed drawers. love that.

inside i found a great wooden bowl where i can keep natural art materials, some ball jars, and these lovely photography contrast filters (for the darkroom) that are made from hard plastic. i can’t wait to see what N wants to do with them artistically! (light table trinkets? suncatcher? what would you make?)

now i just need to make a trip over to SCRAP in SF at some point — but i have to say that it’s hard to stick to my purging and simplifying goals when there are so many great raw materials to hoard! stock up on for art’s sake!

what are your favorite treasures to find for upcycled creative pursuits? where do you get them?

N and i selected 15 corks from the stash to make 5 cork boats. my fox-lover was smitten with one that said “foxhollow” on it and claimed it immediately. we selected some colorful paper to use for sails, and got out my glue gun, craft sticks (toothpicks work too,) twine, eye-hooks, and driftwood/sticks. ready to create!

N got busy folding paper in half and cutting doubled triangles out for sails…

…while i hot glued corks together. (i suppose you could use other waterproof glues that are more kid-friendly, but this is what we had on hand.)

using a dollop of hot glue, i erected the craft sticks in between corks and let them dry.

then we folded the sails around the craft stick and glued them in place. (note: if you use paper like we did, it will get soggy when capsized. if that matters to you, you might want to laminate it with packaging tape or contact paper, use craft foam for sails, or use something plastic like an old plastic folder perhaps.)

we screwed teeny eye-hooks into the front of each ship and tied twine to the hook on one end and to the center of a piece of driftwood on the other end. N had fun rolling up each twine around the driftwood (a natural buoy!) that way our ships wouldn’t sail away from us — we could always hang onto them.

with our boats in a basket…

we set out with some friends to a favorite park with a great creek, perfect for wading and sailing… yet, it was all dried out! so the following day, we ventured to another park with a manmade lake with, uh, turquoise dye in it [willies] to try out our ships.

it was so quaint, simple, and fun — N was psyched that they actually floated! nevermind that the mid-lake fountain kept pushing our boats back to the shore line. no bother for these mighty cap’ns.

wishing you smooth sailing through the rest of summer!

so, what should we make with the rest of our corks?

summer’s here and we’re in outside a lot, so we’ve been sprucing it up with handmade art and splashes of color. recently we created a garden mosaic stepping stone together, and i wrote a guest blog about it for the good hands community. click over to check out our step by step process of how and why we created this piece.

the theme of our mosaic was around this quote my mom has shared with me: “there are two lasting bequests we can give our children: one is roots, the other is wings.”

can you tell N had a hand in creating this according to good ol’ ROY G BIV? i adore my little rainbow lover – a girl after my own heart.