paint cut paste

my daughter is becoming a gnome lover. she’s a girl who gets a lot of satisfaction out of making her own toys - what a great way to boost self-esteem in little ones. this project was perfect for her: creating her own wooden and wool gnome toys!

i recently blogged about how N was learning to sew gnomes with felt. the newer variety is a bit different, in that she is sewing wool hats and gluing them to watercolored wooden peg bodies. i wrote a guest post on this earlier in the week over on kiwi crate, so check it out to see the step by step of how these little cuties came to be!

N has been playing with hers quite a bit, and has gifted some to friends, too. and shhhh, for her birthday tomorrow, she’ll be receiving more wooden peg dolls and wool felt, so i’m sure more will soon be born!

my husband and i are in the process of creating teeny handmade tokens to serve as prizes in the game room at N’s waldorf school holiday faire in a couple of weeks.

creating handmade treats for little ones is right up my alley. because i have a bunch of random materials overflowing out of our art cabinet, i decided to donate not only our time, but also the materials to create some prizes.

mostly, we created pom pom/felted wool acorns, painted and wax-sealed wooden toys of all shapes, and some mini-pinecone fairies. we had a great time this weekend, as a family, making all sorts of fun little things together from the mish-mash of stuff that was bursting (avalanche style) out of our art stash.

i wasn’t sure if these little tokens would be “big enough” prizes until N confirmed that she’d LOVE to win a wooden heart and a wooden apple if she played a game. and she LOVED these weird looking gnomes i designed from the wooden shape that’s supposed to be a carrot. whew! kids are easy to please…

N even helped to paint a few gnomes

one of my favorite adaptations of the weekend was how we morphed our pinecone fairies from 2009 — this time instead of garlic peel wings (one of my fav art materials!) we used these wooden mustache shapes from our collection of odd wooden doodads for more durable wings. they turned out to be pretty cute with their acorn hats.

i love how each of us got in on the action and created these teeny treats for the kids at school. i spent much of the weekend creating holiday gifts for friends and family, too. i’m launching into total handmade holiday elf mode over here, and it’s not even thanksgiving!

the other day, N and i set out to play with one of our favorite art media — liquid watercolors. recently there was a $1 per bottle sale on these at discount school supply (regularly $2.99, but they offer discounts all the time,) so we stocked up at a buck each! i just loooove how vibrant and translucent liquid watercolors can be!

i just put out four colors this time: magenta, turquoise, yellow, and purple. (the first three are a variation on primary colors that i just heart, and they mix to create beautiful combos! purple wasn’t even necessary, but it’s N’s favorite, soooo….)

free art play! these are the afternoons i live for. we did tons of experimenting with techniques — such as white crayon resist:

wet on wet watercoloring (saturate your paper first with water, then paint or drop colors onto it and watch them spread like magic):

sprinkling salt onto the painted page and watching the paint gather toward the crystals to create a stippled effect:

then we did N’s favorite method – squirted elmer’s glue onto the page, covered it with salt, and watched the paint get soaked up by the lines and blend into rainbowy goodness:

we played quite a bit. we even busted out the shaving cream at the end and did some paper marbling with the remaining paint in the jars. (because i hate to waste gorgeous paint and just have to use it up!) we did this over two years ago on the blog when N was just a wee thing, so check out that post for the technique. it’s amazingly beautiful and fun!

this day yielded so many lovely creations!

it was such a colorful afternoon with my sweet girlie and our favorite paints.

we felt like the color kittens! (do you know that old golden book? it’s classic!)

in my practice as an art therapist, one area of emphasis is on supporting expectant and new mommas. one of the best pieces of my training in art as ritual during this rite of passage was not only my graduate studies or my own pregnancy/momming experience, but also the pregnancies of my dearest art therapist friends with whom i graduated. as you’ve seen before on my blog, to mark this time as sacred, we hold mother’s blessing ceremonies for one another.

me with kindred spirits from my art therapy program -- momma-to-be in the center. sept 2009.

i’ve shared a bit about one of the art rituals from my own blessing ceremony these friends held for me, and i’ll blog more about it another time…  but today i wanted to share a beautiful and artful blessing idea from one of my dearest friend’s blessing in autumn of 2009, where a group of women gathered (her closest friends and family) to celebrate the new life on the way.

an art table is as essential as the food table at these gatherings - food for the soul!

one of my fellow art therapist friends led the group in a guided visualization about what they wished for the expectant family. she asked us all to notice the images that came to us — the setting, colors, lines, shapes, textures. each person in attendance was then given a piece of watercolor paper, a pallette of watercolor paints, and a selection of brushes. while beautiful music played, each person found a spot in the room where they could work on their piece.

everyone was assured that no artistic expertise or experience was necessary. each of us was asked to just paint the colors and impressions we had, regardless of whether it is abstract or the image of something. we also were asked not to become attached to the image, as it would be torn up to create a larger piece later. (this was very freeing for most of those who might not have been as comfortable making art.)

big-sister-to-be (age 2 here) even got in on the action, as her image is a key piece in the energy of the final product.

after the art was completed, we sat in a circle with the mom-to-be in the middle, and we each told her what we wished for her. the dad-to-be had created a piece on his own, in advance, which we showed to the expectant mom at the blessing. it was so fascinating that their pieces had such resonance!

mom's art on left; dad's art on right

the next day, the five of us you see pictured up there gathered around a kitchen table for tea, coffee, and paper weaving.

we tore the watercolor pages into strips that were one inch wide, along the longer side of the watercolor paper. we prefer tearing the pages along a ruler to cutting them — this way you get that lovely raw edge.

we chose strips from each of the paintings that were most appealing to the mom-to-be, making sure each person’s art was represented in the final piece.

the five of us wove the strips together, trying different configurations out, and eventually arriving at the final piece.

two months after this blessing ceremony, my friend welcomed her second child, a beautiful boy, into her family (who is now almost two!) this awesome piece of art, holding all of the love and supportive energy of his family, is hanging above his bed.

it’s been a while since we’ve formally done still-life art, and given N’s recent interest in drawing what she sees, as she sees it, i thought we’d expand this into a different medium: watercolors.

on a chilly august morning (yep, we have those here in the bay area) we went outside after breakfast and found a lovely latana flower in the yard. the pink, orange, and yellow little blooms just remind me of faerie magic – such sweet flowers! we brought our watercolor paints (and watercolor pencils – i heart these!) outside, along with our hoodies, and settled into paint.

the difference here is that i actually painted my own art alongside N this time. i generally don’t make art with her because i am hoping that all of her marks are authentic and uninfluenced. when i do, i make my marks in her “handwriting” so to speak, as i discuss in this article. i’ve never shown her how to draw any of the things she draws. this time though, N set the ground rules: “we can’t look at each others’ paintings until they’re all finished!” and lemme tell ya – she was serious about this! i had to pretend i was photographing just the actual vase to take some of these pictures.

we spent the time quietly talking, discussing how we could each see different subtle colors in each tiny flower. we talked about she could see things from her angle that i couldn’t see from mine, so our paintings would ultimately look different.

here is N’s lovely creation — she so enjoyed using the watercolor pencils before she painted to outline her image, and then she loved how “chalky” they felt after she applied them to the wet paint to add in details at the end.

we sat our paintings up behind the actual vase of flowers during lunch time and continued to discuss (while rotating the vase) who could see which flowers from where we were sitting. N’s piece now resides on her art gallery wall in her bedroom., though i will be finding a frame for this masterpiece soon!

do you create art alongside your child(ren)?

this is a crazy-simple post. we love our watercolors around here like nothing else, and we may rival hallmark in the quantity of cards that are created under this roof. so here’s sweet little idea for some greeting cards for any occasion.

before N set out to create her abstract watercolor painting, we placed heart stickers on watercolor paper. (you can use any shape of sticker, of course.) then she enjoyed some time watching the colors ooze and blend together on the page. so relaxing.

we let the page dry completely.

after that, i tore the large sheet of watercolor paper into smaller sections against a metal edged ruler. i prefer this to cutting watercolor paper because it makes beautiful naturally rustic edges.

we peeled away the heart stickers (which came off easily) to reveal a white heart in the midst of rainbowy paint.

N chose colorful blank cards to glue the paintings to (i buy packs of them at michael’s when they offer discounts,) and she sent them out for father’s day and the end of the school year teacher cards in june.

easy and heARTful

yes, this is something we do quite a bit (as i bet you do, too) – paint seashells. i’ve blogged on it before, but with shells found in the pacific ocean. we found these in the atlantic, so yeah, it warranted a new blog, right? (humor me – i’m on vacation.) one of the things N was most looking forward to this trip is waking up my mom first thing in the morning to go shelling on the beach before anyone else is up.

beach strolls here in the outer banks of north carolina (on carova beach) are magical in that there are wild horses on the beach and coming right up to our beach house!

check out those horse teeth! naaay!

after the first day of shelling (and horse watching) we rinsed our collection.

we sorted the white and light colored ones out from the others for painting.

we got out some of our travel watercolors (teeny!) and began the fun.

such a sweet time together.

beautiful creations, and many more left to be painted as the week goes on!

happy beachcombing to you all this summer, should you find yourselves along the shore!