paint cut paste

this year we are taking part in the annual crafty crow ornament swap! the theme for the year is fairy tales… you know, kings, queens, princesses, gnomes, dragons. but they had me at fairy. always do.

fairies hanging out in our tree

so novi and i went hunting in our backyard for some natural materials to make fairy ornaments out of. we found tons of tiny pine cones.

thank you, trees

we baked the pinecones at 250 degrees for about an hour, to make sure the critters were gone and because the sappy stuff in the cones gives them a nice shiny glow after baking. the house smelled divine! (that’s the closest we’ll come to the real christmas tree smell in our home, as we have cats.)

then we decided to apply a bit of gold paint to the pinecones to make them sparkle, all fairy-like. these cones were going to be fairy bodies!

gilded

with some wood glue, we attached unfinished wooden beads to the tops, to serve as fairy heads. then i hot-glued (hot glue guns and toddlers do not mix) a golden thread and paper flower to the top of each, so the fairies had flower hats and a string from which to hang.after that, we used one of my most favorite art materials ever — garlic peels! (and a coupla red pearl onion peels, too) these make the perfect ethereal fairy wings when hot-glued to the back of the pinecone.

then we had a big fairy family to share with the ornament swap recipients!

we put each safely into a small empty crayon box and wrapped them with coloring book pictures of fairies that novi has colored.

we wished each fairy well in their new homes in new york, pennsylvania, louisiana, new hampshire, and california… and they’re off in the mail now to these new homes and new adventures! so excited to see which 5 ornaments we receive in return… we can take a peek at the flickr group for the swap to see what others made, too… how fun!

this entry is a departure from the purpose of this blog, which is to share ideas for ways to get artsy with your little one to inspire their own creations. my aim for this blog is to foster creativity in those little people we adore, who always have huuuge ideas and often just need a third hand (and someone to drive them to the art store) to put those ideas onto paper or clay or canvas.

but, dear readers, today i just thought i’d share a few pics of what i’ve been making lately, sans little helping hands. just for kicks.

i’m no geninne (urban outfitters is not banging down my door for me to silkscreen a pillow for them, dammit) and nor is my inspiration board nearly as cool as hers, but i take inspiration from her board and studio. here’s my own board in my own mini-studio (in our playroom/guestroom):

and i have been collecting some fun natural objects for later use:

despite my complete lack of sewing skillz, i made a few felt owls for new baby friends a la craft stylish:

as you may have seen here, i made our pets into rocks:

i immortalized our cats

i got hungry:

animal crackers (they're cookies!)

i added to our felted wool acorn ornament collection from last holiday season (and then i used some pom poms inside of the acorn caps when i ran outta wool balls, a la pink & green mama‘s idea)

making more felted wool & pom pom acorns

triplets!

i got some wooden beads and watercolored them and used my homemade wood creme to finish them off, to make little toys for novi’s advent calendar:

our wooden family

i resurrected an old passion for making homemade bath products (i used to have a company called green athena where i sold these goods in nyc and on the web, in a former life,) and whipped up some yummers sugar scrubs for the body (raw sugar, grapeseed oil, vitamin E oil, any fav combo of essential oils. i like peppermint grapefruit and lavender rose!)

rub-a-dub-yum!

and some homemade lipbalm to go with (beeswax, jojoba oil or olive oil, honey, and essential oils. these are lemon mint!)

yip yip

when i have a chunk of time, i loooove to watercolor… i took out this one from a few years ago as inspiration and as a reminder that the visual stimuli of this time of year is fun to capture in this medium:

happy holidays to all of you mommas, dads, kiddos, caregivers, teachers, and artists out there! i’m going to be doing more painting, knitting, and baking before the  year is out… and, of course, always making art with my little artist in residence. enjoy the beauty of the season!

i saw this cute halloweeny idea on counting cheerios, and so we tried it out on this cloudy afternoon — a ghost tree!

boooooo!

novi and i went on a walk to find the perfect tree branch. we found a great stem from the magnolia tree in our front yard. then i gathered up some cotton balls, white tissues, orange ribbons, a black marker, and a glue gun.

traditionally, tissue ghosts were made from lollipops wrapped in a tissue, but if your kid is anything like my kid, we would not have gotten through this project without a major sugar high and a late bedtime tonight. so i nixed the lollipops in favor of some cotton balls.

but can i have a lollipop?

we just put the cotton balls into the tissues, tied ribbons around them as bowties, and novi helped to draw eyes and a mouth on each ghost.

"daddy ghost & mommy ghost"

after that, i used a hot glue gun to affix them to the branch. you could use christmas tree ornament hangers, more ribbon, paper clips, string, or other kinds of tape or glue. (if using a hot glue gun, a grown-up should definitely do that part!) then we had a (kissable?) ghost tree to add to our already-overflowing halloween decor!

ghost love

i just saw this idea for making an adorable autumn tree on my amazingly talented pink & green mama friend’s blog, and we had to try it out. she was inspired by that artist woman’s blog on a similar project, which is so lovely! these trees are so cool for fall, and it’d be great to make one for every season!

creativitree in bloom

we actually did it a bit differently than my friend did, as she used watercolors, which would really work super-great. though today we were already painting with acrylics, so i just made a very watery brown and put a blob of it at the bottom of a piece of our paper. i showed novi how to blow the paint using a straw. (admittedly, i had to help her out a bit in the wind velocity department.)

blowing like the wind

we blew this way and that way to make the tree grow tall and branch out in random directions.

branching out

when it was nearly dry, novi glued colorful pieces of tissue paper to the tree to make leaves. (pink & green mama did this step before the painting, which also seems to work wonderfully.)

we hung our windblown tree outside to dry in the blowing wind.

novi's tree