Resist painting

We're a bit hooked on watercolor resist painting lately. This week we tried rubber cement resists for the first time. This was a really fun project - high impact with low fuss... besides the fumes - make sure you're in a well ventilated area!

I instructed Delaney to hold the applicator brush from the rubber cement jar over the paper and "dance" above the paper without actually touching the paper. She enjoyed loading the brush with as much rubber cement as she could and then watching it drip down in squiggles as she danced all around above the paper.

We let the rubber cement dry for an hour before painting with water colors.

We let the watercolors dry overnight, and then I used my thumbnail to scrape the rubber cement off the paper, revealing the white, unpainted areas below. I love it!

It's cheering up a little corner in our office/art area.

I love incorporating Delaney's art into little nooks and crannies around our home. This is a trivet I found thrifting - the feet screw off and the frame can then be disassembled, so I was able to replace a dated picture with my child's art under the glass.

A few more rubber cement watercolor resist links for instruction and inspiration:

Kids Art: Rubber Cement Masking by The Joy of My Life
Rubber cement and watercolors - another fun resist by The Artful Parent
Rubber Cement Art Ideas for Kids by Apryl Duncan on About.com

Magic playdoh garden

Yesterday I posted about the bag of plastic flower heads I found thrifting over the weekend. I bought them with a purpose in mind, and Delaney wasted no time putting the idea into motion. They were perfect for poking into a rolled out patch of playdoh grass to make a pretty little garden, cheering up our little art nook on a gray and drizzly day. 

Delaney love, Love, LOVED creating her garden. She spent well over an hour deciding where each little flower should go.

And then at least another hour playing in the garden. Here, the garden gnomes are happily helping her tend to the flowers.

Gnomes resting, after all their hard work!

Mama and baby duck are surprised to find a snail snuggled in their nest.

I've been inspired by a few playdoh postings lately. This miniature fairy garden  has some fun features I plan to borrow, like the seashells and shiny jewels. Filth Wizardry has designed a very elaborate playdoh mermaid kingdom with more seashells, sparkly jewels, and my favorite - the fairy houses! I'm planning on partnering with the Easter bunny this year to put together a fairy-themed Easter basket. I'm thinking a double batch of this best playdoh recipe ever with a whole lot of glitter and a few squirts of floral perfume for scenting the garden... include some fun accessories like these and these, and I wonder if she will even notice the candy shortage in this year's basket?

Ugly ducklings

I made it to the thrift store over the weekend during a 40% off EVERYTHING sale - perfect timing for stocking up on men's ties! These oh-so-hideous ties make me oh-so-happy as I eagerly anticipate this upcoming project. Grandma is coming to visit this week, so we'll try to hold out on this so she can join in on the fun!

Say hello to my new friend! When I happened across this basket I was undecided - ugly duckling or golden goose?

I wasn't sure I wanted to waste spend a couple bucks on something I might consider tacky and tasteless before I even got it home. But I knew if I left without it, I'd regret it, obsessing over who had stolen it from me during my moment of indecisiveness and how cute it must be looking on someone else's counter when really it should be on my counter, and I'd force myself to go back and try for a second chance to snatch it up before it was too late....so, to save myself an extra trip and the trauma should it be gone when I returned, I considered that it might fly as a funky Easter centerpiece to display our even funkier eggs. From 2200 miles away, I channeled Holly, my trusty, thrifting sidekick extraordinaire, and I heard her voice chanting loud and clear in my mind: "Just get it... don't let it fly away... GET IT! In. Your. Cart. NOW!" It was her subconscious endorsement, sight unseen, that led me to make the purchase - I could commit to it for a week, through Easter, and see if it grew on me. If not, we'd part ways, no hurt feelings. Full of personality, we've totally bonded! Since we don't have our eggs decorated yet, I found something else to keep the duck occupied while it warms up to the rest of the family and tries to earn a year-round position over seasonal work in our home.

Delaney was easy - it was love at first sight! Trey is a different story. I don't think he'll be swooning over the pink swan basket holding our fruit hostage anytime soon. Thankfully he gives me great leeway in decorating our home and quietly forfeited this losing battle - good man!

This was my last find. A bag of old, totally tacky, plastic flower heads. Hmmm... who wants stemless, fake flowers?

I know who! And when that much joy only costs a quarter - it's priceless!



I shared my idea for the flowers with Delaney, and she totally ran with it... here's a sneak peak - I'll share more tomorrow =)

Easter roundup

Looking for some Easter inspiration? I've been rounding up egg decorating links to share - here are my favorites!

1. This technique is for all you freezer paper fanatics out there - Let Lolly show you how!
2. Move over Martha! Jen at Indie Fixx gave this Martha-inspired technique a try, with awesome results!
3. Why is Popeye on an Easter egg? See him there in the middle? How cool is that? You'll covet the ugliest of men's tie collections once you find out how in the heck they did it.
4. Molded Eggs by Make Monthly definitely look like kid-friendly-crafty Easter fun!
5. How about a sweet little basket to fill with sweet little something-somethings for your sweeties on Easter morn?
6. Wouldn't these be charming lining your windowsill, greeting you each day!
7. Have you been catching the waves {and another one!} of Washi inspiration? Why not jump on board and try it out with this clever technique on Easter eggs, as featured in Family Circle. 
8. More tie-dyed eggs - I can't get enough - they're brilliant! I'm totally hitting up the thrift store this weekend to round up the ugliest coolest ties I can find!
9. For the stargazers - Imagine Childhood celebrates Spring with their educational Spring Constellation eggs - far out!

Magnet art

Painting with magnets, inspired by this post, was so much fun! I'm glad I ordered two wands so we could do it together - it was a blast playing marble tag as we chased and bumped each other's marble through the paint, probably more into the game than the actual art being created, which is okay too.

Next, Delaney told me she had a great idea she wanted to try - toss all the marbles into the bin and shake, Shake, SHAKE to see what happens. Also great fun, until things got out of control when the marbles, drenched in paint, bounced out of the bin and rolled across the kitchen floor.  But oh, look at her face - hard to put the kibosh on it when having that much fun.

Here are my sources for the magnetic wands and marbles. 

Baby clothes quilt

I just finished my first quilt top! I've wanted to try quilting for a really long time, and have done some smaller, scrappy projects, but been a bit intimidated by the process of putting an entire quilt together. I've been saving some of my daughter's baby clothes with the hope of making them into a keepsake quilt one day. I was inspired by this baby quilt - the design was simple and modern and with such awesome instructions that broke it down step-by-step I finally felt like I could do it, and I did! Well, I have a good start on it anyway - here are a few sneak peeks of the top and backing.

This is the backing - a light pink and white stripe seersucker fabric. A friend found this for me forever ago, when Delaney was a newborn and I was first learning to sew. I was waiting for the perfect project to use it in - this is it!

It's not perfect, but I'm so happy I finally gave it a go and got this far with the project. It is definitely a labor of love, all the cutting, piecing, pinning, sewing and sniffling as I touched and trimmed all of the outfits worn by my baby girl. And it's still not done. But I'm not so sure I want to tackle the quilting and binding steps myself. I may have it done professionally for peace of mind that it is done well, and practice finishing off another one that doesn't have as much sentimental value. I can't wait to share more pictures of the finished project!

Mixing it up

We've been doing lots of melted crayon art lately using a hot plate, like this. And we love doing watercolor resist projects like these using contact paper, crayons and masking tape. Inspired by this piece of art, Delaney and I decided to try combining a variety of techniques into one. First, I masked off a piece of watercolor paper with painter's tape to create a grid. Next, we placed the sheet on the hot plate to melt crayons on the paper. White crayon gives the most dramatic resist effect, but it takes some effort to convince a preschooler to continue coloring with a white crayon on white paper once they realize they can't see their markings. I tried turning it into an experiment.... "hmmm.... I wonder if the white wax gets easier to see the more it melts on the paper?" which led to a bit more white crayon on the paper than usual , but she quickly concluded that it's still invisible, melted or not, and insisted we try other colors, so I handed her some light, spring colors, which worked fine too.  After she was done melting crayons on the paper, we put away the hot plate, and got out the watercolors. Delaney really loves this part - picking out colors, mixing them up, adding dabs of white pigment and extra dips of water to get her colors just so! During this stage I pointed out how the white crayon magically appear when painted over, though I'm not so sure she was as impressed as I was. Finally, we let it dry thoroughly, then carefully removed the tape, and TA-DA, a colorful, cool piece of modern art ready for framing.

Do you like the funky, red frames? They're kitschy finds I pick up for pennies at garage sales and such - those ugly, gold-gilded frames that hold even uglier art. One lady couldn't believe I was willing to pay for the ones she was selling, until I explained how I use them in our playroom. I could tell she wished she had asked more for them then. Trey spray painted a slew of them red for me last summer. They're an inexpensive way to spruce up the playroom walls with photographs and children's art.

Papermaking

We didn't go too crazy celebrating St. Patrick's Day today - no green foods, no green oufits, and no pinching or pubs. But Delaney and I did spend a good portion of the afternoon tearing up junk mail and scrap paper to make our own green, recycled paper. It's a project I've been wanting to try with her for a while now. She really got into it, insisting we keep going after green and create every color of the rainbow, which works for St. Patrick's Day too. However, we only got two more colors created before being sidetracked, so not the entire rainbow, but the dining room table is colorful with handmade paper in a nice assortment of shapes and colors, full of little bits and bling, drying for the night.

This is the tutorial I had bookmarked to follow, and then I recently happened across a papermaking kit at a thrift store so we didn't have to construct the screen or forms. The kit's blender was useless though, so we did end up using our kitchen blender instead, which worked well enough once we figured out a few tricks. Don't let the pulp get so thick that it stops moving in the blender - the motor may blow.  Have a spoon and warm water on hand - go slowly on pulse mode, in short bursts, stopping often to stir and and more water if necessary to make sure the pulp keeps moving inside the blender. It also isn't necessary to completely liquify the pulp unless you're going for super fine paper - I think having some chunks left behind gives it a more interesting, handmade texture. We also experimented by adding flower seeds to the green pulp, glitter to the pink pulp, and flower petals to the blue pulp - all added after the blending is complete. I just read here that the flowers should have been dried first, so they don't turn black and moldy in the paper - oops! 

I think we'll cut the green paper into flower shapes, and plant them in the garden to see if they bloom. The other might become gift tags, and Delaney has already decided that one of the sparkly, pink stars is to become a magic fairy wand.

I like the suggestion at the end of this link to overlap single pieces to create a larger section of homemade paper - would be great for gift wrap!

Bug puzzle

This was intended to be another fun, keeping-the-peace-while-waiting-in-public puzzle to have on hand to play with our preschooler, but has turned into a semi-shameful competition between the adults, complete with timers, taunts and underhanded distraction tactics. My husband is really fast, solving this in less than two minutes flat, while it takes me at least double that, usually much longer. It BUGS me that he beats me, badly, every time, and he's thoroughly enjoying bragging rights.

Here's the puzzle if anyone is up for the challenge. (See download instructions below if you need help.) The object is to re-arrange the squares until all the bugs line up along the adjacent edges, keeping all nine cards in a 3x3 square. Take your time, play nice, and try to be better parents than us by involving the kiddos too. We finally brought it back to a healthy, all inclusive level so our daughter could join in. Once Trey had the puzzle solved, we started by taking one square out for her to fit back in. That was way easy, so next we removed two and then three squares. She made it to a block of four down and 5 to go, and was well on her way to solving it when we ran out of time. Next time she'll get it, if we can hold ourselves back from taking it over long enough.

Happy Days

Lots to celebrate today!

First up, Happy Pi Day! Even Google is celebrating, what about you? Thanks to the heads up from a friend, I was able to make gifts for the occasion for my cutie pie, and a couple of others we know.

Next, a happy day for Delaney, enthusiastic new owner of a zippy pair of roller skates, one of the treasures found yesterday on a fun outing with my sister.

For those who know how over the top safety conscious my husband can be, you know it's only a slight exaggeration when I say I nearly gave him a heart attack when I pulled these out this morning! Being that he's getting up there in age (ACTUALLY another YEAR Older TODAY.... HAPPY BIRTHDAY TREY!) we have to be careful about such scares... so we remembered the helmet!

I think the skates were just the nudge I needed to secure Delaney's nomination for Mom of the Millennium - she had a BLAST, thanking me over and over the entire morning.


And Trey's off mountain biking in the forest, a fitting way to start his birthday, and the best place for him to be  while I'm at home braving the perils and pitfalls of teaching our preschooler to skate.

Here is the highlight of Liam's weekend - a crinkle toy I made for him, now that's he's starting to grab and grip and giggle with glee! 

And hopefully you're having a good day too, perhaps enjoying a piece of pie?


Personally, we're doing cake later. We were almost going to skip it, per Trey's pledge earlier this month to get in better shape for this and his insistence that cake was unnecessary, but he changed his mind last minute, claiming it's all for the kids' sake, that Delaney would be devastated if we didn't have singing and candles and cake. Uh huh.