paint cut paste

N received her first digital camera from her aunt kim and uncle john for christmas this year. photography is one of my favorite art forms, and lately N has been following suit by miming a camera when she wants to take a picture of something. thus, her christmas gift.

N's vtech kidizoom camera

while the resolution isn’t the greatest on these toddler-proof cameras, they make for amazing works of art! i love the abstract ethereal quality of some of N’s very first images, taken over the holidays.

i also love to see through her lens… the choices she makes as to what is important to her in her environment.

the black bear rug at my mom's house fascinates her

her first game - candyland

no doubt, we’ll be incorporating N’s photography into many of our future creative endeavors. say cheese!

while we’re on the topic of personalized cards, i thought i’d share another little idea along those lines. N will be turning three at the end of this month, and together we made the invitations to her birthday party. N is really into fairies, so she wanted a pixie party where all of her friends would wear wings, so of course the invites had to follow suit.

i save all of N’s completed coloring books because they’re full of little gems. she has a fairy coloring book that she completed in the fall, so we pulled this one out and selected a few fairies from it – one for each of her friends. we cut them out and glued them to blank cards with a glue stick.

i typed up the party details and glued them to the inside. (photo retouched to remove our personal info, of course.)

a super simple idea… but just a reminder that you can repurpose those coloring book pictures into invitations, greeting cards, stationery, wrapping paper, and all sorts of sweet artsy goodies of any theme!

for one of our holiday gifts for family members this year, N and i created very personal stationery. (inspired by a friend – thanks, amy!) it’s such an easy projects and the results so pretty!

first, we had a ton of fun making large watercolor paintings on heavy watercolor paper.

then i cut the paintings into small squares (after photographing them for posterity, of course.) i glued them to some blank stationery cards that i found on clearance at michael’s (they’re always good for packs of blank cards)

we stamped the backs of them (with our cute paintcutpaste.com stamp) so our family would know that they were hand painted by N.

then i sorted them by color schemes for each household of N’s grandparents, great-grandmother, aunts, and uncles and tied them in packs of 8 with pretty ribbons and a gift tag.

i must say that our family members said they are only going to send them back and forth to each other so that they can keep them around… reluctant to send these pretty paintings away.

this would also make for a great birthday gift, wedding gift, baby shower gift, or valentines!

there’s nothing terribly inventive about making little creatures out of tiny (or big) fingerprints, but there’s always something irresistibly cute about it!

inky

we usually send out nearly 200 paper holiday cards each year, but this year, out of respect for our earth (and limited budget) we are creating a digital card… but then we realized that we needed a few little cards to accompany the few handmade trinkets we’re crafting for family members. so, handmade cards on recycled paper is the way to go! i got out my beloved colorbox ink in cyan and let the little one go at it, putting her little fingerprint on our cards.

then, with my beloved sharpie (can you tell these are materials i adore?) i drew the most minimal features to make her cute prints into little bluebirds of happiness.

bluebirds of happiness!

with a brush tip sepia faber-castell artist pen, i randomly sketched in some branches.

then i used the same cyan ink pad to stamp a script “joy” on the insides of the cards (stamp from my beloved paper source – oh huge crush!) and wrote little notes (and let N sign her own name to a few) for our loved ones. a sweet, personalized wintery scene to send!

i think red birds on white stock would be a lovely holiday card, as well! there are tons of other animals and characters that can be made with fingerprints – a fun idea for cards, gifts, and art in general!

then we had all of the (few) holiday cards we needed complete in an afternoon – now we just have to dream up a digital holiday card to create for all of our dear friends…

most of the handprint crafts out there involve tracing your kid’s hand and cutting it out to make it into turkey feathers or flower petals, depending on the time of year. all super-cute ideas, but i do like a good old-fashioned painted handprint.

my daughter is always a bit weirded out at first by her hands getting messy with paint (even when fingerpainting, though she’s warming up to this whole messy art idea.) once she gets into it, she’s into it.

nothing like preserving the cuteness of tiny hands in vivid colors.

page-o-paws

these always make awesome, personal framed gifts or cards for family and friends. i also love the idea of putting them on canvas, as per the item below from red envelope. (please, this is a kit? you can make this yourself!)

giving ya a hand

every time i make a salad, i think about print-making with the vegetables. (what? like you don’t? um….. oh.) i remember being a kid and carving stamps out of raw potatoes and carrots. recently, the fam has been eating a lot of romaine, and i think about printing rose shapes every time i chop off the bottom of a heart of romaine. so tonight after dinner, we went for it with the print-making. grabbed some red paint, a brush, a piece of paper, and the end of the lettuce. (dark photos = it was evening, and i hate flash.)

salad with a side of paint

N helped to paint the lettuce with red paint. ideally for stamping, one would use a brayer and ink, but paint will do the trick. it would also be ideal if you knew in advance of making salad that you wanted to stamp afterward so that you’d cut the lettuce on a straight and even plane, unlike i did tonight.

then we just pressed it onto the page, and there’s our romaine rose!

press to print

i added a few green leaves later, as a reference point for the flower, and there ya go! makes a sweet card or a frame-worthy print.

ah, we’ve arrived at our new cali digs. we finally unpacked our art materials and enjoyed a simple sunday afternoon activity of painting outside in our new backyard!

artiste, en plein air

i busted out the melissa & doug easel with the attached scroll of paper (this easel rocks – thank you to our old neighbors for this hand-me-down!), four cups of acrylic paint (red, yellow, green, and blue) with corresponding paint brushes, a smock, a rag, and a big cup of water. (later we mixed purple paint in a fifth cup, much to N’s enjoyment!)

ingredients for the afternoon

then she just painted and painted for at least an hour, all on her own. she used me as her artist’s assistant, or as we art therapists sometimes say, the third hand. you know, i provided sips of her momma-made organic smoothie when she got thirsty, changed the water, wiped drips with the rag…

the artist at work

it is an honor to witness N’s imaginal realm as she paints. she speaks all of her thoughts so clearly, with no filter between what she is thinking and what she is saying. what an amazing time for a momma, to be privy to this peek into a toddler’s little mind at work.

after N completed two large paintings, we decided to cut them into different shapes to make handmade greeting cards, birthday cards, and thank you cards for the wonderful people in our lives who have some praise and celebration coming to them…

greetings

check your mailboxes, friends!