paint cut paste

i always try to follow novi’s lead when it comes to the art projects we do around here. her natural inclination lately has been toward the realm of still life drawing.

the other day she picked up a pen and drew on the back of a cardboard notepad, and then came and showed it to me. she said, “these are all of the tummy-symbols of the care bears. it’s so much fun to draw what i’m looking at!”

love-a-lot bear wasn't available for the photo shoot. he might be busy under the couch.

so, of course, the following day momma whipped up a pretty bowl of fruit for novi to draw — i mean, why not start out in a classic way? the little one was thrilled!

she wanted to draw a few objects by themselves, as well.

the apple

the tomato

a few tomatoes as a thank you to our neighbors who brought us some from their yard

next, novi said she wanted to draw “a different bowl of fruit that i’m thinking of in my head.”

the bowl of fruit novi pictured in her head

masterpieces!

we had such a fun morning! so sweet and quiet to draw together…

(so quiet that even i got in on the action a wee bit…)

all of our days are artful… but not every day includes an “art activity” to share with you, per se. here are some of the creative and lovely things that have been happening around our house thus far this week that are worth a visual share…

chalk drawing al fresco

mushroom spotting

portraits in frames

momma's inked rocks in process

impromptu pen drawing on the grocery list paper

gathering flowers & herbs in the backyard (with matching pedis a la momma)

coloring mandalas

"hey mommy, i made a bear out of rocks!"

chillin' with a ladybug

flowers & the potential of unpainted wood

take time to notice the small things & happy creating!

there is a day in my graduate training that sticks out for me – it’s the day i went to the studio of one of my most inspiring mentors, mimi farrelly-hansen. she showed me and a few of my colleagues a really relaxing art activity – using a warming tray to draw with crayons.

this process is great for relaxation and stress relief, as the crayons just move so freely and softly across the warming tray as they are melting… it is soooo addictive – (really, i’m warning you!) i recently bought a warming tray just for this purpose, but i got the cheapest one i could find and it does not have a setting for low or high heat. it’s always running on a pretty hot temperature, thus novi can’t do this activity with me just yet. i wanted to post it for those of you with children who would be able to understand safety around using a warming tray – use your judgement about your own child, and always supervise children around a warming tray.

there are a couple of ways to engage in this activity. over the years, i’ve found that finger painting paper is my favorite paper to use because of its glossy quality, though other papers work just fine. metallic crayons are fabulous for this exercise, but any old crayons will do. here i used non-metallics primarily, with some silver and gold in there.

you can lay the paper directly onto a warming tray on low heat, and draw on it right there with peeled crayons. it’s luscious.

another thing you can do is line the tray with foil (when cool, before you turn it on) and draw on the foil. then do some print-making my pressing papers onto the design you’ve created.

i dragged this paper through the image on the foil for a smeared effect

the process is highly satisfying and results are always stunning with either method.

if you use the finger painting paper, the light shines through these so beautifully…

hopefully this sparks some ideas for you suncatcher and lantern makers out there

i made a few cards from some of the prints.

these really do make great sun-catchers… i made this butterfly as a gift for novi, since she’s quite obsessed with chasing butterflies around our backyard (and has seriously almost gone through our screen door a few times in pursuit of the elusive yellow-swallowtail.)

simple butterfly made by filling a black construction paper cut-out with the pretty paper

when following novi’s lead and interests, it is so obvious that she is a drawing machine… and not only does she love to draw, but her drawings are all about storytelling. she creates stories as she draws and tells them to herself and to me.

one of the art therapy techniques i have used with clients (of all ages) came to mind the other day when watching novi engage me in her drawing — it’s called dialog drawing (or dialogue drawing for my friends in the uk ) the idea is that two people will have a visual conversation by taking turns drawing on one page. this can be done by one person making a mark (a line, dot, curve,) then another making a mark, and so on back and forth until a picture develops. little ones don’t always have the patience for the slow unfolding of mark-making, so it’s a good idea to take turns making one “thing” at a time. you can say, “okay, let’s take turns! you draw something on the page. then it’ll be my turn to draw something on the page, then your turn. we’ll take turns going back and forth until we feel like our picture is finished.”

today we got out a large sheet of drawing paper – i’d recommend at least a 17×20 white page for this exercise. working large is great when two (or more – get all of your kids involved!) people are using it as their canvas. we used crayons, primarily, but i made colored pencils available. markers or any other dry media would work.

we began by setting some ground rules. make up your own. if you know your kid gets upset when someone’s marks touch or add to his/her work, then make a rule that the marks can’t touch each other… our rules were loose. they were just that she’d draw one object, then i’d draw one object, etc. you can create a rule of “no talking” so that it’s a strict visual conversation, but we chatted when we made ours. our first picture began with novi drawing a self-image and a ball (which i later colored in.) on my first turn, i drew myself playing ball with her. it is important to remember to use your child’s artistic “handwriting” or visual language when doing this, so as to meet them where they are and non-verbally communicate that they are being seen and witnessed. more on these ideas here.

you can see how our first images of ourselves and a ball started an entire scene

not only is this a good exercise in patience and turn-taking, but it also helps to develop visual language, and it really allows you to give your child your very focused attention, playing an art game where the content is always fresh and new.

novi LOVED making the dialog drawing together! after our first scene, which ended up being a beach picture, she said, “let’s do another one! but this one can’t be on a beach! now, you go first!”

drawing 1: the beach scene

so we did another…

drawing 2: the park scene

we spent over an hour doing these pictures and creating a story and talking with each other about it.

i loved watching how our ideas bounced off of one another. sometimes mine came first…

…sometimes hers did.

it was a really fun and connected morning art activity for us – try it!

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!