paint cut paste

N is a big fan of balloons (like most earthlings) 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!

there are sooo many glorious things about strawberry season. the sun, the ladybugs, the sweet juice running down your chin, the amazing dessert recipes, the reason to make your own whipped cream… we’re going strawberry picking this upcoming weekend, which is an annual tradition of mine since my childhood (and N’s!)

left: me in the 70s; right: N in may 2009

when a friend brought some fresh organic strawberries to me yesterday that she got from a farmer’s produce stand near the beach, i was excited for a pre-picking sneak peek. the berries were delicious, but almost as good were the charming little green baskets they have come in for decades! last year i added a few to N’s play kitchen, for her fake produce, but this year i decided that instead of recycling them, i’d upcycle them!

i have bins and bins of yarn and ribbon… so i figured i’d give N her first weaving lesson using the baskets and various yarn, ribbon, fabric materials i have laying around already.

first, i just tied the end of a piece of yarn to the inside bottom corner of a basket, and began to weave while N’s big blue eyes observed and recorded my motions.

then she wanted to try it with the other basket… so i tied her choice of yarn to her basket and she began to attempt the weave.

“this isn’t easy!” she said after just a few over-under-over-unders.

so i learned that this is not the best first weaving activity to try with a 3 year old (there are other easier weavings we can do, for sure!) but i wanted to post this anyway for those of you with school-aged children who want to upcycle your strawberry baskets. N asked me to finish up the baskets myself while she happily built beside me with other items from our recycling bin.

i thought the results were rather cute! and so did N!

N calls this one "the sunset basket"

these baskets would make great gift baskets for father’s day, graduation, birthdays, or any other occasion. they’re also nice storage for small toys and such.

this strawberry picking season, remember that it’s important to pick and eat organic strawberries! happy weaving and happy summer!

N’s friend is soon having a mermaid pool party for her fourth birthday, and N is very psyched about this theme! when we were pondering artsy gifts to make for her kindred spirit artist friend, i remembered a sweet idea i’d seen long ago on pink & green mama — clothes pin mermaids!

this post is likely a gift spoiler (sorry in advance to the birthday girl’s parents,) but i’m banking on the fact that the little mermaid can’t read blogs quite yet.

some parts of this craft aren’t super kid-friendly… for example, i began by using my woodburning tool (hot) to create faces and belly buttons on some wooden doll pin clothes pins while N was napping.

i also cut tail shapes out of craft foam.

then i set materials up so N could paint the mermaids when she woke up.

N painted the bottom part of each one with various colors to match the foam tails.

the next part was not kid-friendly either, nor was it momma-friendly. i burnt three of my fingers while hot glueing craft foam (cut into tail shapes) to the slit in each wooden pin. i cut little bikini tops out of felt and N helped to glue these to each mermaid.

we used some yarn for hair. you could use that doll hair you find in the craft store, but i just used yarn we had around the house. unfortunately, i didn’t have a huge selection of hair colors, so we made them all blonde. my blonde girl was cool with this, and the birthday mermaid is blonde, as well, so for these purposes, it works out.

a few will swim in the playsilk moat around N’s fairy treehouse in our playroom.

the rest of these aquatic cuties will make a great addition to the gift package we bring to the mermaid pool party next weekend. now we just cross our fingers for pool party weather to make its way to the bay!

wax + colorful yarn = genius. me and the little lady are big fans of wikki stix. they’re a really cool modeling medium in string-like form that is endlessly reusable imagination ignition.

image from drawyourworld.com

i first purchased wikki stix with air travel in mind… what a great idea for something new and fun to do on a plane! then today we were in a local cafe that supplied wikki stix to kids (big thrills) and we saw firsthand what awesome companions wikkis can be in restaurants while waiting for meals to arrive.

she created her name (though blocked out for privacy)

for us, the sculpting fun can last for hours… with a lot of “mommy, can you make it into a duck?” pleading and a whole lot of N sculpting on her own, too.

i’m not getting paid by wikki stix for this pseudo-endorsement. i just wanted to shed light on a non-conventional sculpting material that is super-portable, not at all messy, and can keep our small friends creatively entertained for hours. check out their web site to learn about all of wikki stix uses (artsy and household! i.e.; they help to open jars??)

skulpsherrrr

cuteness bonus: N calls them her “sticky wicks…” and really, they seem like sticky candle wicks, so… why not?

one can never have too many halloween decorations, right? (um, yes, one can. but anyway… ) i saw this supercute idea on make and takes and had to try it out with my little one.

make and takes provides the example of making tiny yarn apples, but we opted for pumpkins because, well, halloween is coming and i had a lot of orange yarn to spare.

i cut off a part of a box from our recycling bin (about an inch wide by 3-4 inches long.) we bent the cardboard longways, as it helped out later. N helped me wrap the yarn around the cardboard. we wrapped it about 80 times.

got it wrapped!

then we threaded a piece of green pipe cleaner under the yarn, and twisted it up and around the yarn. we did the same on the opposite side of the cardboard.

i cut the pipe cleaner close at the end that was to be the bottom of the pumpkin. on the other side, i wrapped the pipe cleaner around itself to make a pumpkin stem, and even some spiral tendrils coming off of the top. then just slide the yarn off the cardboard.

cute for decorations, pumpkins for dollhouses, autumn party favors! i think it’d be cute to attach a tag at the top and use them for place-settings for thanksgiving dinner. now i just need some red and green yarn to make those apples!