paint cut paste

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!

as you all may recall, we got a great package from decoart this summer containing lotsa artsy fun. someone in our house was definitely psyched about this surprise! we have made a few projects so far with these materials — like our first day of school chalkboard sign:

and our glow-in-the-dark rocks:

while there’s still much more fun to be had under our roof with these goodies, i thought we’d share the artsy love by giving some supplies away to you, dear readers! many of these giveaway items are part of our decoart surprise package and others are from our own overflowing stash. i am so thankful that you’re here, sharing in our artventures and continuing to provide me with amazing feedback and inspiration. enter to win some tangible tokens of my gratitude:

• decoart 8oz chalkboard paint (not pictured – oops)
• three 8oz bottles of decoart acrylic paint in the primary colors (red, yellow, blue)
• three 4oz bottles of decoart stencil paint in fuchsia, yellow, and turquoise
• decoart flower stencil set
• decoart glow-in-the-dark puffy paint
• decoart pearlizing medium – 2oz (fun to add to your acrylic paint to give it a shimmery glow)
• rose art rainbow swirl pencil set
• package of twelve #2 pencils
• 4 color ballpoint pen
• a little jar of pixie dust, for art-making magic!
• and one other very cool surprise…

DRAWING IS NOW CLOSED.

you can enter the giveaway drawing up to five times by doing one, a few, or all of the ideas below:

• entry #1: leaving a comment below telling us what you’d like to paint with chalkboard paint
• entry #2: like us on facebook & comment below to tell us you have
• entry #3: follow us on twitter & comment below to let us know you have
• entry #4: follow us on pinterest & comment below to let us know you have (i’d love to know your pinterest link so i can follow you back, too!)
• entry #5: share this giveaway on your own blog, your facebook wall, or twitter page and let us know you have by commenting below

apologies to all of my friends in other countries (who i also deeply appreciate,) but i can only ship these goodies within the continental USA. i will use a random number generator to choose a number of the winning comment on the autumn equinox – friday, september 23rd, at 9pm pacific/midnight eastern. be sure to leave your email address with your comments so that i can contact you if you win!

THE WINNER IS MANDY:

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! )

okay, so who among us hasn’t repinned this okra stamping tip junkie pin yet?

idea from newhouseproject.com featured on tip junkie

i pinned it a while back, and like most of my pins, considered it collected among zillions of ideas i may never get to. until tonight when i was cutting up okra — one of N’s absolute favorite foods of all time!

when i cut the tops off, i put them aside in a bowl. then gathered up some random scrap paper, squirted out two paint colors of N’s choosing, and let her have at it while our homemade gluten free pizza baked in the oven.

i probably could have cut the okra to have smoother, flatter surfaces. i probably could have picked out the seeds to make cleaner prints. i probably could have added a medium to my paints to thin them out. but i did not because i was frying okra. and that’s okay.

okra really is so cool looking.

the prints turned out kinda cool regardless of my jagged cutting and haphazardly thrown together while okra burns in the oil on stove art project.

a few days later. we made them into thank you notes and a birthday card.

we’ll likely try again another day with less of a time crunch and more planning. regardless, the fried okra was delish!

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!