paint cut paste

the winter solstice is upon us, where the days will begin to get longer from there. in celebration of bringing the light and due to its being the darkest day of the year, lanterns are often made in honor of the solstice. two years ago, we made a lovely lantern at the waldorf school where we were in a parent-child class with N before she turned 2. they made quite an impression on her, so i thought we’d make them the same way again for this winter solstice.

when seeking a how-to memory refresher online, i found the most lovely tutorial on the garden mama blog. seriously, her beautiful entry about these lanterns deems this one totally unnecessary, as she wrote the most poetic and wonderfully photographed tutorial on these i could imagine. but i’m going to (b)log our experience here, nonetheless.

admiring the finished product on a dark winter morning

we started by beginning the wet-on-wet watercolor process. we soaked three sheets of watercolor paper.

then we opted to dilute my tubes of professional grade watercolors in little jars of water, though you could just use regular watercolors for this. we also chose to only use primary colors, so as to make this an experiment in color-mixing.

N painted and painted, watching the colors run together and create new hues – magic!

when we were finished painting, she wanted a little more vibrance, so i pulled out the watersoluble crayons (one of my favorite media on earth!) and she added some red, yellow, and blue lines into the wet paint. when wet, these crayons behave like concentrated paint.

we hung the masterpieces to dry overnight.

the next day we rubbed them with canola oil on a cloth, so as to make the paper more translucent when lit from within.

after the oil was dry (about a day) we cut fringe along the long side of the paper. we made two like the garden mama blog suggested (ever 2.5 inches, 2.5 inches long) and the third we only did at 1.5 x 1.5 inches.

we used a pillar candle to evenly roll the paintings around, and secured the edge with school glue, and clothespinned them until dry.

after they were dry, we folded the bottom tabs in to create a bottom.

then instead of putting real fire inside, i used little electric tea lights instead.

now we are ready for the darkest day of the year!

all ready to bring the light on december 21st! (which, incidentally, is my birthday )

by the way, those cute wooden reindeer you see in the photos were a custom set that the talented chris over at mamaroots made for N. we sooo love her creations!

if you read this blog, you know i’m not a fan of pre-fabricated crafts, but N couldn’t resist these grinch christmas craft kits when she spotted them at michael’s a couple weeks ago. our morning project was a kit of ceramic grinch-themed ornaments to paint.

she was so excited by the little pots of paint and the fact that she was painting “delicate glass!!!” as she said. i opted for real paintbrushes in lieu of the bad-hair-day brush that came with the set.

this was at least an hour of painting fun.

after they were dry…

we hung them on the tree, with pride.

in the afternoon, we embarked on our second grinch project of the day… grinch garland! this is essentially a glueing project, as all of the felt pieces in this kit are pre-cut.

the pieces

N picked out which ones she wanted to put where, and glued them together.

they were quite cute when finished, actually.

i strung the felt circles onto the provided silver thread, and hung them in N’s bedroom where she wanted to display them.

this wasn’t an expressive arts sort of day, with these pre-made crafty kits (blech!) but sometimes it’s satisfying to have a predictable product, i suppose…? given the choice between crafty kits and a seasick crocodile, i’d take the seasick crocodile!!! (nope, i’d take the art every time!)

día de los muertos, or the day of the dead, occurs on november 2nd, shortly after halloween. some rituals connected with this mexican holiday include creating altars honoring the dead using sugar skulls, marigold flowers, and the favorite foods of the departed. sometimes people visit cemeteries with these gifts honoring their ancestors. while the day of the dead is different than halloween, it is often lumped together with it since some of the iconography is similar. we decided to create our own little skull honoring the holiday and our ancestors for our altar at home.

N found a pre-made paper mache skull on a recent trip to michael’s that she really wanted to paint, which was the impetus for this project. she decided it should be white (like skulls are) so we got out some white acrylic and mixed it with a little silver for some shine. N began to paint.

after it was all painted white, she wanted to decorate it by gluing on different sequins, shimmery stones, and feathers.

embellishments

she had a great time putting on drops of glue and placing objects. my favorite moment was when she found a red plastic “crystal” and glued it to the forehead of the skull and said, “this can be one of his chakras!” what a proud reiki master momma i was in that moment.

N loved the finished skull with its different yellows, reds, golds — inspired by marigold flowers (though we had none.) after it was complete, she asked if it could “glow in the dark.” we didn’t use glow-in-the-dark paint, so i told her we could try to put an electric votive candle inside of it to make the inside glow. i had to use an x-acto knife to cut a little trap door in the bottom to get the “candle” inside, as it wouldn’t fit through the jaw.

she loved the effect — “magic!” though not made of sugar, the skull will be placed on an altar i made in grad school to honor our ancestors as an offering to those who’ve come and gone before us on november 2nd.

(a peek at my ancestry altar from 2003)

i’m honestly not sure why N and i have not made many collages before… but we finally did! we gathered up a few magazines, scissors, glue, and a scrap piece of black posterboard i had laying around and got started.

N and i flipped through magazines and she told me the pictures she wanted me to cut out. while she is now able to use scissors, her skills aren’t at the level where she would successfully cut out an image she really wanted. so this time, i was a third hand for her.

N was superhappy to squirt glue onto the backs of the images.

she thought about where she wanted each one placed, and took her time. i was somewhat surprised by the care she took with this.

after the pictures were applied, she wanted to draw on the black paper with crayons, so she created a story involving the pictures and her drawing, and told it as she drew.

when she was finished, she was quite proud!

for my adult art therapy clients, i often have a box of pre-cut collage images from which they can choose pictures that resonate for them without our taking up our sessions hunting through magazines. i may do the same for N when i get a spare moment, by cutting out lots of images for her to have at home for this purpose.

N is a big fan of balloons (like most earthlings) 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!

N’s friend is soon having a mermaid pool party for her fourth birthday, and N is very psyched about this theme! when we were pondering artsy gifts to make for her kindred spirit artist friend, i remembered a sweet idea i’d seen long ago on pink & green mama — clothes pin mermaids!

this post is likely a gift spoiler (sorry in advance to the birthday girl’s parents,) but i’m banking on the fact that the little mermaid can’t read blogs quite yet.

some parts of this craft aren’t super kid-friendly… for example, i began by using my woodburning tool (hot) to create faces and belly buttons on some wooden doll pin clothes pins while N was napping.

i also cut tail shapes out of craft foam.

then i set materials up so N could paint the mermaids when she woke up.

N painted the bottom part of each one with various colors to match the foam tails.

the next part was not kid-friendly either, nor was it momma-friendly. i burnt three of my fingers while hot glueing craft foam (cut into tail shapes) to the slit in each wooden pin. i cut little bikini tops out of felt and N helped to glue these to each mermaid.

we used some yarn for hair. you could use that doll hair you find in the craft store, but i just used yarn we had around the house. unfortunately, i didn’t have a huge selection of hair colors, so we made them all blonde. my blonde girl was cool with this, and the birthday mermaid is blonde, as well, so for these purposes, it works out.

a few will swim in the playsilk moat around N’s fairy treehouse in our playroom.

the rest of these aquatic cuties will make a great addition to the gift package we bring to the mermaid pool party next weekend. now we just cross our fingers for pool party weather to make its way to the bay!

N came home from preschool the other day with the cutest little fishy! all of the credit for this simple craft goes to her amazing preschool teacher for creating fun art projects around this month’s underwater theme. i just thought this easy fish was super-charming!

this is truly a painting, cutting, pasting exercise, so i had to feature it here on paint cut paste! i’m not big on purchasing or using paper plates in my home, but if you’ve got some lying around, this is a nice way to repurpose those last few into fun works of art. (and for that next birthday party, be kind to the earth and use washable plates!) all you need to do is cut a triangle out of one side of the plate (making the mouth) and then tape, glue, or staple it to the opposite side of the fish (to make the tail.)

then paint away… for these fish, N’s classmates used a dollop of silver metallic (almost pearly) non-toxic, water-based activity paint mixed with liquid watercolors. then the kids glued large sequins onto the fish (for shiny scales) and a big googly eye. voila! a school of rainbow fish at school!

i could see these hanging at different lengths from the ceiling for a sea-themed birthday party decoration. N enjoyed doing this so much at school that this little green guy won’t likely be the only fish in our sea.