paint cut paste

i’ve had a pack of bleeding art tissue paper in my art supply stash for a while – unopened. the other day seemed like a great time to break it out and make some colorful “paintings” with it!

N and i cut and tore various colors from the large sheets of tissue paper. we then arranged them onto white cardstock-weight paper. N opted for a graphic mix of shapes and colors, while i attempted a sunset-over-water scene.

after the tissue paper was arranged on our pages, N got some practice with the squirt bottle while spraying our pictures with water.

she had so much fun with it that she found some narrow strips of paper and asked if she could make bookmarks this way. sure! (repeat process.) then we enjoyed watching the colors blend and ooze across the wet paper.

we let the “paintings” dry outside while we ate dinner.

after dinner N pulled the tissue paper off of the pictures. our results were lovely and somewhat unexpected. we found that the reds, greens, and some of the blues transferred very well, but the yellow blocked out all color and registered as white, whereas the orange created yellow prints.

i’m wondering if we’d get more saturated results if we added a bit of white vinegar to our water squirt bottle…? maybe next time. have you tried printmaking in this way?

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!

this quick craft was born out of our need for more magnets to hold up the art on our fridge! bonus: a set of these makes for a lovely, personalized mother’s day, father’s day, or teacher appreciation gift!

N found some lovely, flat, lightweight rocks (sandstone) at the beach a few weeks ago which seemed like the perfect natural material for lovely magnets.

we got out our ink pads and N made some colorful thumbprints on the rocks.

i doodled a few different critters on the thumbprint with a sharpie after N ran off to play elsewhere, though in retrospect (yikes!) i really should have let her capable hands do this! momma couldn’t resist – i love fingerprint art.

(psst - my amazingly talented fiber artist friend, kenden, wove this cloth for me on her loom)

we used elmer’s household cement to secure a little magnet to the backs of the rocks.

now our fridge is all kinds of fingerprint fancy!

oh, are you wondering about what the frog magnet says? it’s to remind us of thich nhat hanh’s concept of froglessness.

i’m so psyched to be guest blogging today over at chalk in my pocket! (thanks, regina!) i’ve shared a project that’s great for earth day — it involves a nature walk, painting leaves, printmaking, and beautifying our backyard. go check out how we made our leaf print garden flags!

happy earth day tomorrow, everyone! how do you celebrate our planet?

N has been in a particularly creative mood these past few days, as she has been sick and mildly feverish. she does some of her best imagining in that somewhat warm-brained altered state. today i found a stash of old construction paper wedged between some files, and N and i decided to break out the acrylics and make some paintblots.

i suppose this is similar to rorschach’s inkblot test – or at least the images look that way. i just want to note here, for the record, that rorschach’s name was in no way mentioned in my three years of graduate level art therapy training, so i wasn’t doing this as an art assessment whatsoever. just playing with paint and paper and N’s imagination!

she had lots of fun choosing paper and paint colors and squeezing the paint onto the paper.

then folding, patting, pushing, squishing the paint around in between the fold.

and opening the papers back up to reveal the surprise of a design! “i love not knowing what it will look like!” she said, as she opened fold after fold.

she did some simple ones using one color.

"blue butterfly"

N also explored using several colors with two different techniques: 1) all at once and then fold and 2) folding between each color.

"an angel with a big heart"

they revealed some really amazing images, and i loved hearing about what they each looked like to N.

in her words, (L to R, top to bottom) they are:

1. fire breaking into a nest of yellow eggs
2. janice (from electric mayhem) with big colorful eyes and big lips
3. an angel with a big heart
4. a fox face
5. two bunnies giving each other eggs
6. a baby
7. a butterfly
8. the ocean
9. ribs or bones (looks like hip bones to me!)
10. a turkey about to clap
11. blue butterfly
12. someone saying “mmmmm”

this is an easy and fabulously fun way to spark creativity! while paint is wet, you can add sequins or glitter. and after the paintblots are dry, it would be fun to embellish the images or scene with crayons or markers. these would make excellent t-shirts! maybe next time we’ll do this with fabric paints…

what would you do with a series of paintblots?

two of N’s boy friends from preschool celebrated their fifth birthday this month. when i asked N what she wanted to get for them, she said, “i want to make them both a shirt.” um, okay – let’s do that!

i got a good deal on solid, plain tees at old navy ($5 each when you buy more than one – we bought three. one for each boy and, of course, one for N. ah, preschoolers. sigh.) the boys’ shirts had a pocket on the front, which meant we’d be printing the design on the back. N reeeeally wanted to put their name on the front, but we compromised on each kid’s initial on the pocket. she hunted for letters in our cardboard letter stash.

when i asked N what each boy might want on his shirt, she replied that they are both really into firetrucks. so, i cut some cardboard into what i thought kinda sorta resembled a firetruck shape…? humor me.

then N painted the firetruck cut-out with a thick coat of red fabric paint, using a paintbrush and not a roller. we weren’t very pro with this job, but it was fun and it worked in the end.

we pressed it onto the backs of the shirts. because we did this on a whim, and used what we had in a pinch, we didn’t really think through the materials too well ahead of time. i used a corrugated shipping box to cut the firetruck out, so it came out kind of striped. eh.

i had to fill in the spaces with a paintbrush.

to make the ladder, N painted a wooden craft stick with blue paint and we pressed it on twice, with a shorter stick for rungs. this is pretty much the thing that helped it resemble a firetruck.

now it was time to make N’s shirt. she decided she wanted a “rainbow horse shirt!” thankfully, we had a package of these great horse shaped cardboard cut-outs. she painted one into a stripey rainbow, kinda like the birthday sign she made for her 4th.

because the horse was not on corrugated cardboard, and because i put a large, flat, hardcover book under the shirt when we pressed it, it turned out pretty well!

we let these dry for 4 hours, then waited 72 hours to turn them inside out and wash them (per the fabric paint instructions.) voila – custom birthday gifts for the guys, and a sweet tee for my little lady!

spring is one of my favorite seasons! it brings such colorful flowers and such beautiful art! in thinking about daylight savings time coming before the spring equinox this year (this sunday!), it seems like we’re all so READY for spring to arrive!

so i thought i’d publish a little round-up of some of our favorite art activities we’ve done in springs gone by…

nesting orbs – help pimp the nests of our little birdie friends

make some fancy flowerpots

create a personalized springy tote bag (great mom’s day or teacher’s gift idea!)

upcycle with paper roll flowers

get your paws into some cherry blossom prints

tiz the season to weave some beautiful strawberry basket bins

create some blooming paper!

and we’re up for sooo much more springy art this year! stay tuned!