Quince and Quire

Flurry

We've got a flurry of flowers and paper and glue and tape happening here, as we make special surprises for mothers and daughters. I'll let you decide who made what for whom!

Patterned paper eggs

We spent one rainy morning this weekend making patterns on paper. My mom sent a stack of "texture plates" from the craft store awhile back, and the kids and I got them out to see what we could do. They worked great for making these paper eggs, and our block Stockmar crayons made beautiful soft colors over the textures. My daughter and I each cut out free-hand egg shapes (hers are in the middle photo) with our papers. 

Now what do we do with them? Perhaps use them for cards (yes, we still have to make our Easter cards), or perhaps put two together with a string in between and hang them up. Any other ideas?

Classic spring project

This little project has been one of my most popular crafts for young children: it has been featured on craft blogs around the world, including mammafelice, Craft Gossip, and The Crafty Crow.

 

The baskets are colorful, cheerful and easy for kids to make. 

 

For variety, have your kids paint the baskets with acrylics and add glitter while the paint is wet.

You can find the tutorial here. Happy Spring!

Shape of the moment

I was playing around with watercolors again, foolishly ignoring my lack of skills. But they are such fun.

When in doubt about life, paint circles: what else offers a vision of harmony, unity, stability, motion, new life, water, air, levity, and the dream of perfection? Not bad for one shape.

It's never too late for luck

What can you do with very little time, bright colors, a craft punch, a glue stick (not pictured) and a few kids who want shamrocks?

 

You can make four leaf clover greeting cards in dazzling colors. 

 

What if you add a few alphabet stamps and use strips of paper?

 

You get bookmarks for all the young people in your life.

 

And then, you can do it all in reverse! Add colorful envelopes for your cards and bundle your bookmarks in rainbow order and you've got St. Patrick's Day covered.

I hope this gives you ideas for any last minute St. Patrick's Day crafting needs you (or your kids) may have! 

Transformation

I've been working with watercolors and feeling my lack of art school training. I had poetry training, and book arts training, but never basic mix-colors-and-materials training. So there were some creative failures this week with ideas about diagrams and plots and colors, which I will share with you when my ego is less challenged.

 

Instead, let's think about leaves. My daughter painted the leaves, not me, using watercolors and a few sprinkles of salt. We cut the leaves out together, quietly, sometimes quickly. As we worked I thought about why people are compelled to make things, to put paint on paper, to assemble, to create order. Do we actually create? Or are we arranging the things already given in this world? 

 

My daughter is deeply interested in the idea of Lent this year. We are not Catholic, but we are, shall we say, guests in a Catholic community. And it's a good place to be, with strong women, thoughtful children, and people deeply concerned about serving others: all things we like. Not every belief in this community fits our views, nor must it be so: we see it as an opportunity to talk about different ideas as we wrestle with our own sense of the divine. We are, after all, a family made up of a scientist and a writer and curious children: there are bound to be ontological debates.

 

And so we are keeping a form of Lent at our house. In our family, that means having more time for reflection; working on our ability to serve and help others; developing our spiritual knowledge by reading a variety of texts, from scripture to poetry to commentary; and being kind and patient with one another.

 

We made a calendar to mark the journey through Lent. It's not our idea. We found it through the Parenting Passageway, and it was an idea from this site. Each day we move our oh-so-elegant pipe-cleaner caterpillar to another leaf on the calendar, Eric Carle style. (I used the beloved push drill to make a hole in each leaf). At the end of the forty days we'll hang watercolor butterflies: a lovely metaphor from the natural world about what we are trying to do in our own life. 

 

This week, as I watch the stunning events unfold in Japan--a catastrophic example from the natural world that offers no room for metaphor, only empathy--our little leafy calendar feels like an exercise in fantasy. Yet I hope and, yes, pray that the terrible situation will get better, that there will be survival and renewal. It will not be a forty days' journey, but it will happen. There are many ways to help make that a reality. 

Starry drafts

My daughter and I spent part of our snow day (you heard about the snow, right?) working on constellation books. We began with a simple accordion-fold structure, which made each page approximately 2 x 3 inches: a tiny book. She used blue crayon for her sky; I choose a greeny watercolor, and then we punched holes with the push drill to represent constellations.

Though these are just first drafts, we were both delighted with our little books. I'm planning to paint a darker sky for the next one, and to use ink for the lettering, and maybe a cursive hand. I think I'll also change the size of the punched holes to more accurately represent each star.

This was one of those projects that I had planned for January: you know, cold frosty nights with lots of stars get you thinking about such things. Now everyone is thinking about shamrocks and bunnies. But two feet of new snow gets one back in that January mood, and I am so glad we finally explored this idea.

Heart

I hope everyone is enjoying this day as much as we are! I sent the kids off to school after a breakfast of heart pancakes, ready to deliver yarn-tied bags of treats to their buddies. My Valentine cards went out on time (a good thing) but I didn't photograph them (not so great), so I put that last photo up to show you last year's labor-intensive push-drill Valentines. Now I'm off to bake a chocolate cake! Happy day to everyone!

Using and storing children's art

The New York Times had an article about displaying children's art, and it got me thinking about what we do here. Each child has an art table in a dedicated art space, with lots of materials out and many more available with supervision. This means we end up with daily works of art. What to do with it all?

 

The most basic approach for the most basic art, such as these index card portraits, is to simply put them up on the bulletin board. I use a pin with a clip so that we don't poke a hole in the drawing.

 

For monthly favorites and seasonal themes, we have this very large frame from Michael Olaf. It has a birch frame and a long sheet of plexiglass that lifts out easily. I should have included a person in this photo to give you a sense of scale. You can figure it out by knowing that the two pictures on the bottom left are 9 x 12 inches. This frame hangs at a child's eye level, about three feet off the floor, so that the kids can see things easily and add art as they wish. 

 

Sometimes we use this little wood easel frame for tabletop display. 

Over in doll world, where my daughter keeps all the doll clothes and supplies that her grandmother and I have made for her, we have an informal display on the wall above the doll bureau. She chose a few of her favorite drawings of dancers and fairies and we arranged them spontaneously. 

One thing you will notice is that nothing is permanently framed. I have set aside a stack of things I particularly love, but because they are so often odd sizes, I need to take them to a frame shop to have them framed. I just haven't gotten around to it. In the meantime, this assortment of rotating display options seems to suit the children's prolific output. When they are tired of one drawing and ready to hang another, the older pieces get added to a giant bin, which I will sort through someday when I have time! At the very least, I do label each piece with names and dates.

 

Finally, we often like to give the art as gifts. Here my daughter made a picture for a good friend on her birthday. I sewed the drawing to the cover of a blank Moleskine sketchbook. Perfect to encourage more art!

What do you do with kids' art in your house?

Simple snowflakes: 3

Thank you so very much for your comments and emails. Hearing from readers old and new gave me renewed confidence that what I am trying to do--in life, in art, in this blog--does matter. It's a difficult world, isn't it? We mourn our fellow citizens in Arizona (see Pat's blog for a beautiful post on this); our friends in Australia suffer through devastating floods; our friends in Haiti mark one year since the terrible earthquake, and still they suffer--and so it goes, all around the world. Sometimes I can hardly bear to think of it all. My scientist husband remarked to me that trying to make beauty will always be important in a world of hardship. So yes--we must help others, in every way we can, and we must also pursue Beauty, and have faith in its purpose. 

And so from those thoughts, onward to snowflakes, ephemeral and yet, en masse, powerful, as we have been experiencing in the past few days. They cover our land in a frigid blanket. They fall like feathers; they glitter. They sit dull and quiet; they whisper. They pull down power and leave us cold and dark, surrounded by white. And then, crystal by crystal, they vanish.

Last year I made sun prints of snowflake shapes, and I liked them so well I thought I'd share them now. I embellished the prints with white ink.  

For the complete post and how-to, see here. 

Simple snowflakes: 2

So there were supposed to be more photos with this one, but there aren't, because life got in the way. But this is so simple, indeed, that I think you get the idea. Take a paint chip. Trim. Punch. Affix to a card and write a nice note to someone you love. Enjoy the color variations. Maybe this would be fun with non-traditional snowflake colors. I see possibilities for Valentine's day too with a range of pinks and reds and some heart cut-outs.

Anyway, there's a lot of life getting in the way of blogging. I wonder sometimes if I should continue. I have so many ideas and projects, and I do a reasonable job getting most of them done, but finding time to synthesize ideas, present tutorials, photograph projects, and compose text to go with it really takes time. I find that I don't have time to comment on other blogs, and when I don't do that, then naturally other people don't comment here, which I understand. But then if there's no conversation going on, why do I do this? Does the world need this blog? I think not. Do I need it? I guess I must! 

I have been thinking about these issues more since Emily decided to stop writing her blog. Meanwhile, the delightful Ariadne, who is a loyal commenter here, just started her own. And Molly has a giveaway going at her blog in celebration of its third year. Each of these beautiful spaces adds to my creative world and gives me new ideas. Regardless of whether I keep this one going (and I will keep it going at least through this spring), I hope I give some of you new ideas too!

Simple snowflakes: 1

We are working on a snowflake "unit," if one can call it that. We do not home school, but we do spend a lot of time on art and science projects at home. This month we are focusing on the winter sky, and this week I'll share some easy ways to make art using the basic shape of a snow flake. 

For this project we chose to stencil stylized images of snowflakes on paper as a way to explore color, composition, and the idea of negative space.

You don't need much: we used a craft punch to make snowflakes; watercolors in tubes; a stencil brush; a pencil; and some paper.

Using a very small amount of paint, and a nearly dry brush, one brushes over the stencil (held down with a pencil or other stylus) with strokes that radiate outward. And that's it. Very simple, but with nice results. We used white paint on blue paper, and blue paint on white paper. 

Tomorrow we'll use a favorite prop from the hardware store with our snow flakes!

Color book of the seasons

Everything I do begins with color. My very thoughts are infused with them. My clothes reveal color fixations; my garden endures color experiments. In my mind each day of the week has a color. My memory is less about what I did than what color I remember: the pale blue staircase to my great-grandmother's attic. The red rock cliffs of Mauritania. That puce green cardigan I wore to the coffee shop in college.

All my projects begin with a color that indicates emotion and purpose to me.

When I was a letterpress printer I used the Pantone color book to mix ink for the press. Now I'm a mother, and no longer a printer. But I still need to work with color, in whatever form I have time for. 

I was thinking about the coming year and the things I want to create, and the first thing I decided to make was my own version of a color book. Mine follows the logic of how I see the seasons in my part of the world (and in my own brain), with each leaf representing one month. In this photo above you see January, February and March.

January for me is a month of blue and white, grey and black, sparkle and dullness. For my January color strip, I painted two shades of blue and one of charcoal. My projects for the month, both with the kids and for myself, will involve things related to the winter sky. I'll be sharing them with you in the coming weeks.

If you want to make your own version of this little experiment--call it a color book, color wheel, or paint chip collection, as you like--just find some scrap paper and color. I used handmade paper and watercolors, and I painted my little squares without much concern for exactitude. My leaves are approximately 6 inches by 1 and 3/4 inches, and the size was dictated in part by the scraps I had available. 

I hope everyone is enjoying the new year, with new projects and new beginnings.

Ornaments to make with kids (& tutorial links)

The kids and I have been busy making ornaments for our teacher gifts this year. We were inspired by the many projects featured on some of our favorite blogs. Below are five kinds of ornaments that we made. 

These felt wreaths were inspired by this post at the Magic Onions. I used wool felt scraps from the bevy of crowns I made a few years ago. I used my Japanese push drill to make quick holes, and we threaded the felt discs on fancy pipe cleaner and twisted the ends into a loop for hanging. Fast and easy! The kids loved this project best.

 

Our tiny fabric houses were inspired by a pattern in this book. I didn't follow the pattern, but simply cut up some squares and triangles from Moda fabric and tried sewing them together with fancy stitches and rick rack. The results are wonky but charming. My daughter had fun trying out the sewing machine (now I know why they put "speed governors" on them.) 

 

We made glittery egg carton jingle bells inspired by a project on the Crafty Crow. Cassi's jingle bell flowers are far more elegant, but ours do stand out on the tree with all of that glitter! 

 

We are making recycled ribbon spool ornaments with the children's art this year (the one pictured above has a greeting card image); you can find the tutorial from last year here. 

 

I made a two-part tutorial for these little books here and here. This is a more involved project, but with some planning and help, kids can do it! 

Any of these ornaments would make a great last-minute gift! Happy weekend!

Light-filled leaves, this year

Do you remember this post? I had such fun making those designs. I haven't had much time or energy this fall to make things, but I managed a few push-drill leaf compositions, as seen below. One has to do something with all of the leaves that the small folk collect . . . .