paint cut paste

this summer we ended up with a lot of beach treasures, so rather than let them sit in buckets in our shed all winter long, this pinspiration (courtesy of beachcomber) made me want to give these beauties a new (and festive!) life.

remember our trip to a nearby salvage yard? well, we scored this distressed cabinet door for under $5, which made for a perfect backdrop to our driftwood christmas tree. N and i gathered up various sizes of driftwood, and began our work.

driftwood itself is just so lovely.

N was a huge help in organizing the pieces of driftwood by length.

then she set to work lining them up on the board in a tree pattern. after she arranged them how she liked them, i hot glued the wood to the board.

once they were glued down, we sourced more beachy items (starfish for “tree topper” and shells and sea glass for “ornaments”) and N “decorated the christmas tree” with them.

thankfully, she didn’t clump them all in one spot (like she did on our actual christmas tree!)

it’s just so fun to look at!

and it makes for a handsome holiday mantel!

okay, so i keep blogging about projects from pinterest that i want to do (not necessarily child-centered – ack!) but at least N helped a great deal with this one, right…??? and she LOVES it… does that count? [insert sheepish grin here.]

let the holiday season begin!

you may remember my gushing about an artist couple N and i met at a local art festival – they’re rick and heather from earnest efforts natural woodworking, and they make the most amaaaazing art out of trees: beautiful boxes and magical spirit shakers that will make you swooooon!

N checking out the earnest efforts booth at the kings mountain arts fair last month

i’ve scored an interview with the artists and they’re giving away a spirit shaker and a rattle to my readers (one winner for each) so read on to learn more about the art of wood and enter for a chance to win a lovely handmade piece!

my interview with heather of earnest efforts

jen: can you tell us a bit about how and when you came to find the gift of your woodworking craft?

Heather: Earnie Efforts (aka Rick) has been selling his woodworking wares at the Eugene, Oregon Saturday Market (the longest-running outdoor, handcrafted marketplace in the US) since the 1980′s. I, Ellie Efforts (aka Heather), joined the Market in 1994 with my fiber arts. In 1998 we got to know one another, fell in love, and married in 1999. Earnie was an apprentice cabinet maker to his grandfather and continued working in wood to supplement his family’s income. I tell people that I not only married him out of love, but the fact that he had a woodshop – I had wanted to work in wood since I was little.

"Earnie & I in our booth at the Saturday Market"

jen: i notice that each of your pieces clearly has resonance with the spirit of the wood from which it was created. how do your natural materials inform your work?

Heather: If you could crawl inside Earnie’s head and see the world through his eyes, you would know that he doesn’t see driftwood on the beach… he sees boxes. Each piece of wood has it’s own personality, story and destiny. We don’t just see wood or trees; we see life on many levels. I think we forget that wood is still living long after it has fallen to the earth and will continue to live on long after that box we made is discarded and goes back to the earth. This is also why it is so important to us that we maintain the integrity of the wood with a natural beeswax finish. We want you to be able to feel the warmth of the wood, not a plastic coating so often used in “preserving” wood and we want the wood to return to the earth clean.

"Earnie cutting up driftwood on the Coquille River - note the top left piece of wood has been chewed by a beaver"

"River Alder Box - chewed by a beaver"

jen: my daugher and i just love making music with the spirit shakers and rattles we’ve purchased from you! can you tell us a bit about how they are created (like, what’s inside?) and why you call them spirit shakers?

Heather: The spirit shakers are very special to us on many levels. Earnie & I scavengers and hoarders (in a good way) – we don’t waste anything. When he cuts the boxes, the heart of a box becomes another box, a rattle, or a spirit shaker – until all that remains is kindling for our house wood stove. I’m going to leave the spirit making a little bit of a mystery for you, but inside are copper BBs. We call them spirit shakers because we have witnessed that the essence of the living tree continues to live in on in the wood and within us as we touch, make music, and meditate with the wood.

(these are our earnest efforts rattles & spirit shaker - isn't that purple one AMAZING?! no dyes or paints - that's the natural color of the wood!)

jen: how can parents and teachers help inspire children to begin working with wood as an art material?

Heather: Taking children to meet artists at art festivals is a wonderful way to introduce children to art in all of it’s forms. When children can touch, smell, feel and see artwork with an artist they can ask questions and process in a way unavailable in books or online. We meet children at every festival who are interested in woodworking and we encourage their parents to seek out woodworking classes at community colleges or art centers since so many schools are closing their woodshops.

"Earnie cutting a box on our 1953 Boice Crane bandsaw"

jen: is there anything else you’d like to add?

Heather: Take care, be good & kind, and don’t forget to laugh.

giveaway

Oregon-Myrtlewood Spirit Shaker & Maple Baby Rattle/Teether

earnest efforts is so kind to offer one spirit shaker (left in photo above) and one rattle (right in photo above to two paintcutpaste.com readers who enter the drawing. the rattles are beeswax coated and completely safe for babies to chew on. heather says, “these are representational photos – they are not the actual rattle & spirit shakers we are giving away, as we will chose beauties with lovely sound for the winners.” oooooh, and they’re all so lovely!

i will use a random number generator to choose TWO winners (one for each) this thursday evening, october 20, at 9PM pacific/12midnight eastern.

how to enter: comment on this blog entry and let us know your favorite type of tree AND the age(s) of your child(ren) — incase you are a winner, the child’s age is how i will know whether you should receive the baby-safe rattle or the spirit shaker. please be sure your correct email address is associated with your entry so that i can contact you if you’re a winner. (comment link is up there on the left, under the date of this post. i’ve gotta move this at some point…)

two winners were chosen! thanks to all who entered!

please do yourself a favor and check out earnest efforts’ awesome etsy shop to view and purchase more of their wares. (think: holiday shopping!) and be sure to “like” earnest efforts on facebook.

good luck, woodchucks!

a few months ago i inherited a huge box of wine corks from a friend who was moving. because i’m not going to decorate my home with someone else’s wine choices (though there are some great wreaths, corkboards, etc out there,) i’ve been trying to think of kid craft ideas to do with cork. when i saw this gem on jonah lisa land, via the crafty crow, i knew we had to give it a whirl.

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?

today i have the absolute pleasure and honor of guest blogging on one of my super-duper-favorite blogs, mamaroots! chris willow, of mamaroots, is a talented toymaker extraordinaire and such an inspiring writer, healer, and momma!

chris makes these beautiful wooden toys, which bless our home in just about every nook and cranny… so what on earth was i thinking when the art material i shared on her blog was WOOD when i know nearly nothing about woodworking!?? haha! perhaps it is the inspiration of chris and our lovely pacific coastline with its magical driftwood…

but i was called to post this simple driftwood mobile we created as a family. it’s a paired-down, less-is-more version of the beach treasure mobile we shared here last week. don’t you love how mobiles are all about moving in the wind and all about balance? please hop over to mamaroots to check out my guest post over there today.

so easy, so lovely. so perfect for father’s day.

*wink wink*

as you know from our recent post, we spent some time along the lovely beaches of the pacific over memorial day weekend, and gleaned a few treasures in our beachcombing. N has always been obsessed with holding and running around with sticks (safe, huh?) so she’s a natural at finding nice driftwood, bringing it to me, and saying, “we have to make art out of this!!!” so what’s a mom to do? make art!

we sorted our findings in the backyard and were inspired by the driftwood, (and of course by the lovely stones we used in the rock picture holder post! i’m still obsessed with making those!)

N decided that she wanted to paint some of the driftwood like we did last summer, ginette lapalme style and create a mobile from them. first, we got some exposure to the power drill, to drill holes across the top of a long piece of driftwood and in the ends of five short pieces. N marked the stick first to show where she wanted the holes to go.

then we were ready to paint, al fresco!

the two of us had so much fun striping these wooden sticks.

as we painted, we chatted about the wood and “what colors it was telling us that it wanted to have on it.” one of N’s pieces wanted light pink at the bottom (which she learned to mix for herself) because it looked like a ballerina’s slipper.

we let the sticks dry in the sun – so very pretty! (i’m a sucker for rainbows and natural materials.)

after the sticks were dry, we laid out a plan for the mobile. the next morning, a pj-clad N helped to thread the cord through the sticks, a rock, and a couple shells.

i used knots to secure everything in place.

the whole family is smitten with the outcome of this project…

so much so that we chose to hang it in our tall stairwell so we can enjoy seeing it from all angles, watching it twirl around.

i’m in love with the shamanic look of this piece – now i feel like we need to make more of them as gifts and for our backyard!

i recently chanced upon this inspirational photo of these lovely sticks by an artist named ginette lapalme.

ginette's sticks

we had some sticks and driftwood hanging around our backyard, just waiting to become art materials… and i’d been thinking on it for a few days. i’m also reading a book on the shamanic tradition of holding council, which involves a talking piece – usually a stick. i’ve been dreaming about finding and embellishing a talking stick for my family and also for my work with clients. then blamo! – this picture finds me. the internet is so cool like that – providing serendipitous encounters and answers. anyway, the fire was lit under me, so i showed N the photo to share the fire, and we gathered up our things: sticks, acrylics, brushes, palette, water jar, rag.

perhaps sticks we had won’t necessarily become future talking sticks, but i set out without that intention – just wanting to enjoy art for art’s sake and the fun of painting whimsical stripes and such on a natural canvas. while i worked on a big stick, N had so much fun with the smaller ones.

she talked all the while about how she’d never done this before, and how she loves all of the new art ideas i come up with for us to do — how sweet to hear! (incidentally, she told me i am the best artist in alaska… which was flattering and all, but we’ve never even been there. ) it was a playful art-making session.

N's "ocean sparkle" stick

when working with natural materials, i like to (and this may get too woo-woo for some of you, but bear with me) have a dialog with the stick, rock, shell, etc. about what it would like to become. i feel like nature’s form really can dictate the lines, shapes, and colors, if we mindfully engage with it, observe, listen, and trust our instincts about the artistic choice we are making. i did this as i worked on painting my sticks, and i introduced this concept to N as we painted. children are such absolute naturals when it comes to creating such a dialog, storyline, conversation – they are not self-conscious and are so genuinely connected to nature, so it comes easily. as adults, we have often lost that ability, and work to reclaim it.

the collection (sticks and stones)

besides having tons of fun together, the visual results were magical.

my "heart chakra" driftwood

the most magical aftermath of all…

our artist hands

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. N and her daddy loved making this creature together!

N 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.

N 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…