paint cut paste

i recently chanced upon this inspirational photo of these lovely sticks by an artist named ginette lapalme.

ginette's sticks

we had some sticks and driftwood hanging around our backyard, just waiting to become art materials… and i’d been thinking on it for a few days. i’m also reading a book on the shamanic tradition of holding council, which involves a talking piece – usually a stick. i’ve been dreaming about finding and embellishing a talking stick for my family and also for my work with clients. then blamo! – this picture finds me. the internet is so cool like that – providing serendipitous encounters and answers. anyway, the fire was lit under me, so i showed novi the photo to share the fire, and we gathered up our things: sticks, acrylics, brushes, palette, water jar, rag.

perhaps sticks we had won’t necessarily become future talking sticks, but i set out without that intention – just wanting to enjoy art for art’s sake and the fun of painting whimsical stripes and such on a natural canvas. while i worked on a big stick, novi had so much fun with the smaller ones.

she talked all the while about how she’d never done this before, and how she loves all of the new art ideas i come up with for us to do — how sweet to hear! (incidentally, she told me i am the best artist in alaska… which was flattering and all, but we’ve never even been there. ) it was a playful art-making session.

when working with natural materials, i like to (and this may get too woo-woo for some of you, but bear with me) have a dialog with the stick, rock, shell, etc. about what it would like to become. i feel like nature’s form really can dictate the lines, shapes, and colors, if we mindfully engage with it, observe, listen, and trust our instincts about the artistic choice we are making. i did this as i worked on painting my sticks, and i introduced this concept to novi as we painted. children are such absolute naturals when it comes to creating such a dialog, storyline, conversation – they are not self-conscious and are so genuinely connected to nature, so it comes easily. as adults, we have often lost that ability, and work to reclaim it.

novi's "ocean sparkle" stick

besides having tons of fun together, the visual results were magical.

the collection (sticks and stones)

my "heart chakra" driftwood

novi was proud of hers!

we decided to use embroidery thread to attach a feather to one of novi’s sticks.

and the most magical aftermath of all…

our artist hands

okay, i can’t pass this one off as art, but it was so much fun that i had to share. aaaand, we checked off one of our summer activity cards today — water balloons!

someone was psyched!

we (uh, okay just me) got soaked trying to fill the water balloons with the hose, and then we had a great time with them!

the first batch

novi had a great time watering the plants with them…

and watering ME with them…

watering the grass with them…

watering the garden wall with them…

there was also some degree of self-sacrafice involved

we were sure to gather up all of the balloon pieces when we were finished so that no animals would eat them. novi gave them a new life by making little blankets out of them for her marbles (creative lady.)

happy water ballooning this summer!

is your mouth watering already? on a spring trip to harley farms in pescadero, ca, i tried the tastiest goat cheese i’ve ever had in my life – lavender honey goat cheese. this got me thinking that i should look into making some lavender honey ice cream in my ice cream maker at home. so we did.

we grow organic lavender in our backyard… the same lavender we have been using for lavender wands. it’s not technically culinary lavender (which i think you can get in a box at wholefoods?) but i figured it’s good enough. we grew it, we do not spray our yard, it’s organic. novi helped me to harvest the lavender as it is beginning to dry out, while we dodged the bees the entire time.

we hung a bit to dry in our kitchen for several days while i researched recipes. i found one on epicurious.com that seems to be quite universal, as it is repeated on so many other web sites exactly the same way. so we tried it out. here tiz:

ingredients:

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 2 cups half-and-half
• 2 tablespoons dried edible lavender flowers
• 1/2 cup light honey
• 2 egg yolks
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

method:
cook the half-and-half and cream on medium heat until warm, do not let it come to a boil. turn off the heat, add the lavender to the pot, cover and let steep for half an hour.

after flowers have steeped, strain the liquid and discard the flowers. add to the liquid the honey and heat on medium low until honey has dissolved. again, do not let liquid come to a boil!

beat the egg yolks with the vanilla, lemon juice, lemon zest and salt. stir into the eggs 1/2 cup of the warm liquid and then add the entire egg mixture back to the pot.

heat this on medium low for five minutes or until it gets slightly thick. you’ll know it’s ready when it coats the back of your spoon. (honestly, mine got a little curdy and didn’t stick to the spoon even after a long time heating, but i proceeded anyway.) cool in the refrigerator for four hours. freeze and churn according to your ice-cream maker’s instructions.

this makes a quart of ice cream… though i thought it tasted more like a custard than an ice cream. some people find the lavender taste to be kind of soap-like or incense-esque. admittedly, it is quite strong, but i enjoyed the super-rich treat! to be fancy, you can serve it with a drizzle of warm honey and a sprig of lavender. yum!

someone loved it... down to the last drop!

sure, it’s not innovative, but i just had to include our day at the beach this weekend, making art and fun out of the natural surroundings…

there were sand drawings…

no one is a stranger to the magic of a sandcastle…uh, or a sand alligator. novi and her daddy loved making this creature together!

novi took her time creating and adding to this rock/driftwood/sand man.

i collected shells, sea glass, and flat, smooth stones for painting – ever the beachcomber, i am. best art supply store there is!

there was plenty of kite-flying in the mix, as well.

novi collected driftwood on the walk back up to the car.

"mommy, i think i'm going to build a house out of this when we get home."

let’s see what else transpires from our day at the beach…

novi is a big fan of balloons, 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!

what a perfect thing to do on these sunny summer days – make your own nature photos with sun art paper!

on saturday, novi had a friend over to play. i tasked them with finding interesting looking natural objects in our backyard. they mostly gathered leaves and flowers.

then we went into the shade and pulled out a couple sheets of our sun art paper. (i bought three sizes of it from amazon over the winter, when i was daydreaming of sunny days ahead. this time we used the 5″x7″ paper.) we arranged the leaves and flowers on the paper before going into the sun.

next we put a clear acrylic sheet (comes with the paper) over the objects. this holds down your things so they don’t blow away in the wind or move around while exposure is happening. each sun art paper kit comes with just one, but if you want to do more than one at a time, raid your picture frame stash (especially the cheap plastic ones) and borrow some more from those. we left the paper in the sun for just 3-5 minutes (until it turns a very light blue.)

next we put the papers into a tub of water for one minute. because we wanted out images to turn out a deeper shade of blue, i added a few drops of lemon juice to the water (like it said to on the package.)

we repeated the process with more leaves and flowers… and some bubble wands, too!

after the prints have soaked for a minute, let them dry on a towel. (once completely dry, you can press them in a book for a day or so to make sure they are flat.)

the girls had fun watching how their pictures turned out, but mostly they were psyched just to run around with their popsicles. (perhaps the reason the package of sun art paper says for ages 6+)

these beautiful natural prints would make lovely cards, but i think i will frame this batch in a series to display in our home.

she's quite proud.