paint cut paste

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.

mosaics have been near and dear to my heart since my first semester of graduate school when i created a lifesize one as part of a semester-long self-exploratory “container project.” we created a small one for my daughter’s bathroom in the early days of this blog, but thought my little treasure-lover would enjoy making one for the backyard.

summer’s here and we’re in outside a lot, so we’ve been sprucing it up with handmade art and splashes of color. recently we created a garden mosaic stepping stone together, and i wrote a guest blog about it for the good hands community. click over to check out our step by step process of how and why we created this piece.

the theme of our mosaic was around this quote my mom has shared with me: “there are two lasting bequests we can give our children: one is roots, the other is wings.”

can you tell N had a hand in creating this according to good ol’ ROY G BIV? i adore my little rainbow lover – a girl after my own heart.

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!

top o’ the mornin’ to ya, lads & lasses! just a little luck & cheer from my weee bit (1/8th) irish lady one who drew this lovely little leprechaun to celebrate the season:

while she drew the rest of what you see below, she told me this: “that’s me behind her, catching the leprechaun! did you know that if you catch a leprechaun, she has to give you all of her gold?”

happy st. patty’s day to all!

you, dear readers, may recall the huge frame that N and i painted as a prop for her rainbow-themed fourth birthday party.

well, this lovely rainbow ikea frame was just calling to us for some original artwork to fill it. N was up for the task! we started by painting a lavender (N’s choice) watercolor wash onto a heavy weight piece of drawing paper. N wanted to background of her mixed media picture to be purple like her bedroom.

after the paint was dry, N wanted to draw a picture with pencil onto the page. she had an idea that she wanted to draw a porcupine wedding taking place under a decorated tree, with some animal guests.

after N drafted most of the picture in pencil, she got out our crayons and got to work coloring in this huuuge coloring page.

some of the areas were so large (like the tree trunk and some of the tree top.) that her hand got tired and she asked me to help out coloring “in the lines, mommy!” as it was progressing, the look on her excited face was priceless!

the details are fabulous, and i wanted to share a few…

dancing groom & bride

fox, mice, bunny wedding guests

mama bird, nest with eggs, and squirrel

N was pleased with the finished piece.

but even more psyched when it was framed in her bedroom!

today is N’s 4th birthday – happy birthday to my sweet little artist! last weekend, per her request, we had a rainbow art birthday party. i was THRILLED at her choice of party themes, as i, myself, had a rainbow birthday party for my fifth birthday – the same year i coerced my parents into painting a rainbow on my bedroom wall and getting me rainbow sheets, while blasting “the rainbow connection” 24/7. anyway, i thought i’d share a few (well, quite a few) images from our party preparations and the party itself.

we created waldorf kite paper rainbow stars for window decorations for the party, using garden mama’s tutorial. N loved doing this, and now has them in her bedroom windows. (if these composite images seem too small to see details, click on them to open the larger version.)

another item we made for the party is a rainbow striped picture frame. i got a large, inexpensive, lightweight wooden frame at ikea, and we painted it so that it could be a prop in a “photo booth” area at the party, where i hung rainbow fabric as a backdrop and let the kids hold up the frame. a huge hit!

N and i also created shrinky dink nametag pendents for the guest’s gift bags. N had a great time decorating each kid’s nametag with colors or a theme that she knew they’d love. the nametags are necklaces that each child can wear on rainbow yarn.

the gift bags were filled with rainbowy fun toys and art materials, including some homemade snowflake (winter bday) rainbow crayons that we made like the heart ones from last valentine’s day. (you can see them in the post just before this one.)

for the party, we provided light snacks and cake, as it was between lunch and dinner, and we had 20 kids (plus parents) there! as a surprise to N, i created two different rainbow cakes. the first was a 7 layer ode-to-ROY.G.BIV cake, ordered properly according to the chakras, of course. i saw the idea on one charming party.

it turned out to be so awesome inside!

i made a second rainbow cake, which was a psychedelic swirly rainbow cake, just two layers. i saw this idea on omnomicon, but i did *not* make her sprite/weight watchers version. i just followed the cake box recipe.

on both, i kept the icing simple and just made cream cheese icing (1 8oz package of cream cheese, 1 stick of butter, and 1 lb powdered sugar, a little vanilla.) i had to triple that recipe for these 2 cakes. my talented baker friend over at bliss bakery created a dozen gluten-free, vegan rainbow cupcakes for our guests with dietary restrictions.

in addition to some good ol’ pirate booty, i made a rainbow layered fruit salad. i left out the candy – cake offers enough sugar!

since it was a rainbow ART party, of course we had a few art stations. one was a place where kids could create watercolor initial paintings, like N did when she was two years old in this post.

we also had a model magic table, with the primary colors of model magic, along with white. the kids had fun with this modeling medium, and it’s not at all messy!

we also had a table where i rolled out a large doodle roll sheet of paper and offered a couple buckets of crayons so the kids could work on a mural together.

we found that playsilks make for beautiful window decor…

and helped to warm up the entry area. (p.s. – this isn’t our home. it’s my friend’s condo’s clubhouse room.)

the kids had a ton of fun… and let’s be real. there was more running than art-making at the art party.

the birthday girl had the most fun of all!

there’s a window in N’s playhouse outside that gets amazing afternoon light… it was begging for some prismatic suncatchers!

i found these cool crystal pieces from an old chandelier ages ago at an antique flea market for maybe a buck each, if that. they seemed like perfect little rainbow-making charms to drop from the bottom of each of our three light-catching strands. because we used nylon bead cord, i just tied a knot to the little loops at the end of the chandelier pieces, and added beads from there. (if you use bead wire, you can rig it like you would the end of a necklace.)

being a formerly avid beader, i have a stash of bead string and wire around the art room, as well as plenty of random cheesy plastic and glass sparkly beads that little girls like to play with. if you head to michael’s or check on amazon.com, you are likely to find a large pack of plastic sparkly beads for a few dollars. mirrored pieces are nice, too, but i didn’t have any for this.

one night, after dinner, N and i made a bowl of the most colorful and reflective beads we could find. (because we did this in the evening, the photos look darker. sorry. i’m not a fan of using flash.) N had plenty of fun just putting her hands in the bowl to feel the beads – like a tiny sensory table.

she searched for treasures to thread onto our bead cord.

we made three strands of totally random color order and all different lengths.

we tied loops in the top of them so that the next day we could hang them from nails in the wall of the shed-turned-playhouse above the window.

they’re already making rainbows all over the walls in the afternoon sunshine… love it!