paint cut paste

a couple weeks ago my mom (N calls her “gwee”) was visiting us on the left coast, and while my husband and i took a little date weekend away, gwee treated N to a new world of crafting for her — weaving potholders.

it was really cute – my mom sent an amazon box to us about a week before her visit and asked us not to open it, since it was to be a surprise for me and my husband. N was thrilled about the prospect of what she might make out of what was in that mystery box. once we were out of the house, i was told that N could not wait to get started.

inside was a potholder design kit with metal loom. gwee showed N how to go over and under (we’ve done some weaving before, but not yet on a loom) and she caught on and worked diligently on the potholders.

gwee reported that N loved coming up with the color order and combinations for the weavings. one of the potholders she designed was in ROY G BIV order, of course. my little rainbow lover. N was suuuper proud to show us her potholders when we returned home, and she was even more psyched when we used them a couple of days later, saying “they work!”

you may remember our watercolor silhouette father’s day gift from this summer… well, we did an acrylic version most recently that i wanted to share with you.

i used much the same process in making this one that i used for the watercolor version. i printed the same silhouette (from photo i took in spring – see instructions on the father’s day blog entry) onto contact paper. then i carefully cut it out with good scissors.

after peeling the adhesive off, i stuck it onto a pre-gessoed square canvas. (this one is 12″ x 12″.)

i mixed up a lovely neutral cafe-con-leche-esque color of acrylic paint and covered the entire canvas with it, including the sides. after the first coat was dry, i repeated with a second coat.

once the entire thing was dry, i carefully peeled off the silhouette sticker to reveal a white outline of my daughter’s cute head.

i then sprayed the whole canvas with clear acrylic coating to seal it and give it all a shine.

we gifted it to my mom (N’s “gwee”) for her birthday, and she loved it!

oh, i have been wanting to try this for years, and i finally got around to it this father’s day! i remember thinking about doing this when N was just born, but (weirdly enough??) i kinda of wanted to wait until she had a substantial ponytail. ha! anyway, the timing was perfect for this custom, heartfelt, handmade, on-the-cheap dad’s day gift.

here’s how we did it: i took a nice profile photo of N against a white wall one day after preschool. i asked her to keep her chin up and give a little smile. (you should see some of the hilarious outtakes during this process… )

then i used my photo editing program to turn it to black and white, and pump up the contrast. (i use pixelmator because it’s free, works well, and i can’t afford to update my old version of photoshop to be compatible with my macbook. you can probably do all of this with any very basic photo editing program.) you may need to play around a bit with things like invert, posterize, and threshold to get the right feel for a simple black and white silhouette. i turned the inside of it white, so as not to use up all of my printer ink. here are some of my steps along the way:

i printed it onto contact paper sheets with my inkjet printer. (i made a small one and a larger one because i wasn’t sure which to use.) i caaarefeully cut out N’s silhouette. then i wiped any excess ink off of the contact paper with a towel before peeling it off and sticking it onto thick watercolor paper. i ended up using the large one for this project, with 11×15″ watercolor paper.

after it was stuck down securely (especially around the edges) i used a soft, fairly fat brush to wet the page around the edges of her face. then N chose blue watercolor paint (daddy’s favorite color) to drop into the water. (wet on wet watercoloring technique.)

i had to work fairly quickly so the paint would not dry out and create weirdness (which happened anyway along the bottom, but i’m okay with that.) when the painting was totally dry, i peeled off the clear contact paper. i was so happy it came off the watercolor paper in such a clean way!

peeling, revealing

we framed it in a simple and lovely matted frame. N and i were so happy with the finished product!

so was daddy! this image is going to hang in our family photo gallery in our stairwell. we like to mix art in with our photographs when displayed – and this one sort of counts as both.

hope all the dads and granddads out there had a beautiful weekend!

being an artsy momma blogger can be weird at times. there is so much art happening at our house every day — majorly overlapping projects. i sometimes look at these wonderfully organic art processes struggle with the question, “what is blog-worthy?”

tuesday morning, N painted & decorated a picture frame for a friend

in any given day, N draws/colors between 30-60 original pieces.

this sketch titled, "who wants some pizza?" cracks me up

there are watercolors and other paints on the regular. most days involve scissors and glue.

impromptu "paper house" made all on her own, after dinner monday night

cards are made at least 4 days a week, i can safely say.

moms' day cards for the grandmothers & great grandmother

lots of time there is sculpting or building of some sort. always photography. often fabric. constant make-believe. there are always gatherings of natural materials and using them for unique and artful purposes. or just watching nature’s magic unfold…

we watched these lives form over this week in our backyard playhouse

yet, days can pass where it’s more of the same type of art is happening, and i’ve blogged about it before.

mom's day restaurant tablecloth aftermath

whenever i introduce a new material, i generally blog about how that turned out. when N is in the flow and follows a self-initiated process through excitedly, i blog about it.

engrossed in beading

sometimes we create projects that are reserved for guest blogs elsewhere. (a few are coming soon!) a lot of the time i can’t blog about something awesome because it’s a gift we have yet to give. (ahem, fathers’ day cramping my style! why can’t i ‘block’ my husband from my blog, facebook page, and twitter feed for that one post?) oh well.

N "being the tree" at an artist open studio on mothers' day

and let’s be honest, i have sooo much less time to blog now that i see clients in my practice during N’s every single preschool moment. as she is getting older, school hours get longer and our chillin’-at-home-melting-crayons time is sadly on a gradual decline.

so, this leaves me curious about two things:

my fellow bloggers: how do you choose which of your many artful moments are blog-worthy?

and readers: what types of things do YOU enjoy seeing on this blog?

we are honored to partake in tinkerlab’s one year anniversary cardboard box challenge, alongside so many amazing bloggers! when presented with this challenge, i wondered how we could incorporate two things that N is naturally curious about exploring right now: illustrating (like a fiend!) and butterflies. i like to go with the flow…

with mother’s day coming up, my own uber-creative mom is on my mind a lot… and this blog is purely an homage to her. i decided to attempt to replicate a “visual aid” my mom created with me for science class when i was in about third grade. a perfect marriage of cardboard, drawing, butterflies, and celebrating MOM!

first, this crunchy boho-chic (um, pretty please?) momma got a new pair of birkenstocks (long overdue! sigh – but not so chic.) the box they came in seemed perfect for the challenge. i used an x-acto knife to cut a little window in the top of the lid to serve as our “screen” for the story to show through. then i sliced Xs across from each other in the top sides and bottom sides of the box, which is where our dowels (cardboard tubes) would go. that was the grown-up part of the project.

yes, i have big feet & when it comes to birks, i'm classic arizona or maybe a florida

next, N chose turquoise acrylic paint to cover the box, and used a small paint roller to paint the entire box. then she picked plum purple paint to paint the dowels. i remember that the version my mom and i made in the 80s was wrapped in fabulous hot pink butterfly wrapping paper, but we opted for paint so we could open & close the box afterwards.

while the box was drying, we cut a long thin strip of white scroll paper (from the roll of paper that goes on her easel.) we discussed the life cycle of a butterfly, which is currently what N is learning in preschool. on monday of this week, they watched the butterflies emerge from the chrysalis with wet wings and fly away. she is fascinated to say the least!

N named 4 stages of the butterfly: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis or pupa, and butterfly. as you see above, i drew boxes vertically along the scroll of paper for each stage, and two extra – for a title page and ending page. N is a sucker for puns, and got a great idea to draw a butterfly dancing on a stage for her title page: “stages of a butterfly”

she then got busy illustrating each of the phases in the cycle.

and was quite proud.

after the box was dry, N added many different butterfly stickers to its surface.

we opened the lid and used packaging tape to tape the top of the scroll to the top dowel and the bottom to the bottom dowel. (i love that this box has a hinged lid so that we can open and close it to perhaps insert different “stories” later!)

that's the image of the butterfly dancing on a stage. get it?

once the story box was complete, N was sooo excited about it! “we made a TV!” she exclaimed. i’ll let her give you the little tour through her story, winding the dowels at the top and bottom to crank the scroll through the images…

the four stages – images spliced together

click image to enlarge to see details - those are droplets from the "wet wings" in the last image

ta da!

the end (i'm sure the box could have used another coat of paint)

thank you to rachelle at tinkerlab for this challenge and for one year of your oh-so-inspiring blogs! and huge gratitude to my amazing mom for your contagious creative spirit and igniting my passion for self-expression! i hope i can do the same for my daughter.

happy mothers’ day weekend, mommas!

wanna see more cardboard creations?

this quick craft was born out of our need for more magnets to hold up the art on our fridge! bonus: a set of these makes for a lovely, personalized mother’s day, father’s day, or teacher appreciation gift!

N found some lovely, flat, lightweight rocks (sandstone) at the beach a few weeks ago which seemed like the perfect natural material for lovely magnets.

we got out our ink pads and N made some colorful thumbprints on the rocks.

i doodled a few different critters on the thumbprint with a sharpie after N ran off to play elsewhere, though in retrospect (yikes!) i really should have let her capable hands do this! momma couldn’t resist – i love fingerprint art.

(psst - my amazingly talented fiber artist friend, kenden, wove this cloth for me on her loom)

we used elmer’s household cement to secure a little magnet to the backs of the rocks.

now our fridge is all kinds of fingerprint fancy!

oh, are you wondering about what the frog magnet says? it’s to remind us of thich nhat hanh’s concept of froglessness.

we’ve done some bead crafts before, but N wasn’t ever as into diligently stringing beads as she was today… when my self-proclaimed beader went to WURK.

we got out our trusty alphabet beads to make a baby bracelet for a newborn friend (and a big sis bracelet for the newly-minted big sis.) we like to mix these with our mish-mashed bead collection on stretch cord to make funky trinkets as gifts.

we’ve also used these same combos to make allergy-alert bracelets – remember? N picked out some beads she loved, and we also made her a name bracelet for herself today.

(knitted sweater a la my mom)

as i was working on the baby bracelet, i noticed that N was rooting through the letters, and had picked out a stash of beads and was stringing them happily on the other side of the table. honestly, this wasn’t going to be a blog entry craft until i saw what was going on.

it wasn’t until i was finished with the baby bracelet that i realized what she was doing – too sweet!

customized jewelry is quite a perk of having a 3-year-old who can spell the names of her family members.

batgirl, the beader

i proudly sported my mommy bracelet all day long!

way better than silly bandz, yo!