paint cut paste

okay, i can’t pass this one off as art, but it was so much fun that i had to share. aaaand, we checked off one of our summer activity cards today — water balloons!

someone was psyched!

we (uh, okay just me) got soaked trying to fill the water balloons with the hose, and then we had a great time with them!

the first batch

novi had a great time watering the plants with them…

and watering ME with them…

watering the grass with them…

watering the garden wall with them…

there was also some degree of self-sacrafice involved

we were sure to gather up all of the balloon pieces when we were finished so that no animals would eat them. novi gave them a new life by making little blankets out of them for her marbles (creative lady.)

happy water ballooning this summer!

is your mouth watering already? on a spring trip to harley farms in pescadero, ca, i tried the tastiest goat cheese i’ve ever had in my life – lavender honey goat cheese. this got me thinking that i should look into making some lavender honey ice cream in my ice cream maker at home. so we did.

we grow organic lavender in our backyard… the same lavender we have been using for lavender wands. it’s not technically culinary lavender (which i think you can get in a box at wholefoods?) but i figured it’s good enough. we grew it, we do not spray our yard, it’s organic. novi helped me to harvest the lavender as it is beginning to dry out, while we dodged the bees the entire time.

we hung a bit to dry in our kitchen for several days while i researched recipes. i found one on epicurious.com that seems to be quite universal, as it is repeated on so many other web sites exactly the same way. so we tried it out. here tiz:

ingredients:

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 2 cups half-and-half
• 2 tablespoons dried edible lavender flowers
• 1/2 cup light honey
• 2 egg yolks
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

method:
cook the half-and-half and cream on medium heat until warm, do not let it come to a boil. turn off the heat, add the lavender to the pot, cover and let steep for half an hour.

after flowers have steeped, strain the liquid and discard the flowers. add to the liquid the honey and heat on medium low until honey has dissolved. again, do not let liquid come to a boil!

beat the egg yolks with the vanilla, lemon juice, lemon zest and salt. stir into the eggs 1/2 cup of the warm liquid and then add the entire egg mixture back to the pot.

heat this on medium low for five minutes or until it gets slightly thick. you’ll know it’s ready when it coats the back of your spoon. (honestly, mine got a little curdy and didn’t stick to the spoon even after a long time heating, but i proceeded anyway.) cool in the refrigerator for four hours. freeze and churn according to your ice-cream maker’s instructions.

this makes a quart of ice cream… though i thought it tasted more like a custard than an ice cream. some people find the lavender taste to be kind of soap-like or incense-esque. admittedly, it is quite strong, but i enjoyed the super-rich treat! to be fancy, you can serve it with a drizzle of warm honey and a sprig of lavender. yum!

someone loved it... down to the last drop!

you know i adore my brilliant and inspirational bloggy friend, pink & green mama. this weekend, she will begin selling an awesome art lesson plan booklet (in pdf form) called “ocean fun art camp lesson plans” on her blog. we got our hands on an advance copy – how special is that? you can get a copy, too! read on – there’s a juicy giveaway* at the end of this blog entry… (*closed as of 7/23/10 midnight)

we have already done pink & green mama’s wooden mermaid clothespin dolls that are featured in the booklet, and they were a huge hit over here! these little sea maidens continue to provide hours of playtime enjoyment.

remember these? they're in the book!

novi and i looked through the great instructional photos illustrating each super-inventive exercise in pink & green mama’s booklet. novi picked one that she wanted to try out today (and she graciously said we can save the other 11 art activities in the book for tomorrow. we’re gonna be busy over here!) this afternoon we experimented with bubble wrap ocean printing!

we followed pink & green mama’s very clear instructions to paint the bubble wrap on the bumpy side with washable acrylic paint. novi chose many shades of blues, greens, and purple and decided to apply it in a stripey pattern.

after novi painted the bubble wrap, she pressed it onto cardstock. (you can use any paper thick enough to hold up to acrylic paint.) it made the greatest bubbly ocean!

pink & green mama gives detailed instructions for making your own very clever ocean-themed stamps (while recycling!) to press onto the scene; however, this time novi preferred to paint the sea creatures herself instead of printmaking. she was inspired by a trip we took to the monterey bay aquarium over the weekend – such beautiful exhibits! i have to share at least one photo with you!

gorgeous sea nettles!

novi got down to business, painting away with the acrylics and chatting about all kinds of sea animals she saw at the aquarium. this art lesson booklet is so timely — such an enriching addition to our summer fun!

we were able to make three pages of prints with just one coat of paint in the bubble wrap. each one was a bit lighter than the one before, but that made for great subtle backgrounds for the paintings.

(yep, one of them involves a girl and her dog snorkeling...?)

pink & green mama has done it again – crafty excellence! this activity book is chocked full of oceanic fun like this! i highly recommend it to any parent or teacher out there who makes art with kids ages 3-9. the instructions are clear and concise, the photos are fabulous, each of the 12 activities includes a supply list, and all templates are printable.

GIVEAWAY ENDED JULY 23RD, 2010:

to WIN A FREE COPY of these wonderful art lesson plans, leave a COMMENT HERE by clicking “comments” to the upper left. you’ll have 3 chances to enter the drawing:

1. for your first comment, state your most vivid art memory from your own childhood.
2. “like” paintcutpaste.com on facebook and leave a comment stating that you now “like” us (or that you have liked us all along. aw, thanks!)
3. link to this blog entry on your blog and leave a third comment showing us the link to where you mentioned it.

leave your comments BEFORE MIDNIGHT EST FRIDAY, JULY 23RD. at that time, i will draw the winner based on a random number. please also include your email address in the body of the comments so that pink & green mama can send you a copy of this awesome book when you win! GOOD LUCK TO ALL!

___

patty walsh (#23) is the winner of pink & green mama’s ocean fun art camp lesson plans pdf booklet. CONGRATS, patty! it’s an awesome book – enjoy! her comment was:

My most vivid art memory as a child would have to be when I was about 4. I remember going in to my Mom’s make up and mixing water with eye shadows to make paint. I remember having such a good time, I don’t even think my Mom got mad. It really was a great experience!

sure, it’s not innovative, but i just had to include our day at the beach this weekend, making art and fun out of the natural surroundings…

there were sand drawings…

no one is a stranger to the magic of a sandcastle…uh, or a sand alligator. novi and her daddy loved making this creature together!

novi took her time creating and adding to this rock/driftwood/sand man.

i collected shells, sea glass, and flat, smooth stones for painting – ever the beachcomber, i am. best art supply store there is!

there was plenty of kite-flying in the mix, as well.

novi collected driftwood on the walk back up to the car.

"mommy, i think i'm going to build a house out of this when we get home."

let’s see what else transpires from our day at the beach…

novi is a big fan of balloons, so we blew up a few little ones the other day to play.

leave the balloon blowing to the grown-ups

i remembered i had seen a cool post on ordinary life magic back in the spring involving balloons, yarn, glue, and water. i just love projects that involve the stuff i already have in the house. i thought it’d be fun to try this project outside the other day with our balloons. easy enough, right? well, read on…

if you look at the ordinary life magic post, you’ll see these lovely “yarn eggs” that the hardened-by-glue yarn left behind after the balloons popped. i was excited to end up with some of these skeletal orbs, and had some cool ideas for what we might do with them. so we got started… first, dip a 3 foot long (or so) strand of yarn into a mixture of craft glue and water. during the process, we made several mixtures of the craft glue (i used both elmer’s glue-all and aleen’s original tacky glue intermittently to use up the last of two bottles i had laying around the art room.)

then just begin to wrap the wet, sticky yarn around a partially blown up balloon.

after the balloons were all wrapped in lovely yarn scraps, we hung them in the playhouse to drip dry overnight. (if you’re doing this inside or over a floor you care about, be sure to put a towel down or do it over the bathtub.)

the next day we checked on the balloons, and attempted the next step… pop balloon and peel it away from the yarn. cool, i came prepared with a thumbtack. it was a snap, pop, then crackle moment. as the balloon deflated, it crackled as it took the yarn with it, imploding slowly. no pretty yarn orb.

deflated.

i tried peeling the balloon away from the yarn, but it was harder to do on some balloons than others. perhaps the ones with a thicker glue mixture were more stubborn? here are the sad results we got.

so i wrote to stephanie over at ordinary life magic and asked how she got the lovely results she got in an effort to learn where we might have gone wrong. here was her answer: “ours did that, too – some more than others. i just poked my fingers through the egg, and reshaped the ones that had deflated. you could probably use a spoon or something if you wanted to. they’ll stay if they sag and you reshape them, and then as they dry over days they’ll keep the reshaping.” good tips, though i think it was a little late for our yarn tangles, honestly.

we’ll try again another time, but i always like to post these art-gone-wrong experiences so you all can see our trials and errors. it’s also a nice example of the idea that in art, products are often unpredictable, so it’s all about the process! sometimes the materials dictate what they want to become, and we have the opportunity here to honor that and curb our attachment to results. we can model this for little ones who either can become frustrated and disappointed when art doesn’t turn out how they imagined OR were honestly not as goal-oriented as we were from the beginning, and probably just had fun playing with balloons and sticky goop. for me, the most satisfying part of this was indeed the process…  seeing our balloons all lined up outside on the line to dry was just lovely…

and seeing my little one’s mind excitedly expand to include the idea of using balloons for art materials was priceless!

it has been one year today since i began this blog on july 1, 2009*. whoo hoo! in the past year, we’ve published over 140 entries to this blog… that’s a lotta art made! it warms my heart that we have just reached 850 followers on facebook who are all getting artsy with their little ones!

to celebrate, i wanted to post a little round-up of just a few of my favorite art activities that novi and i have experimented with over the past year… it is so hard to choose, but all of these below are fun to do in these warmer months, so i hope these flashbacks spark ideas for you all now. here goes:

color hunt (so fun with even the littlest ones!)

shaving-cream marbled paper

kool-aid painting (hey, it’s better than drinking the stuff!)

shrinky dink garden tags

watercolored stationery

baked clay garland

(these are hearts, but you can do this any time of year with any shaped cookie cutter… perhaps flowers, butterflies, suns, and birds for summer??)

nature impressions

nest zest orbs

handprint flower tote bags

shell garland

strawberry basket weaving

thank you for following us and keeping us inspired all year long! here’s to many more years of making art to come!

*sure, some of the posts date back to march 2009, when we did a few projects that i wanted to include in the blog, so i pre-dated them so readers could use dates to calculate novi’s age at the time of creation based on her january 2007 birthday.