paint cut paste

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 novi 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…

novi and i just enrolled in a local parent-child art class (is this redundant for us? perhaps, but we love to make art together.) the theme for today’s class was musical instruments. the art teacher had some fun ideas, so i wanted to share hers and one of ours, too.

novi really enjoyed watercoloring on wooden castanets, so she can make plenty more noise at home. (watercolors on wood is one of my personal favs… check back near the holidays for more on this medium!)

painting castanets

let's flamenco!

we also made shakers out of household objects like paper plates and beans. just fold the plate in half, staple around 3/4 of it, and let your little one put dried beans inside. (we used pinto beans.) then your kiddo can decorate the shaker with any sort of paints, crayons, markers, glued objects you have around. (novi opted to make painted dots and then play “connect the dots” with a crayon on hers.)

polka dotted pinto bean shaker

once we got home, novi wanted to continue making musical instruments. she said she really wanted a drum. i noticed that our raisins were pretty low, so we turned a cardboard raisin box into a tissue paper mod podge drum…

thinking on my toes to find drum supplies

so we can still see paul newman through the tissue... oh well

maybe later this afternoon we’ll put on an artsy concert for daddy. if you don’t wanna make art, but you want to make music, melissa and doug always got your back:

okay, it’s the week before halloween, so it’s time to bust out one more (or a couple? we’ll see…) halloweeny crafts. i saw this make-shift monster on the no time for flash cards blog and decided to try it with my little monster.

reason being: we already had all of the materials at home, and we love to repurpose items we already have into art and playthings. also, after doing the monster mash on jib-jab where novi got to play the part of frankenstein, she’s pretty into this particular massive mutant.

all you need is stuff in your recycling bin and maybe a few tokens and art materials you can find around the home:

• an empty toilet paper roll or a paper towel roll cut in half (for two monsters! we did it this way.)
• green & black paint, markers, or crayons (we used watercolors)
• golf tees, beads, or cardboard scraps (anything that can be ear-like)
• googly-eyes, buttons, felt, or construction paper (anything that makes eyes)
• scissors
• glue

paint or color your toilet paper roll about 2/3 green and 1/3 black.

cut slits along the top of the black part and fold them down to make “hair” and paint the folded down flaps.

hair colorist

then poke holes for your golf tees to go through. or, if you’re like us and are not a golfing family, just glue on some beads or cardboard or whatever you have lying around for knobby monster ears. then we used buttons for eyes because googly-eyes didn’t warrant a special trip to the craft store, and why buy new when you can reuse whatcha got? i had beads left over from the stash i found for our leaf garland.

novi drew mouths onto the frankensteins, and our little monsters came to life!

they did the monster mash... waaahooooo...

so this frankenstein is green in more ways than one! (hey, what are blogs for if not for cheesy puns?)