paint cut paste

over spring break in april, it was time for me to plant some potted herbs for the season. with all of the fairy house excitement as of late, N wanted to make them into “fairy herb gardens,” naturally.

even without her own pinterest account, this trend seemed to seep into the consciousness of my 5-year-old. go figure. first we potted the herbs into two large pots. N said that she would decorate the basil and rosemary pot, and the other (sage, cilantro, and parsley) was for me to adorn. i felt honored to get to do one, as i assumed she’d do both. yay!

she decided we needed our shrinky dink herb tags here, but the ones we made a couple years ago weren’t the same types of herbs, so we spent an afternoon making new shrinky dink tags. (easy steps: scribble with colored pencil on rough side, cut shape, write herb name with sharpie on smooth side, heat shrink, stick in soil.)

then it was time for the houses. i gave her a choice of using natural materials (like she does in the yard) or painting some wooden birdhouses we have ($1 bin at michael’s.) she chose the painted route, and we got to work on our fairy houses.

next we gathered up some items for landscaping… like colorful marbles, stones, shells, sea glass, and even a few of the lovely painted sticks we made a couple years ago. N excitedly designed her fairy herb pot.

she spent a lot of time getting everything just right for the fairies. what a hostess!

the herb pots are so darn sweet… and we’ve spent some time over the past month (has it been that long!!!??!) clipping sprigs of herbs for our dinners and sprucing up the fairy neighborhoods.

my little fairy-lover has been making fairy houses out of natural materials for months. she loves to create them, and then check back in on them the following day to see if she sees signs of fairy activity. (sometimes the “fairies” leave colorful marbles or sparkly treasures for her overnight. *wink*) i just love these spontaneous nature creations that can happen without purchasing any materials or having any agenda. open-ended, outdoor art supreme!

on a recent family picnic in the park sort of sunday, she worked hard to create a fairy house at the base of a redwood tree.

she also loves making them in our backyard…

and adding to this one in her school yard during outside playtime…

do your little ones like to create little homes in nature? i’d love to hear about what you’re making. for some really sweet inspiration, we love this book on fairy houses. it’s one of our go-to bedtime reads at the moment. stay tuned for our fairy herb garden, coming up on the blog in a coupla days…

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

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.