paint cut paste

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.

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.

once upon a time, i made terrariums for my friends as birthday gifts, but it’s been ages since i made one for our own house. with a sick little lady at home this week, we decided to beat the cabin fever by bringing the outdoors inside, and getting our hands dirty!

i already had a bunch of great jars from world market with tightly sealing lids. (we use them to store snacks, grains, etc.) we found a stray one, and some organic potting soil. while N (and daddy) were tasked with finding stones and toys who might want to live in our terrarium, i made a little trip to the nursery down the street for the rest of the supplies.

the types of plants who enjoy living in an enclosed, moist environment are: members of the peperomia family, pileas, miniature fern, coleus, cuban oregano, penta, tradea scentia, miniature mums. even collector plants like african violets, orchids or small begonias are great. miniature and dwarf plants work the best. i chose baby tears, a pink polka dot plant, and a small african violet. i though N would enjoy each of these.

the other things you will need are charcoal chips and pebbles (for drainage) and you can get some moss for ground cover, if you’d like. (i skipped this step, as our jar is very small and i knew the non-plant space would be covered with rocks and marbles.)

now you’re ready to create a tiny ecosystem – first start with a 1 inch layer of crushed gravel or pebbles. next sprinkle a layer of charcoal chips, enough to cover the gravel layer. top this off with 2 inches of potting soil.

then uses your fingers to gently plant your plants and place your landscaping items. we put smooth river stones, rose quartz, glass marbles, and N’s little ladybug into ours.

give it a bit of water, and close the lid. put it in a bright area of your home (but not direct sun.)

there wasn’t enough room for the baby tears plant to live in the terrarium, so i found another home for it.

i’m not the world’s best green thumb at all, but here’s some info i’ve gathered for keeping your terrarium happy:

ailments:

• yellow leaves or leaf tips turning brown – too much moisture, try taking the top off your case for a few hours a day until plants look greener.
• leaves falling off the plants – foliage is touching the glass, adjust your plants or prune when necessary
• leggy growth – not enough light (remember don’t put in direct sunlight)
• brown or black blotches – too much sun, move to lower light area
• remember also to remove dead blooms and twigs

other tips:

• you won’t need to water much, encased plants can go months without water, watch the condensation, when it becomes extremely minimal it is time to water.
• no need to fertilize – it will create toxic salts that kill plants.
• put your terrarium in a bright area, but don’t put in direct sunlight it will bake (kill) your plants. putting plants atop a television or other electronic equipment will also bake their roots.

N enjoys checking on her terrarium a few times per day, and waves hello to the ladybug in there. and bonus: this is one way to have houseplants and cats at the same time! whoo hoo!

N’s third birthday party was for pixies… that is, we did a fairy theme and all of her little friends wore their wings. we had amazing vegan fairy cake and cupcakes, made by the scrumptious bliss bakery. it was quite a shin-dig!

we had a lot of fun making the gift bags for the kids to take home.

our favorite thing in the gift bag were the fairy wands that we made for each party guest…

N’s dad went for a beautiful morning hike and collected some sticks that were about the size of pencils, from the tall, magical sequoia trees that are woven under and over us here in the bay area.

then he sawed the ends of each stick so that they were flat, and we sanded each stick just enough that it was smooth to the touch.

next, N selected special gemstones for each wand, taking care to decide which one was for which friend. we chose matching ribbons, and began our work by hot gluing the ribbons to the tips of each stick.

then i hotglued each stone to the end to insure that it stayed in place. not pretty, but it won’t show in the end. i found it to be easier to do the next step if the bead was secured.

then we wire wrapped the stones and sticks together with copper beading wire.

after that, we tied a feather to the end of one of the ribbons on each wand…

and abracadabra! our little fairies each had their own special scepter for making magic!