paint cut paste

if you’re a regular of this blog, you know that my daughter, novi, is an avid magna-doodler. for real – she spends 45-120 minutes a day on that thing. she wears them out (really, the pen tips get scratchy.) we’re on our 5th or 6th (?) one in 2 years.

the time she spends magna-doodling is no joke… so we are turning these little masterpieces into gifts! for example, you may have seen the cool custom mug we made for father’s day from a magna-doodle image:

well, my mom and stepdad are celebrating their 20 year anniversary tomorrow (whoo hoo!) novi calls my mom “gwee” and my stepdad “big daddy.” for their 20 year, we made them little anniversary hats. (and, of course, a handmade card.)

it’s easy to do this — i just took a digital photo of a magna-doodle image she drew a while back of “gwee and big daddy dancing.” i always take pics of these, for posterity’s sake. they’re so temporary and i’m not a good buddhist about such things.

the original

then i traced over her lines in pixelmator (my free version of a photoshoppy product) in order to make them less grainy. the magna-doodle has those weird cells in it that don’t translate well, so this would be better done with an actual paper and marker drawing, but i had to use what we had.

i saved that image and put it on a product of choice on cafepress.com — hats. they are boaters and tennis players, so albeit cheesy, i know they will actually wear these.

happily, novi is doing a lot more doodling on actual paper, so the drawings aren’t as temporary as they were on the magna-doodle. in the future, i can skip the tracing step – yay!  happy 20 years, gwee & big daddy!

and seriously, if this keeps up, everyone we know will likely get a doodled tshirt or pair of boxers for the holidays this year.

little worker elf

oh, and while you’re making cool artsy gifts on their site (no, i don’t get paid for this endorsement of cafepress or for anything else) hop over to the paintcutpaste shop on cafepress and show us some love… spread the word: you know you want a paintcutpaste.com smock, tote, or sigg bottle!

on a recent trip to colorado to visit my dear fellow art therapist friends, they reminded me of a fun little activity that i used to do when i was a little girl – scratch drawings! as a kid, i loved the magic of revealing a rainbow under a dark, black veil. i thought novi might appreciate this, too.

i thought i remembered painting thick paper with watercolor, coloring over it with thick black crayon, and scratching… but perhaps not. my art therapist friend (and momma) was doing this with her 3 year old and reminded me that you can color with crayons or pastels, and then put a thick coat of acrylic paint over the whole page to scratch through. so we gathered our materials (thick paper, crayons, acrylic black paint) and began…

novi and i both covered a page with patches of tons of colors… i got a blister from doing this!

then we painted over the entire lovely page with black acrylic paint.

we let it dry overnight. once it was dry, we got out a few scratching tools – a wooden skewer, a paperclip, a tack, and a nail. not all of them were cool for young kids, but novi seemed to do well and was careful with all of them. whew!

novi drawing with a nail. (bad mommy?)

we scratched and scratched to reveal fun pictures… “nighttime scenes!” as novi excited called them.

you know me and cutting things out and putting them on colorful papers as borders. (yeah, i did that again. maybe for cards?)

who knew that when novi found the regular old pencil i put in her colored pencil cup, a new favorite medium would be born?

she’s been keeping it simple over here for a coupla days now… just doing basic line drawings with a pencil and some scrap paper i keep in a bin on her art desk.

while novi draws, she always narrates what is going on in the picture and what the characters are saying, in different voices and such.it’s fascinating to watch.

i will share a few (of the stack that’s collecting) of her little scenes – so fun!

festival with bounce-house, daddy with cotton candy, novi with balloons, and mommy with her camera (what else would i have?)

walrus jumping rope while a bird brings her (easter) eggs to a nest

novi feeding our cats their dinner bowls, but the cats are mad (see wagging tail) because a yeti has caught a person in a lasso

L to R: bird with a present, ant, spider climbing tree trunk to his web, bee, butterfly, flowers

she even made a little birthday card for our cat, bean, who turned 9 on sunday… just one day before novi turned 3.5 years old this past monday, the 26th – (yes, those half-birthdays are a big deal, right?)

she wrote the message and drew a picture of herself playing with bean with the laser cat toy

the other night she began to add some color to a few line drawings she did, using her crayons. i am really into this artistic development going on over here!

our cat, bean, giving iridessa (the light-talent fairy) a rainbow tube

so for this one, i’m willing to bet you’ve got all the materials you need!

i adore my iphone for many reasons, not all of them healthy. one of the more productive reasons is that it is allowing novi to begin to make digital art.

surely, in her generation, she is likely to draw with pixels of light moreso than we ever did as kids. i mean, litebrite is as close as we came to light pictures, right?

i am a fan of digital art, myself. and it’s so fun to have novi ask me if she can write and draw on my phone. we did a post on this same thing a little over a year ago, so i figured it was time to revisit this medium.

she loves picking her own colors and trying to create little scenes. the ones shown here are made my a free iphone app called scribble lite.

we also like colortilt. what are your favorite artsy iphone apps? comment (by clicking top left) to let us know! i’m always looking for a good free download.

sure, it’s not innovative, but i just had to include our day at the beach this weekend, making art and fun out of the natural surroundings…

there were sand drawings…

no one is a stranger to the magic of a sandcastle…uh, or a sand alligator. novi and her daddy loved making this creature together!

novi took her time creating and adding to this rock/driftwood/sand man.

i collected shells, sea glass, and flat, smooth stones for painting – ever the beachcomber, i am. best art supply store there is!

there was plenty of kite-flying in the mix, as well.

novi collected driftwood on the walk back up to the car.

"mommy, i think i'm going to build a house out of this when we get home."

let’s see what else transpires from our day at the beach…

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…)