paint cut paste

this is just a quick little (momma art) entry about what has become a bit of an obsession of mine in the past year and a half… painting with white ink on smooth, dark stones.

stones i painted in july 2010

i first fell in love with this idea when i saw them on genine’s art blog a long while back – if you have not yet visited this amazing blog, check it out! sooo inspiring! although little rock paintings are not a new idea and they’re all over the internet. i figured i’d share them with you here regardless. mostly because i love creating them — even though it’s intricate work, i find it very relaxing and soothing. i love to look at the stones and let them inform me, by their shape, color, and texture, what sort of image might live on them.

i like to use white acrylic ink and a script liner brush when i paint mine. recently, i purchased some different inks in sepia, gray, and turquoise, so i’ll experiment with those on rocks soon. (N and i have already played with inks on red clay pottery.) for some reason, N has yet to paint with the inks on rocks with me, but i imagine she’ll join me soon.

these make for easy and personal gifts for birthdays, thank yous, hostess tokens, etc. and it gives me something fun to do with all of the lovely stones i can’t stop picking up along the pacific coastline.

admittedly, i got all jazzed about pinterest painted pumpkins this year. i mean, have you seen the options?! it’s intense out there. martha is quaking in her fryes with the sheer amount of pumpkin talent run amok on the interwebs. and lemme tell ya, i am NO  threat to ms. stewart in any way, shape, or form. let’s talk total craft fail right now (and a quasi-recovery?) here are some of the pinterest gems that piqued my pumpkin passion.

you know i don’t use the words “craft” or “fail” much at all, (for totally different reasons) but this is a complete craft fail (do i have to put a hashtag in front of that term? eww, lingo.) and instead of ___fail, i’d rather just call it an art-gone-wrong moment. (but yes, #craftfail!) i was inspired to make some painter’s tape resist pumpkins (like bottom left pic above) and three pumpkins with B O O stenciled onto them. i figured they’d be all beautiful and i’d title the blog “smashing pumpkins” and everything. i bought these super inexpensive beauties at a produce stand.

taped and stickered them where i wanted them to remain orange.

i grabbed some matte spray paint, and went to town.

(the only thing that was cool here was the caravaggesque lighting of these photos, and that was an accident)

after the paint dried, i peeled off the tape and stickers… um, and MOST OF THE SPRAY PAINT! (grrr)

for the B O O pumpkins, i thought i’d use these cool vinyl letter stickers i bought at michael’s, but large stickers do not stick in any sort of flat way to a rounded pumpkin surface, so i knew they would not produce a clean line when painted around. so i thought (sure, just for like two seconds) and grabbed some rubber cement and painted the letters B O O onto the pumpkins instead.

i figured the rubber cement would roll right off after they were painted and show the letters i had carefully designed by hand. perhaps this would have worked (???) if i had NOT USED SPRAY PAINT!

so i dropped this agenda altogether. i purchased three white pumpkins. i stuck the vinyl letters onto them as best i could. i traced around the letters with a pencil. i painted inside my pencil lines with sepia acrylic ink.

and it worked out well enough for this year.

pumpkins drying against sliding glass door - fun effect

and now onto designing the rest of the mantel…

this fall we got to learn about the michaelmas festival at waldorf school. it happens close to the autumn equinox and marks the beginning of the receding light. the parenting passageway has a great post all about it here, so i’ll leave the describing up to carrie because she does it so well, but in keeping with our woodworking theme this week (check out the giveaway – winners will be drawn tomorrow!) i’d love to share what N made at her school’s michaelmas festival.

on this special day, all of the children wore orange and yellow to school. there were many autumnal activities and presentations. N’s kindergarten class worked on sanding pieces of wood and drilling holes into them as candle holders. N was so proud to show me hers after school that day.she wanted to create her own candle to put into her new holder, so we got out our beeswax.

she had a hard time deciding between red and purple wax (her favorite colors,) but loooved examining the honeycomb shapes on it. eventually, she settled on red, and we cut an 8″ x 8″ piece of wax. N put the wick alongside one edge of it and simply rolled it up with even pressure across.

…as even as she could.

she pushed the candle down into the hole in her candleholder, and was psyched that it fit. (we totally didn’t pre-measure any of this, so i was glad, too.) that night we lit it for dinner, and N was “in looooove” with the candle.

before snuffing out the candle (and cutely whispering “thank you candle for your light”) N said (and sang) her meal blessing song from her kindergarten class:

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!

autumn just might be my favorite season for nature-inspired art-making! i’ve been wanting to make teeny acorn cap candles for a long while, and it’s so easy i’m not sure why we’ve not gotten around to them before now.

as for supplies: we scored a little bag of 10 short candle wicks from N’s waldorf school store (my new favorite art supply and toy store!) for just $1. i already had some wax around the house from the last time we made candles, and we’ve got acorn caps stored up over here like nobody’s business. we even added in a few shells from our summer OBX trip, just to mix it up.

N and i picked through the acorn caps to find ones that would lay relatively flat, or ones that would lay flat after we picked off the stem. if you can’t find ones that are flat enough on top (candle bottom) that’s okay — one fun way to display these are as floating candles in a pretty bowl with lovely autumn leaves!

the N put the wicks into each cap and shell…

…while i melted the wax in our double boiler.

good thing i had everything on top of wax paper on my counter because pouring the melted wax into such tiny nature containers was tricky — but made us smile

now we’ve got a sweet collection of tiny candles for our autumn nature table and to gift to friends. (and i’m gonna go grab some more $1 packs of wicks this week at kindergarten pick up time!)

happy fall, y’all! (ooo, my quasi-southern roots are showing.) today is the first day of autumn, even though the sf bay area seems to just be getting the summer started. regardless, in my body and spirit, it feels like it’s time to bust out the chet baker and a scarf. to celebrate the season, i gifted my little one with a basket of autumn goodies today…

among the treasures was a strand of mala beads i strung just for her. i’ve always intended to make N one of her own (as she covets mine) and i was inspired by this one i saw on little. lovely. i just used 108 (in the buddhist tradition) blonde wooden beads i had on hand and some stretchy cord.

after they were strung, i looped embroidery thread around my fingers, snipped it at one end, then laid it over the cord. i tied another piece of thread around that to keep it in place. this made for a cute tassel.

i also included two wonderful autumn books in N’s fall basket — i just love both of these seasonal series. one is autumn, an alphabet acrostic by steven schnur and the other is by the light of the harvest moon by harriet ziefert. we have the other seasons from both authors, but somehow didn’t yet have these autumn treasures.

additionally, i found a sweet little melissa & doug wooden kazoo, some pomegranates (N’s favorite fruit – she takes after her momma!) and one a replica of one of my childhood memories… a weather telling owl kinda like this one! when i was a kid, i had a ceramic owl exactly like this on my windowsill. he has little clear salt-sized crystals on his head that change color to tell the weather (or so i thought when i was a kid???) when one of these owls came up randomly on my etsy homepage this summer, my heard did a little flip flop of recognition, and i knew i had to buy it!

another fun thing about today is that we got to use the autumn side of our handmade placemats – ah, refreshing change! i can’t wait to have some fun with fall art projects now…

first day of autumn breakfast

happy autumn to all! did your family do anything special to celebrate autumn’s arrival?

autumn is upon us next week… tis the season of harvesting the fruits of our labor. when we’re lucky, summer “labor” looks like a long walk on the beach. if you’ve got a lot of beach booty laying around, this could be a simple fun one for you and your littles.

our summer vacation to carova, north carolina, left us with plenty of beautiful shells with natural holes in them. perfect for jewelry, garland, and ornaments!

we set a few larger shells and some ribbon scraps aside with the intention of creating keepsakes for 12 of our family members (5 households) who shared this trip together.

first, i wrote “carova 2011″ on the inside of each shell with a sharpie.

then N got to work painting the shells with one of my favorite glimmery paint additives called “make it shimmer.”

this paint gives such a lovely mostly-silver, somewhat-pearly glisten to anything it touches. N applied it directly to our shells, but as a paint additive, it is meant to be mixed into plain paint to heighten it to shimmery loveliness.

once the shells were dry, we added colorful ribbon scraps from our stash.

while this project has roots in summer, it extends through the winter holidays. we are excited to give these to our family to display on their christmas trees or in their homes whenever they’d like.

it’s a fun memento from a sweet summer vacation. (surprise family – these will be coming your way before the holiday season! )