paint cut paste

who knew that when novi found the regular old pencil i put in her colored pencil cup, a new favorite medium would be born?

she’s been keeping it simple over here for a coupla days now… just doing basic line drawings with a pencil and some scrap paper i keep in a bin on her art desk.

while novi draws, she always narrates what is going on in the picture and what the characters are saying, in different voices and such.it’s fascinating to watch.

i will share a few (of the stack that’s collecting) of her little scenes – so fun!

festival with bounce-house, daddy with cotton candy, novi with balloons, and mommy with her camera (what else would i have?)

walrus jumping rope while a bird brings her (easter) eggs to a nest

novi feeding our cats their dinner bowls, but the cats are mad (see wagging tail) because a yeti has caught a person in a lasso

L to R: bird with a present, ant, spider climbing tree trunk to his web, bee, butterfly, flowers

she even made a little birthday card for our cat, bean, who turned 9 on sunday… just one day before novi turned 3.5 years old this past monday, the 26th – (yes, those half-birthdays are a big deal, right?)

she wrote the message and drew a picture of herself playing with bean with the laser cat toy

the other night she began to add some color to a few line drawings she did, using her crayons. i am really into this artistic development going on over here!

our cat, bean, giving iridessa (the light-talent fairy) a rainbow tube

so for this one, i’m willing to bet you’ve got all the materials you need!

you spin me right round, baby right round… what a flashback i had today to my own childhood artistic joys. i remember being at a carnival when i was probably around novi’s age and discovering the joys of spin art!

we received this alex fantastic spinner as a gift a while back, and i just pulled it out for the first time today. this is a great set – it comes with the hand-powered (kid-powered!) spinner machine, papers, cards, and red, yellow, green, and blue paint in squirty tubes.

i realize that this could totally be a great DIY activity, deeming the product absolutely unnecessary, and i say go for it if you’re a person who has a salad spinner to spare, some empty squirty bottles, and some tempra or acrylic paints (that you may want to water down a bit.) but i am not a person with a spare salad spinner (or even a salad spinner at all) unfortunately. therefore, this was a fun gift to receive for myself novi.

we both had a great time! mostly, i hand-powered the machine while she squirted the paint wherever she wanted…. though we took turns a couple of times where she powered the spinner and i squirted the colors.

talk about multitasking - i spun with one hand, photographed with the other

there were many little ooooohs and aaaaahs each time the spinner stopped and novi saw her creation.

each of them lovely bursting rainbows!

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.

we haven’t done a whole lot of printmaking and stamping lately, but when i saw this post on make. believe., i was re-inspired!

novi and i collected hard, round surfaces from the kitchen on which to paint with acrylic paints. we came up with a few options. this is one of those activities for which i’m sure you already have all of the materials laying around your house. if not, improvise! (you can use pie pans, shoebox lids, paper plates for surfaces, and fingers or pencil erasers instead of q-tips.)

then we had fun mixing colors and covering the bottom of pie pans with a thick layer of acrylic paint using 1″ wide, flat paintbrushes. (sure, a brayer would have been nice, but somehow we don’t have one.)

"mommy, did you know that when you mix purple and magenta, you get beautifulness?"

next, we drew our designs onto the bottom of the pans, carving away the paint with cotton swabs (yes, q-tips. how well-marketed is that brand that their brand name is the common name we most often use? wow.)

"i'm making paint pie!" novi said, as she drew a fish with bubbles in the paint

then we pressed the bottoms onto different sizes of white paper.

(yep, she's writing her name with the paint-soaked q-tip on the print)

next we tried using a paper plate (leftover from her january birthday party) to do the same.

we got similar results with the paper plate as the ones we got with pie pans. (my tip any of these surfaces is just to spread the paint on very thick, and make sure the q-tip really carves away the paint when drawing your design.)

"this one is a person with a bird flying above"

lastly, we got out a cupcake tin that we only use for art, and decided to paint each one a different color.

then novi drew designs on each cupcake bottom. she picked simple things to draw like hearts, suns, moons, flowers, leaves, waves, spirals, etc.

we pressed the cupcake pan twice onto a large sheet of paper, and voila!

the designs came out looking abstract and charmingly weathered. i love how these prints turned out as beautiful mandalas!

hanging outside in the playhouse to dry

this one began as a simple request by my little artist in residence: “last night i was thinking about drawing a ballerina using white and peach crayons, but those colors never show up!” so i suggested that we get out different colors of paper and she could draw with any and all of the drawing tools she has.

i brought out many colors and sizes of paper i have stashed. some construction paper, some were those little packs of card stock scraps you can buy cheaply. i put her crayons, colored pencils, and oil pastels out on the table.

then she got to draw the ballerina she had imagined… and said, ”you know, if i think hard enough, i can see what i want to draw in the air before i draw it.”

another dancer came after that (which she said is an image of herself)

then she changed themes and drew a very cool picture on black paper that she titled, “night surfing”

and made an image of a chocolate ice cream cone as a gift for our friends.

so as simple as this blog entry is, it is merely a reminder that it’s fun to switch it up sometimes and bust out all sorts of papers to draw on… it inspires kids’ imaginations in different ways and new images arise. try it out and see what emerges…

novi came home from preschool the other day with the cutest little fishy! all of the credit for this simple craft goes to her amazing preschool teacher for creating fun art projects around this month’s underwater theme. i just thought this easy fish was super-charming!

this is truly a painting, cutting, pasting exercise, so i had to feature it here on paint cut paste! i’m not big on purchasing or using paper plates in my home, but if you’ve got some lying around, this is a nice way to repurpose those last few into fun works of art. (and for that next birthday party, be kind to the earth and use washable plates!) all you need to do is cut a triangle out of one side of the plate (making the mouth) and then tape, glue, or staple it to the opposite side of the fish (to make the tail.)

then paint away… for these fish, novi’s classmates used a dollop of silver metallic (almost pearly) non-toxic, water-based activity paint mixed with liquid watercolors. then the kids glued large sequins onto the fish (for shiny scales) and a big googly eye. voila! a school of rainbow fish at school!

i could see these hanging at different lengths from the ceiling for a sea-themed birthday party decoration. novi enjoyed doing this so much at school that this little green guy won’t likely be the only fish in our sea.