paint cut paste

we go through art paper around here like nobody’s business, which you may have remembered from the STACK in this post from april. i’ve tried to cut it into smaller pieces. i’ve tried to get N to use the backs of sheets at times. still, this prolific artist just HAS to produce, and i’m totally in support of that! i may have stumbled upon a way to curb the paper usage and create a new format for my little artist.

if you watched this video i posted on facebook a while back, you’ll notice how N’s illustrations (or “play drawing” as she calls it) is all about the development and unfolding of a story. about a week ago, we got to a point where N used the front and back of at least 8 sheets of paper (16 drawings) to show frames of the same story progressing. then she started drawing her own boxes to write a story in, like this one:

naturally, i ran to my computer, drew up some story frame boxes as comic strips, and hit print. easy enough. so easy. i presented them to this 4-year-old illustrator, and she knew just what to do with them.

that day (sunday, june 5) she created several comic strips with elaborate stories. this was the first one – about a bird’s adventure.

my favorite frame in this one is when “the momma bird is in her house, drinking her hot cocoa and peacefully looking out at the moon. she didn’t even notice the tv was on because the moon was so beautiful.” haha.

more stories unfolded that day…

once when she was up in her room drawing and ran out of “box paper” she did this on the back of one of the pages:

N narrated them afterwards, walking us through them frame by frame. so fascinating!

we are loving this format over here this week — and i’m sure the trees will thank us!

see you in the funny papers!

oh-so-many colorfully creative ways to dye an easter egg floating around the web this year… we could not choose just one! we had to sample them all!

see our garden flags in the background?

we got out tons of supplies and started on our mission to color a couple dozen eggs!

from one of our old annual stand-bys of the melted crayon dye resist on the hot hard-boiled egg…

to blowing out eggs (until the veins in my neck burst) to create hollow masterpieces we can keep for a while (and keep out of the fridge!)

N tried it too - it was way difficult for her, as well

to decoupaging tissue paper patterns onto eggs a la the artful parent

to sticker masking

to shaving cream marbling (like we did with paper two years ago – and hey, it works on eggs, too! tip: try the darker colors for best results)

to food coloring in a strainer a la pink & green mama’s post

to botanical masking (gone wrong)

to toenail easter eggs

even some of our accidents were pretty…

cracked (oops) then double dipped in red & purple (N's fav colors)

…and some of our accidents were NOT pretty!

the contents of 6 hollowed out raw eggs dumped on our nice area rug

next year i vow to stray from the paas and food coloring to try vegetable egg dyeing. i’ve always wanted to, and have found some great recipes in the past. i LOVE the ones over at tinkerlab this year! but gosh, we had a lot of fun this week…

i also wanted to add that i was quite impressed with martha stewart’s egg dyeing iphone app! it’s 99 cents well spent for all of the inspiration it provides! (oh how i wish martha would give me a kick back for saying that!)

i’m saving some of these ideas for next year. once my neck and ears recover from hollowing out those eggs, i want to try more hollow eggs so i can create and decorate an easter tree with them since i didn’t get around to fulfilling that easter dream this spring.

all in all, it’s been quite an eggperimental easter week over here!

happy hoppy to you and yours!

i knew it was only a matter of time before we made one of these. we’re big fans of snowglobes over here. this is a new one my sister gave us this year as a gift. lovely, huh?

i’ve sort of been intimidated by the whole snow globe thing — what with eggshells and different oils inside in all of those instructions i see online. then i decided it didn’t need to be all that complex. we had all four things in our home that we needed, lucky for us, as N has quite a bad cold right now and we can’t really run to the store. we gathered up a clear jar, glitter, polymer clay (sculpey), and a plastic trinket for inside. oh, and water! just water.

we opened the jar and put a ball of the sculpey clay on the inside of the lid. N chose a plastic cinderella from her sandtray toys outside to put inside of the snow globe. okay, so it’s not christmasy… but she can display it year round in her bedroom. we stuck the cinderella securely into the clay.

then we sprinkled lots of glitter and some tiny shiny confetti into the jar.

N filled the jar with water. (yes, our sink got glittered.)

(nevermind the tea cup and egg pan from breakfast)

then i put hot glue around the top edge of the jar and screwed the lid on. this seals the jar from leaking.

we let it dry for a bit…

and voila! cinderella (all fancied up with a blue sash for the ball) was enjoying a blizzard of fancy sparkles!

winter is upon us in a few short weeks, the winter solstice being my favorite holiday! (ahem, it is my birthday, afterall…) today N and i practiced our folding and cutting while decorating for the winter by making paper snowflakes!

we gathered up some scrap paper and both grown-up and kid scissors. if you want an idea for something to do with those watercolor paintings that come home from preschool or lovely marbled paper, this is a great transformation for that art work to have a new life.

first, i had to brush up on my origami paper folding for snowflakes. sure, you can fold it in half and in half again, but there is a more intricate way that involves a 60 degree angle. this youtube video really seemed simple and friendly enough for me (or your older children) to follow. here are some of the papers in various stages of folding…

after properly folded, we were able to cut like crazy (as he says in the video.) here is where we found that a 3 year old using her little kid scissors just might get frustrated when cutting layers upon layers of folded paper. gotta hand it to N – she tried. if you have older children, they’ll be able to do this just fine.

then she opted to cut a bunch of other things out….

…while i cut the folded snowflake paper.

blue and white preschool painting turned to snow!

N also modeled the finished snowflakes, lined them up, counted them, threw them in the air like it was snowing… lots o fun!

when we were finished, it looked like a snowstorm in our den!

we hung these paper snowflakes up on the back door. i’ll likely make more to hang from our chandelier or to string into garland — i’m such a garland addict! help!

a little golden one landed on our christmas tree

who says it doesn’t snow in the bay area?

all the credit for this one goes to N’s amazing preschool teacher! the kids made these at school, and you know i’m a fan of art made from recycled materials, with a particular penchant for toilet paper rolls. (what does this say about me? i don’t know.) check out these beauties!

to make these, all you need are toilet paper rolls or paper towel rolls (cut into smaller sections, if preferred,) some wooden craft sticks, and paint. i love how they used the metallic paints at the preschool. these look so cool.

the group of them that the class made created a really cool wall display for this month’s unit on transportation. i love the cotton ball smoke puffs behind them! these would look cute in a playroom or plane-themed bedroom for a kid, too.

i just had to share… since they’re tp rolls and all. ah, it is easy to be green!

you probably already know we like to make art out of toilet paper rolls around my house…. the recycling bin is a great place to find art materials! when i saw this project on the a glimpse inside blog, i knew we’d have to try it out. i mean, we have toilet paper rolls for days being saved over here.

first, we gathered about 5-6 or so toilet paper rolls (paper towel rolls work well, too.) you’ll also need scissors, orange paint (we used acrylic, but tempra is fine,) a hot glue gun, twine, and maybe a ruler. i flattened the cardboard tubes and cut them into sixths. (i just eyeballed it, but a ruler measuring them to a half inch might have been nice…?)

N had lots of fun painting them orange. (on the blog where i saw the idea, they painted some orange for pumpkins and some red for apples, but we opted for pumpkins only at our house. check out their apples though – different shape and also way cute!)

i painted the insides of the rolls for her, and she did the outsides

honestly, it was a hot orange mess, but i love how acrylic paint just peels right off of skin when it’s time to wash up.

after the ringlets were dry, we lined four rings up in a row, and i hot glued them together where they touched.

next, cut two other rings on one of the folds. spread one out across the top and the other out across the bottom of the four glued together rings, and glue those to the sides and onto each of the four points across top and bottom. put a glue dot on the top, and glue an unpainted (or green painted, if you please) little piece of cardboard there for a pumpkin stem.

we ended up making five of these pumpkins, but i almost chose to make four of these larger pumpkins and alternate them with single-ring tiny pumpkins (like the one i mocked up below) across the garland. i decided against it in the end, but i wanted to share that idea here incase you want to try it. if you do the tiny pumpkin, turn the stem sideways (like you see below) so that the twine can be strung through it.

these are the five pumpkins we made, before they were strung. cute, huh?

next, N helped to string the pumpkins onto some twine we had laying around. (i love that i bought nothing new for this project. my favorite kind!) when you’re ready to string yours, you just have to choose which part of the pumpkin is the front, and make sure the bulk of the string shows across the back when you thread it through. she just put it down through the top tiny triangle hole on the left side of each pumpkin, and then back up through the top tiny triangle hole on the right. easier done than said.

photo credit: my husband was home

that’s it! then you’ll have a rustic pumpkin garland that will be so cute for halloween and the duration of the autumn harvest season! we strung ours across the mantel. if you try this, let us know  – share your photos on our facebook page’s wall, as we’d love to see yours and where you’ve hung it!

as of late, N’s days and evenings are filled with line drawings. she has found her “favorite pencil” (just a regular old yellow #2 pencil) and it’s pretty much her go-to art material these days.

in september, she began to crank out an impressive volume of line drawing, usually totaling 5-15 per day. she draws them at her “art desk” in the kitchen, usually while i am preparing meals. as she draws, she narrates what is happening in the picture, she does voices for the characters in the picture, and she describes each image to me in detail afterwards. this has almost replaced her magna-doodle habit.

the papers were stacking up on her desk, my desk, the dining room table, the kitchen counter… i put the date on the back bottom right corner of each one because each is just such a gem — way too precious not to keep and cherish forever. but how?!

"this cat is an artist all day & all night"

many of you have written to me asking how to store your child’s art. we display N’s art around our house in a gallery format in her bedroom and in frames around our house. we also create cards, giftwrap, and gifts out of N’s art. the rest we do store. i keep much of it in a large portfolio (read: two pieces of posterboard taped together on 3 sides) in the playroom closet. but these drawings were just coming too fast and too brilliantly to do that. so i got a cute binder at target and a 3-hole punch and created a drawing book in which to store these masterpieces chronologically.

my intention was that all of N’s drawings for the remainder of 2010 would go in here. you can see that by the title i put on the spine.

however, this book — the stack you see here in the photo below — is the product of just 22 days of drawing! (and my own sketchbook project‘s book has 3 little pages done. i think i should commission my little artist-in-residence to help me with that!)

a serious body of work for 3 weeks time!

most of them are with her trusty pencil, but a few get colored in.

cinderella & the prince

N makes all sorts of other art during the day, but no matter what, she cranks out the line drawings. she says she’s “writing a movie.” i think she’s well on her way to illustrating a cartoon, a flip book, or a children’s novel at the very least. i think i’m going to get her a spiral sketchbook next. have any of you tried that with your 3-year-olds?

how do you archive your child’s art? do you keep it all? aaaand, how do you get your kid to draw on the backs of the pages? (as green as we try to be and as much as N respects trees, loves using cloth napkins, etc., she cannot bring herself to draw on the back of her pages. suggestions?)