paint cut paste

one of our favorite holiday cards this year was made by a dear friend and her little artist, and it inspired this project… painting/stamping with cookie cutters!

first we selected some cookie cutters (mostly stars, moons, and hearts… we were working with a few themes) and some construction paper.

we put a pool of paint onto a paper plate. then novi just dipped the cookie cutters in the paint and novi stamped away!

novi stamped some hearts that i’m sure we’ll use for valentine’s day in some way.

we decided to use the stars and moons to wrap the friend’s birthday present, and it made really cute gift wrap!

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 novi 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…

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

novi 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.

red romaine

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.