paint cut paste

i’m a big fan of prayer flags or anything that resembles them. and what better thing to pay homage to than food? (well for me. eat, pray, love – right?) anyway, i saw this awesome idea on alphamom to do a fourth of july bunting using starfruit. i fully intended to do this before the holiday, but after combing 5 grocery stores/produce markets here, there is just no starfruit to be found. we improvised and took a different path.

novi and i gathered up some fun and sturdy shapes at wholefood’s produce section. then i sliced them in half and let them sit face down for about an hour on a towel, to absorb any extra moisture.

to prepare, the night before i had cut up some natural-colored linen (i purchased some from jo ann’s fabrics – you could also use white or cream burlap or other fabrics) into 8″ by 5″ rectangles, with a little help from my cat. i frayed the edges by hand because i love the raw look of that.

novi and i chose some colors from our fabric paint stash (you can also use acrylics) and began to paint the flat sides of the fruits and veggies to do some printmaking. (you can dip them in the paint, but we went this route so we wouldn’t waste any paint by leaving it in a dipping pan.)

we chose different colors for each of the different pieces of produce, and pressed them firmly onto the linen, toward the bottom of each rectangle. (this is to leave room for a pocket at the top for the rope to go through to hang them later.)

it was so much fun to see the colorful shapes emerge on the fabric.

we let them dry all afternoon, while we admired our work.

the next day, i pinned and sewed each flag across the top to make a pocket for a rope to go through.

sadly, i was impressed with my ability to do this. i am NOT a sewer.

alphamom’s blog said you could use fabric glue instead to create the loop for the rope, but i used this as an opportunity to practice using the sewing machine my dear friend gave me before she moved to bali. (i mean, this was the next best thing if i couldn’t move there with her, right? wow, this is becoming an eat, pray, love post in a coupla ways.)

i got some nice rope at the hardware store for 14 cents per foot. after putting the rope through the loop at the top, we were super-pleased with the results.

the banner/flags/garland is now hanging in our kitchen window… where else?

during the printmaking process, we got a little overzealous about the fact that cauliflower makes cute little trees, so we made an extra banner of all of the “tiny trees” we printed.

more ideas:

• i got word that there’s a shipment of starfruit coming in tomorrow to a local grocer, so you just may see some star bunting in our future, after all… it’ll be more on the aquatic-colored starfish side of things than fourth of july though.
• another thing i’d love to do with all of our extra lined rectangles is to do some leaf printing on them like the artful parent shows here.
• you can also print letters to spell out a word or name.
• it would be great to do a different child’s handprint on each piece of fabric, say for a school class banner (think: teacher appreciation) or to give to a grandparent who has several grandkids, or for yourself, (if you have enough little hands and feet in your house to make a decent length garland of your own kids’ paws.)
• printed fabric squares make for lovely garland, flags, pockets to sew onto aprons, book-covers, etc, etc, etc…

let your imagination run with it and string it up on the wall!

novi is a big fan of balloons, so we blew up a few little ones the other day to play.

leave the balloon blowing to the grown-ups

i remembered i had seen a cool post on ordinary life magic back in the spring involving balloons, yarn, glue, and water. i just love projects that involve the stuff i already have in the house. i thought it’d be fun to try this project outside the other day with our balloons. easy enough, right? well, read on…

if you look at the ordinary life magic post, you’ll see these lovely “yarn eggs” that the hardened-by-glue yarn left behind after the balloons popped. i was excited to end up with some of these skeletal orbs, and had some cool ideas for what we might do with them. so we got started… first, dip a 3 foot long (or so) strand of yarn into a mixture of craft glue and water. during the process, we made several mixtures of the craft glue (i used both elmer’s glue-all and aleen’s original tacky glue intermittently to use up the last of two bottles i had laying around the art room.)

then just begin to wrap the wet, sticky yarn around a partially blown up balloon.

after the balloons were all wrapped in lovely yarn scraps, we hung them in the playhouse to drip dry overnight. (if you’re doing this inside or over a floor you care about, be sure to put a towel down or do it over the bathtub.)

the next day we checked on the balloons, and attempted the next step… pop balloon and peel it away from the yarn. cool, i came prepared with a thumbtack. it was a snap, pop, then crackle moment. as the balloon deflated, it crackled as it took the yarn with it, imploding slowly. no pretty yarn orb.

deflated.

i tried peeling the balloon away from the yarn, but it was harder to do on some balloons than others. perhaps the ones with a thicker glue mixture were more stubborn? here are the sad results we got.

so i wrote to stephanie over at ordinary life magic and asked how she got the lovely results she got in an effort to learn where we might have gone wrong. here was her answer: “ours did that, too – some more than others. i just poked my fingers through the egg, and reshaped the ones that had deflated. you could probably use a spoon or something if you wanted to. they’ll stay if they sag and you reshape them, and then as they dry over days they’ll keep the reshaping.” good tips, though i think it was a little late for our yarn tangles, honestly.

we’ll try again another time, but i always like to post these art-gone-wrong experiences so you all can see our trials and errors. it’s also a nice example of the idea that in art, products are often unpredictable, so it’s all about the process! sometimes the materials dictate what they want to become, and we have the opportunity here to honor that and curb our attachment to results. we can model this for little ones who either can become frustrated and disappointed when art doesn’t turn out how they imagined OR were honestly not as goal-oriented as we were from the beginning, and probably just had fun playing with balloons and sticky goop. for me, the most satisfying part of this was indeed the process…  seeing our balloons all lined up outside on the line to dry was just lovely…

and seeing my little one’s mind excitedly expand to include the idea of using balloons for art materials was priceless!

there are sooo many glorious things about strawberry season. the sun, the ladybugs, the sweet juice running down your chin, the amazing dessert recipes, the reason to make your own whipped cream… we’re going strawberry picking this upcoming weekend, which is an annual tradition of mine since my childhood (and novi’s!)

left: me in the 70s; right: novi in may 2009

when a friend brought some fresh organic strawberries to me yesterday that she got from a farmer’s produce stand near the beach, i was excited for a pre-picking sneak peek. the berries were delicious, but almost as good were the charming little green baskets they have come in for decades! last year i added a few to novi’s play kitchen, for her fake produce, but this year i decided that instead of recycling them, i’d upcycle them!

i have bins and bins of yarn and ribbon… so i figured i’d give novi her first weaving lesson using the baskets and various yarn, ribbon, fabric materials i have laying around already.

first, i just tied the end of a piece of yarn to the inside bottom corner of a basket, and began to weave while novi’s big blue eyes observed and recorded my motions.

then she wanted to try it with the other basket… so i tied her choice of yarn to her basket and she began to attempt the weave.

“this isn’t easy!” she said after just a few over-under-over-unders.

so i learned that this is not the best first weaving activity to try with a 3 year old (there are other easier weavings we can do, for sure!) but i wanted to post this anyway for those of you with school-aged children who want to upcycle your strawberry baskets. novi asked me to finish up the baskets myself while she happily built beside me with other items from our recycling bin.

i thought the results were rather cute! and so did novi!

novi calls this one "the sunset basket"

these baskets would make great gift baskets for father’s day, graduation, birthdays, or any other occasion. they’re also nice storage for small toys and such.

this strawberry picking season, remember that it’s important to pick and eat organic strawberries! happy weaving and happy summer!

last weekend novi and i went to our local waldorf school’s spring faire, where many crafts were being made… mostly with wool, true to the waldorf spirit.

while i didn’t initiate these (nor did i take pictures of them being made – sorry) i wanted to share what we learned and created so that you may be able to do this, too. the theme was spring, and we made some little friends to hang out with this season.

first was the pipe cleaner and wool caterpillar. he’s a fuzzy cute guy made by bending a piece of pipe cleaner in half, and fashioning some antennae out of the top, like so:

then we wrapped colorful wool roving around and around his body until he was all covered in fuzz. i curled his antennae at the end so that the pipe cleaner wouldn’t be sharp, though some kids at the faire coated the antennae in felt all the way to the tip, as well.

next we made a furry bunny rabbit. this was done in the “make a pompom” fashion, which if you’re a knitter or crocheter, you probably already know how to do. the cool thing is that novi could do a lot of this on her own, as we were using very wide (about 1.5″) natural colored wool roving instead of thin yarn.

here’s how ya do it. sorry i didn’t take pictures of the process – it was sort of awkward to do so, as a kindergarten waldorf teacher was just sweetly whispering instructions to novi as she did this, oh-so-quietly and slowly, while taking breaks to run screaming like a wild banshee normal 3-year-old through the grass in between steps, and asking the teachers “why is everyone just whispering here?” anyway, here’s the how-to, but you can google “how to make a pompom” if you are visual (like me) and need to see pictures.

• cut two piece of cardboard into the shape of a doughnuts. the bigger the bunny, the bigger the doughnut. (ours were about 5″ in diameter with about a 2″ in diameter hole in the middle.)
• hold the two cardboard pieces together and wrap the yarn evenly around the doughnut in a circle, working around the cardboard until the hole is full, but don’t wrap too tightly or cutting will be hard to do. don’t worry if you happen to run out of yarn – just leave the ‘tail’ on the outside and start with a new length of yarn. (this is the part novi did with very little assistance. the rest is for the grown-ups.)
• once the wrapping is complete, use the scissors to cut along the edge of the doughnuts a few layers of yarn at a time until you reach the cardboard.
• pull the two cardboard pieces apart slightly, and using another piece of yarn, wrap it a few times along the middle and tie tightly.
• pull out the cardboard pieces or cut a slit through the cardboard pieces so that they can be pulled away easily.
• fluff up your little pompom bunny.

take a look at the figure and see which part could become the head. then tie a piece of white yarn around what would be the neck so that the head stands apart a little bit from the body. then you can gently pull two pieces of the wool roving up with your fingers to create bunny ears. and there you have your faceless waldorf bunny.

except that when we got home, novi said “where’s his face?!” so she opted to glue buttons on for eyes and a nose… “blue eyes just like mine!” as opposed the the usual red rabbit eyes.

i imagine we’ll be making a lot of little springy friends this season, using various methods, so stay tuned and your spring altars, seasonal tables, and easter baskets will be chocked full of sweet little handmade creatures!

one can never have too many halloween decorations, right? (um, yes, one can. but anyway… ) i saw this supercute idea on make and takes and had to try it out with my little one.

make and takes provides the example of making tiny yarn apples, but we opted for pumpkins because, well, halloween is coming and i had a lot of orange yarn to spare.

i cut off a part of a box from our recycling bin (about an inch wide by 3-4 inches long.) we bent the cardboard longways, as it helped out later. novi helped me wrap the yarn around the cardboard. we wrapped it about 80 times.

got it wrapped!

then we threaded a piece of green pipe cleaner under the yarn, and twisted it up and around the yarn. we did the same on the opposite side of the cardboard.

i cut the pipe cleaner close at the end that was to be the bottom of the pumpkin. on the other side, i wrapped the pipe cleaner around itself to make a pumpkin stem, and even some spiral tendrils coming off of the top. then just slide the yarn off the cardboard.

cute for decorations, pumpkins for dollhouses, autumn party favors! i think it’d be cute to attach a tag at the top and use them for place-settings for thanksgiving dinner. now i just need some red and green yarn to make those apples!