paint cut paste

it’s march and we have pink, white, and yellow blooms all over our neighborhood here – signs of spring!

tree in our front yard

one of my favorite spring blooms are cherry blossoms. i adore their soft pink petals. with spring in our hearts, we went to a friend’s house yesterday for a playdate. N and i brought along some simple art materials: paper, sharpies, and a pink stamp pad. because the kids were going to make fingerprints, i got the water-based, washable, kid-safe stamp pad, as opposed to the dye-based kind. i have to say that it’s not very washable anyway, and i’m disappointed that the pink my store had was more hot pink than the beautiful pale color of a cherry blossom. oh well, next time.

regardless, the girls went to town making lots of fingerprints on small rectangles of white paper.

we noticed they preferred to use just one pointer finger, so we encouraged them to use several fingers at a time to cluster the pink dots, much like the tree would have clusters of flowers. (they didn’t really care about that though.)

the more random the pink splotches, the more full and fluffy the trees turn out to look. after we had several little sheets of fingerprints, the kids were ready to play and dance, so we mommas sat down with our sharpies. we made branches connecting the little pink poufs on the page to create the cherry blossom trees.

must clarify that my tshirt was a happy matching accident - must have really had cherry blossoms on the brain!

after the playdate (and lunchtime and naptime) we gathered up some materials to glue the little tree pictures to cards, and embellish them with rhinestones, sequins, and glitter glue.

the finished cards would make sweet “happy spring!” cards or even nice mother’s day cards.

an alternative to using fingerprints would be to use a paintbrush and some (pale) pink watercolors, but i figured that when making these into cards for family, they always cherish little paw prints.

happy almost spring!

there’s nothing terribly inventive about making little creatures out of tiny (or big) fingerprints, but there’s always something irresistibly cute about it!

inky

we usually send out nearly 200 paper holiday cards each year, but this year, out of respect for our earth (and limited budget) we are creating a digital card… but then we realized that we needed a few little cards to accompany the few handmade trinkets we’re crafting for family members. so, handmade cards on recycled paper is the way to go! i got out my beloved colorbox ink in cyan and let the little one go at it, putting her little fingerprint on our cards.

then, with my beloved sharpie (can you tell these are materials i adore?) i drew the most minimal features to make her cute prints into little bluebirds of happiness.

bluebirds of happiness!

with a brush tip sepia faber-castell artist pen, i randomly sketched in some branches.

then i used the same cyan ink pad to stamp a script “joy” on the insides of the cards (stamp from my beloved paper source – oh huge crush!) and wrote little notes (and let N sign her own name to a few) for our loved ones. a sweet, personalized wintery scene to send!

i think red birds on white stock would be a lovely holiday card, as well! there are tons of other animals and characters that can be made with fingerprints – a fun idea for cards, gifts, and art in general!

then we had all of the (few) holiday cards we needed complete in an afternoon – now we just have to dream up a digital holiday card to create for all of our dear friends…

it is during this time of year, when trees are changing colors and shedding, that we often take notice again of the simple beauty of a leaf. to spend time studying and knowing the leaf, then painting the leaf. one of my favorite subjects when watercoloring is a colorful autumn leaf.

my model on left; my painting on right

i’ve also been experimenting with painting ON leaves this year, with the inspiration of geninne’s art blog. (this woman is seriously amazing! i want to live in her studio!)

leaves as canvas

we recently made leaf garland, which has such natural beauty when hung in the home. but another wonderful study of leaves is something we all did as kids: leaf rubbings. i had forgotten how simple and lovely these can be until N and i made a bunch of leaf rubbings this week. an activity that’s as basic as a leaf, a sheet of typing paper, and crayons.

also fun to cut out!

i’m enjoying the contemplative exercise of taking one natural object, in this case a leaf, and looking at it through various lenses and media. it’s even better when sharing this with a little one and seeing it from her perspective, too.

most of the handprint crafts out there involve tracing your kid’s hand and cutting it out to make it into turkey feathers or flower petals, depending on the time of year. all super-cute ideas, but i do like a good old-fashioned painted handprint.

my daughter is always a bit weirded out at first by her hands getting messy with paint (even when fingerpainting, though she’s warming up to this whole messy art idea.) once she gets into it, she’s into it.

nothing like preserving the cuteness of tiny hands in vivid colors.

page-o-paws

these always make awesome, personal framed gifts or cards for family and friends. i also love the idea of putting them on canvas, as per the item below from red envelope. (please, this is a kit? you can make this yourself!)

giving ya a hand

every time i make a salad, i think about print-making with the vegetables. (what? like you don’t? um….. oh.) i remember being a kid and carving stamps out of raw potatoes and carrots. recently, the fam has been eating a lot of romaine, and i think about printing rose shapes every time i chop off the bottom of a heart of romaine. so tonight after dinner, we went for it with the print-making. grabbed some red paint, a brush, a piece of paper, and the end of the lettuce. (dark photos = it was evening, and i hate flash.)

salad with a side of paint

N helped to paint the lettuce with red paint. ideally for stamping, one would use a brayer and ink, but paint will do the trick. it would also be ideal if you knew in advance of making salad that you wanted to stamp afterward so that you’d cut the lettuce on a straight and even plane, unlike i did tonight.

then we just pressed it onto the page, and there’s our romaine rose!

press to print

i added a few green leaves later, as a reference point for the flower, and there ya go! makes a sweet card or a frame-worthy print.