paint cut paste

a few weeks ago, decoart was kind enough to send us this awesome package of free art supplies, and among them was glow-in-the-dark paint! of course this was N’s big favorite, so we decided to use it to celebrate with our friend deborah over at teach preschool today, who has reached 20,000 facebook likes! she is seriously stellar – go check out her blog if you don’t already — congrats deborah!

thank you for inviting us to join you in the ABCs. today N and i are presenting the letter N for Night light! when i asked my N what she wanted to do with the glow paint, she immediately said, “paint rocks!” hmm, okay. why not!? we got all set up with a few big stones.

and painted them with this milky yellow-green paint on both sides.

we also decided that we’d use some of these tiny pebbles as a glowy treat.

we let them dry (and charge up) in the sun.

once dry, we put the pebbles in an adorable tiny honey jar and the stones on the windowsill to soak up some more rays.

then it was the moment of truth — do they glow? we tested it out in our window-less guest bathroom, and YEP! glowy rocks!

pardon the shaky long exposure photo

okay, so maybe not the most useful night lights, as the luminescence isn’t that intense, but they are like magical phosphorescent stones that N is psyched to put on her night stand, next to her real glass-encased glow-in-the-dark jellyfish from the monterey bay aquarium! what kid doesn’t love things that glow?

in our home, we like to have some time of day, at least once, where we light a candle together. usually this is a ritual around dinner time and sometimes as a special treat at N’s bedtime when we tell stories by candlelight in her bedroom. when i recently spotted this cool glass paint, i had to pick some up so we could personalize our candles even more by upcycling some clear jars.

we set up shop out on the picnic table in the backyard with our supplies and some mason jars and baby food jars. (yes, we bought baby food specifically for the jars. N didn’t touch the stuff as a baby, as i made her food, but i figured we could use the bananas in some banana pancakes, right?)

N had such a good time painting on the glass…

after they were all painted, we set them out to dry for 48 hours (per instructions on the paint.)

(still haven't made anything from our holey shells from vacay)

then we baked them in the oven (also per paint instructions) on 325 for 30 minutes, allowing them to heat up and cool down with the oven on either side of that baking time. this allows the paint to adhere to the glass – love the alchemy!

after they had cooled, the jars were all shiny and ready for tealights and votive candles. love these little ones for our back patio!

N chose to put the large mason jar she painted on her nightstand for story time at night. magical!

she chose to put the “sunrise-sunset jar” on which we collaborated on her bedroom shelf.

more fun with biocolor courtesy of N’s preschool teacher! (okay, now i need to get some of this stuff!) this week N and her friends made awesomely colorful window decals in her summer camp.

first, the kids squirted the biocolor onto nonstick aluminum foil. N stuck with the concentric circle pattern (like the comet painting) but some kids applied it in other designs.

the kids ran forks and toothpicks through it to make radial burst patterns and swirls like these you see below.

then they allowed the biocolor paint to dry on the foil. her teacher told me it dried very quickly when out in the sun.

(front shown here)

after they was completely dry, they peeled the dried paint off the foil carefully to reveal these very cool plasticky forms.

(backs shown here)

they can be stuck repeatedly to glass windows, but if they are heavy, the window may require a little misting of water before application to keep them on. the lighter colors (and parts with thin application) are translucent, allowing the sun to shine through the color. here are ours from the inside…

from the outside you can see the original circles N drew.

dear biocolor paint company: wanna send me some samples to review? i’ve got lots more ideas for this stuff, and discount school supply offers lots of biocolor ideas here too!

after a white-chocolate-chip-and-raspberry-gluten-free-pancake breakfast a couple sundays ago, N was lured outside by the sight of her easel. still in her pjs, she requested paint (tempera) and a jacket (summer mornings are chilly in the bay area.) she got down to the business of being the artist she is.

the day before, i had the pleasure of a mom’s day out in san francisco, where three friends and i visited the SFMOMA gertrude stein exhibit and treated ourselves to lunch at cafe gratitude and crazy flavored ice creams at humphry slocombe. mmm… i digress (as ice cream makes me do.) while at the museum, i picked up a matisse post card to bring back to N since she couldn’t be with me that day. (i’ll be bringing her back to the exhibit this summer, for sure! she’d love all the matisse, picasso, cézanne, etc.)

postcard i got for N: henri matisse, femme au chapeau, 1905; oil on canvas. image from wikipedia

N said she was “so inspired by the postcard of the lady” so she wanted to paint portraits “with weird colors, like matisse did.” she asked me to be her first model. i had to sit still on a chair in our backyard while she painted me, with “weird colors.”

notice the matisse in the lower right corner

next, my pj-clad husband was asked to sit for his portrait. and he (and his coffee) happily obliged.

i love how focused she was when painting these pieces…

next, the artist asked to be the model – and she wanted me to paint her portrait. whenever i make art alongside my daughter, i do so in her “artistic handwriting,” so to speak, as a way of communicating that i am witnessing and supporting her. this also gently thwarts a child’s natural tendency to compare. (to read more on these ideas, visit a blog i wrote on how to talk to your children about art.)

after these, N made quick portraits of both of our cats, who were watching from inside the screen door. we hung these to dry on our clothesline art-drying line in the play shed, while N admired her work.

this master-in-the-making was quite proud of this exhibit!

just wanted to share a quick little gift idea… on the last day of preschool last month, N wanted to give her classmates something. she was quite specific about what it was — she wanted to share her favorite music with them.

music has always been very important to N – and even more so since christmas when she got an ipod touch for her bedroom that we keep stocked with her favorites. (i got her this after trying to figure out what the 2010s equivalent would be to the record player i had in my bedroom when i was 4 years old.) ipod touch docked in a sideways station so kids can visually scroll through album covers. i got the dock on amazon and found the ipod touch on craigslist. score!

she chose all of the songs she wanted for the list… which i’ll share with you here, just because:

• The Muppet Show Theme – Muppets
• Rainbow connection – Muppets
• Black Horse and the Cherry Tree  - KT Tunstall
• Can you picture that?  - Muppets
• Girls Just Wanna Have Fun – Cyndi Lauper
• Bobby-O – Kimya Dawson
• Dog Days Are Over  - Florence And The Machine
• My Energy – Laurie Berkner
• Little Panda Bear – Kimya Dawson
• Googleheads – Laurie Berkner
• I hope that somethin’ better comes along – Muppets
• Fraggle Rock Theme  - Muppets
• The Three Bears – Gary Rosen
• Movin’ Right Along – Muppets
• Puff the Magic Dragon – Susie Tallman
• Never before, never again – Muppets
• Victor Vito  - Laurie Berkner
• Finale: the magic store  - Muppets
• Fire And Rain – James Taylor
• The Littlest Birds – The Be Good Tanyas
• I’m going to go back there someday  - Muppets
• Sunbeams and Some Beans – Kimya Dawson
• School’s Out for Summer – Alice Cooper

appropriately enough, that last song IS one of N’s favorites, as alice cooper is her very favorite “muppets special guest star” when he performed that song on the muppet show (yes, the one from the 70s/80s. we have the muppet show DVDs. you know she’s a muppets fanatic.) i burned the playlist to CDs. this felt so archaic… i know i should just be uploading the mp3s to a cloud somewhere and inviting the parents in the class to gain access to it, right? i’m not there yet. then we chose some of N’s preschool art works from the year to cut into CD covers. (one answer to the question of what to do with your childs’ stack of preschool artwork)

we used our lovely tag paper punch to make gift tags that N signed for each friend.

tied them with some pretty dyed yarn…

and voila! a thrifty, thoughtful, and tuneful (it’s a word) gift for her classmates finished in an hour, tops.

rock on kids!

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!

the idea of the process arts is one that i can get behind wholeheartedly. simply, it means “the practice of various modalities of self-expression for the purpose of process rather than product.” a lot of us moms, teachers, or caregivers who make art with kids (and many artists) tout this process over product concept. as an art therapist, it has been a big part of my work with clients, as well as the way i approach my own art and making art with my daughter. so i thought we’d delve into a little process painting together…

according to process arts expert, stuart cubley, “process is the actual doing, the experience in the moment. it is the journey into the unknown without assumption. it is being open to a larger dimension than the limited agendas of the mind. It is being there fully – in presence…

…the essence of the process arts work is freedom. it is about climbing out from under the demanding attitudes that enslave us, where we believe we can only be happy in an imagined future with an imagined outcome.”

in this spirit, and over the course of several days, N and i applied color (acrylic paint) to canvas together. we listened to music – one of our favorites for painting is ann licater’s flute music (which N asks for quite often when making art.) we chatted happily. we painted quietly and listened to the brush strokes, which were often rhythmic with all of these little dots and things happening on the canvas. we painted outside and listened to the birds, the wind, the people passing by on the sidewalk. we watched the painting unfold.

we approached the canvas with the agreement that our marks would likely eventually come into relationship, touching and overlapping, and that over the course of a few days, things would get covered over with layers of paint. we agreed not to “try to make something” rather just to enjoy the experience of the paint. i was intentional in the way i painted freely, so that i could model for N how it might be to watch the images shift and move. i was hoping (hypothesizing) that it might not only be freeing for her to make art in this way, but that it’s quite organic for a child…

um, not necessarily so at age four, at least for my kiddo. she became quite attached to certain images, so watching them change or overlap later became emotional. (many of the images she became attached to were ones i had made on the canvas, and when i tweaked them over painted over them, she got upset.)

this was such a rich opportunity to discuss process, and while staying within the metaphor of the art in our conversation, a deeper meaning of the discomfort of uncertainty, the idea of change, and of things being temporary was able to be worked through together and held or contained in a safe way in the art. gosh, i love art therapy.

next time, we’ll each get our own canvases — then i’ll see what develops. my guess is that it’ll be a whole different ballgame, but i wonder what might happen. on his web site, stuart cubley writes: “the process arts are uniquely effective in facilitating the inner imperative because they are:

• non goal oriented: they do not depend on a stereotype or formula.
• non-rational: they rely on greater reality than logic
• unpredictable: they face us immediately with the unknown
• transformative: they remove us from habitual patterns of behavior
• insight producing: they stimulate a more comprehensive perception
• freeing: they expose the restricting ways of the inner critic”

documenting changes during the process with her own camera

go forth and trust the process.

let me know what unfolds…