paint cut paste

all of our days are artful… but not every day includes an “art activity” to share with you, per se. here are some of the creative and lovely things that have been happening around our house thus far this week that are worth a visual share…

chalk drawing al fresco

mushroom spotting

portraits in frames

momma's inked rocks in process

impromptu pen drawing on the grocery list paper

gathering flowers & herbs in the backyard (with matching pedis a la momma)

coloring mandalas

"hey mommy, i made a bear out of rocks!"

chillin' with a ladybug

flowers & the potential of unpainted wood

take time to notice the small things & happy creating!

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.

this one is another fun nature walk exercise… perfect for toddlers who are enthralled with their letters. and what letters are little ones first drawn to? the ones that spell their own name, of course!

after the rain stopped today, we went on a walk down our street and used our imaginations to have a scavenger hunt for letters. the ones that spell her name: N O V I! she was all about this task!

we found several combinations in nature… (this was a rule that she made up at first: that the letters had to be from natural objects.) you may have to be a little flexible when visualizing the N… it’s a tricky one.

after that, we found her name spelled out in signs we saw on our street…

then we came inside, and novi was still on a roll. so she found her name inside our house.

such visual, stimulating, educational fun! this is a great task for letter recognition and using those little big imaginations!

light is one of my most favorite art materials – ah, photography. so i just wanted to let you know of a little photoblog of which i am a part. my friend in colorado, katie, and i (in california) co-created a blog where we each take a photo at the same time every afternoon. it doesn’t matter where we are, or what we are doing, we take a snapshot of it. it has been such a wonderful exercise in coming back to the present moment, taking a look around, and finding a point of view. we share our photos each evening on our photoblog. it is titled in this instant.

follow along with us by subscribing to our rss feed… it’s the easiest blog you’ll ever read – there are no words. unless you count the 1,000 that each picture is worth. enjoy!

on a warm spring day in the backyard, novi made up a game that she simply called “interesting things.” it’s really just a natural treasure hunt… but it made for quite the beautiful nature collage.

we took turns hunting for “interesting things” in our backyard. she made up a rule that we could not pick anything – it had to already be on the ground. each time we found something, we had to “place it gently on the board. gently, gently…”

we had to hide our eyes while the other one found an object and placed it on the board. then we had to look at the board to try to figure out what was new each time, which got harder as we gathered more things.

i just loved this kid-initiated activity – and it resulted in a lovely nature collage installation, however temporary it may be. (at least photos aren’t!)

gotta love her paint cut paste shirt - click this photo to get yours!

our collaborative masterpiece with mother nature

i recently posted a poll on the paintcutpaste.com facebook fan page (hello sweet fans! thank you for your support!!!) about what your child’s favorite art material is. my comment was that novi’s favs are watercolors and crayons. what was i thinking?! most of the art done in my house is so very temporary… it’s on the MAGNA-DOODLE!

sun, person, flowers (36 months)

she adores this thing – has ever since she was about 18 months old, i recall. she has worn out the pens on at least three of them so far. by that, i mean that she draws so much with it that the coating comes off the tip of the pen and it starts to scratch the drawing surface.

"just a guy" (32 months)

i find that documenting and keeping record of novi’s magna-doodle art has allowed me to really see her chronological artistic development. because it is the simplest graphic medium – black lines on a grayish-white surface – i am able to really pay attention to how her lines and forms progress without a whole lot of variables. we leave novi’s out on the coffee table at all times in our house, and often that’s where she can be found. sure, the art is meant to change and move and grow and be erased and redrawn, but i encourage parents and caregivers out there to maybe take photos every week or every month over time to really witness the beauty of your child’s visual language unfolding over time. so fascinating!

some of the first people she drew (31 months)

a person, 5 weeks later (32.5 months)

a person with features, holding flower, duck, sun, cloud, groundline, and text; 3.5 months later (36 months)

i also enjoy how novi tells stories while drawing on the magna-doodle. it is fun to sit and listen to her creative process unfold, as she is still young enough that her internal dialog is expressed verbally. (oh how i’ll miss hearing that as she grows older!) some of the fun magna-doodle stories have been:

"this astronaut is flying with the birds!" (33 months)

"the mommy sun is feeding pomegranates to her baby suns" (32 months)

my personal fav: the day the "balloon boy" story broke, we told novi about it and this was her depiction of what happened (32 months)

another fun piece of magna-doodling is how novi is using it to practice writing her letters alllll the time. she makes up words quite a bit by stringing letters together on the screen and asking me what she spelled.

left: mirror - right: magna-doodle. odd. (33 months)

the amazing graduate school i attended to study transpersonal art therapy, naropa university, was buddhist-oriented. i consider myself somewhat buddhish; however, one of the many areas where i fall short of  the whole buddhist philosophy is how to handle the transient nature of a magna-doodle image. i just can’t let go of these masterpieces that novi creates. thus the obsessive photographing of this little fischer price toy, and entire web photo albums dedicated to her magna-doodle pieces on our private family site. i even added some to my i only have the account so i can see others’ photos flickr page, click here if you want to see more, though i realize this is a photo-heavy entry already. (they’re just too fun!)

happy doodling!