paint cut paste

spring has sprung, and with the new season comes freshness and color all around our home. from mantel decorating to watercoloring wooden easter eggs and greeting cards to ink painting on beautiful smooth stones, it has been an artful and colorful spring so far around my home. my favorite hue is the inspiration for our spring mantel…

i used elements i saved from N’s nest-themed baby nursery to adorn the mantel, like the distressed iron bird candle holders and this robin’s egg blue nest plate.

isn't this beeswax egg candle beautiful?! it was a birthday gift from N's friend. (click photo to find one on bella luna toys for your home! nope, i don't get paid for that.)

N even made a spring “mantel” of her own on her bedroom dresser, just like she did for valentine’s day and st. patrick’s day.

we’ve been playing with watercolors a lot more since spring began… maybe it’s all of the rain that’s putting us in the mood for them. march showers bring… april showers…?

N's weather paintings on a rainy saturday morning

N is enjoying our annual spring tradition of watercoloring wooden eggs that we get from casey’s wood. i’ve posted about it twice, so i’ll just mention it here with the link to say, yep, we’re doing that again. they make for sweet spring gifts for little friends.

all our eggs in one basket

N has also been playing with liquid watercolors in the afternoons… mostly doing some wet-on-wet watercoloring and making sticker resist greeting cards.

i’ve been dabbling a bit in my acrylic inks, taking inspiration from geninne and inking some smooth stones we found on the beach. (i’m looooving the pale green stones!)

i’ve also been having lots of fun beading, needle-felting, and doing some light sewing… nothing to write home blogs about really. just the usual that i’ve blogged on before, but loving the rebirth of creativity i’m feeling this spring!

and i love that we got to bring out the spring placemats we made  – snaaaaails and flowers!

in the photo above you see my  sunday breakfast i saw on dr. oz – a 5 minute microwave muffin. it totally tasted like sand until i added the butter and honey, but gosh, i felt healthy! click the link to try it out. (i may add a little cocoa powder to mine next time.)

what sort of colorful inspiration is springing up around your home? 

wool roving is quickly becoming one of our favorite art materials around here. N learned how to felt stones at school recently, to make them into colorful, fuzzy eggs for spring. she came home all excited to teach me and my husband how to make some, too. so we let her lead in teaching us this activity.

first we gathered supplies: egg-shaped smooth stones (we have collected tons of beach rocks perfect for this,) colorful wool roving, a bowl of warm, soapy water, and a towel.

each of us selected a stone with which to work, and we each chose a first color of wool. i wasn’t able to take step-by-step photos of this because my hands were soon wet and soapy, but it’s pretty easily explained and if you want a photo tutorial, there’s a good one here on lil fish studios blog.

we spread out the wool and wrapped the first layer around the rock until it covers the stone entirely. you can use a felting needle to close the seam here, if you’d like, but it’s unnecessary. then we dipped the stone into the bowl of warm soapy water. once it was wet, we tossed the wet stone back and forth between our hands. it’s a gentle, repetetive motion of back and forth, which can be very soothing.

kid hands, husband hands

you can even squirt some liquid soap into your palms for this part, if you’d like. after the wool seems to adhere together a bit, wrap your second color around the stone in the same way and repeat. you might not want to cover the first color entirely – it’s fun to see it show through.

back and forth

we chose to wrap our rocks with three colors each. after they were wrapped, we put them on a plate to dry. N informed us it would take “a whole day plus a night” to dry.

she was right – in about 24 hours our egg/rocks were dry… and oh so cute!

since we made ours as egg shapes and in spring colors, they are so wonderful with our spring/easter decorations! i’d love to make some solid color ones (like she did on lil fish studios) as pretty stone gifts, too.

large one on left is N's egg, small ones in nest are my husband's and mine

a few evenings ago, we noticed a little bag of silver pendants in our art cabinet that we had yet to use — and i have my friend, rachelle of tinkerlab, to thank for passing them along to us! so, thank you, tinkerfriend, for these great blank “canvases” of the jewelry variety! they provided N and i with some enjoyment, as we decided how we wanted to design our pendants.

N wanted to make a “nature one” and a “beady one.” so we gathered some pebbles and shells from random buckets of beach treasures that are still in our backyard.

then N rooted through my seed bead collection and found some colors she liked.

she arranged the seed beads in the circular metal pendant, and put a white shell in the center of the square one with some pebbles and a few random neutral beads around it.

once she had them arranged how she wanted them, i squirted dimensional magic onto each, and let it dry for 3 hours. after it dried and encrusted all of these jewels to keep them in place, N wore her new beautiful mandala necklace!

and she decided we should give the “nature one” to rachelle and her little artist, N, as a thank you gift.

this is just a quick little (momma art) entry about what has become a bit of an obsession of mine in the past year and a half… painting with white ink on smooth, dark stones.

stones i painted in july 2010

i first fell in love with this idea when i saw them on genine’s art blog a long while back – if you have not yet visited this amazing blog, check it out! sooo inspiring! although little rock paintings are not a new idea and they’re all over the internet. i figured i’d share them with you here regardless. mostly because i love creating them — even though it’s intricate work, i find it very relaxing and soothing. i love to look at the stones and let them inform me, by their shape, color, and texture, what sort of image might live on them.

i like to use white acrylic ink and a script liner brush when i paint mine. recently, i purchased some different inks in sepia, gray, and turquoise, so i’ll experiment with those on rocks soon. (N and i have already played with inks on red clay pottery.) for some reason, N has yet to paint with the inks on rocks with me, but i imagine she’ll join me soon.

these make for easy and personal gifts for birthdays, thank yous, hostess tokens, etc. and it gives me something fun to do with all of the lovely stones i can’t stop picking up along the pacific coastline.

a few weeks ago, decoart was kind enough to send us this awesome package of free art supplies, and among them was glow-in-the-dark paint! of course this was N’s big favorite, so we decided to use it to celebrate with our friend deborah over at teach preschool today, who has reached 20,000 facebook likes! she is seriously stellar – go check out her blog if you don’t already — congrats deborah!

thank you for inviting us to join you in the ABCs. today N and i are presenting the letter N for Night light! when i asked my N what she wanted to do with the glow paint, she immediately said, “paint rocks!” hmm, okay. why not!? we got all set up with a few big stones.

and painted them with this milky yellow-green paint on both sides.

we also decided that we’d use some of these tiny pebbles as a glowy treat.

we let them dry (and charge up) in the sun.

once dry, we put the pebbles in an adorable tiny honey jar and the stones on the windowsill to soak up some more rays.

then it was the moment of truth — do they glow? we tested it out in our window-less guest bathroom, and YEP! glowy rocks!

pardon the shaky long exposure photo

okay, so maybe not the most useful night lights, as the luminescence isn’t that intense, but they are like magical phosphorescent stones that N is psyched to put on her night stand, next to her real glass-encased glow-in-the-dark jellyfish from the monterey bay aquarium! what kid doesn’t love things that glow?

i’ve been wanting to try this one for a while now… and we finally did! remember that plethora of stones we got from the beach recently? well, we chose a few…

and baked them and colored on them with crayons. visit our guest post all about it over on moms by heart.

today i have the absolute pleasure and honor of guest blogging on one of my super-duper-favorite blogs, mamaroots! chris willow, of mamaroots, is a talented toymaker extraordinaire and such an inspiring writer, healer, and momma!

chris makes these beautiful wooden toys, which bless our home in just about every nook and cranny… so what on earth was i thinking when the art material i shared on her blog was WOOD when i know nearly nothing about woodworking!?? haha! perhaps it is the inspiration of chris and our lovely pacific coastline with its magical driftwood…

but i was called to post this simple driftwood mobile we created as a family. it’s a paired-down, less-is-more version of the beach treasure mobile we shared here last week. don’t you love how mobiles are all about moving in the wind and all about balance? please hop over to mamaroots to check out my guest post over there today.

so easy, so lovely. so perfect for father’s day.

*wink wink*