Kenzie likes to pick me flowers from our yard, which we put in a little bud vase inside the house. This random act of kindness, was the inspiration for these. I don't think this was my unique idea - but I can't remember a source, so I can't site it. :)




We created the blooms while recycling toilet paper tubes, glammed up in glitter paints. Tissue paper is stuffed inside the round center, and a bamboo skewer makes a nice stem. And these, won't wilt.



Directions:
This was one hour worth of solid entertainment for my daughter. I cheerleaded & surfed the web while she drowned her flowers in paint. :)

I used one toilet paper tube per flower.
Draw a ring 2" in from the edge of each tube. Repeat on other side.
Draw cut lines every 1/2 inch (so the kid knows where to cut, but reinforce that they have to stop at the center rings! This required a lot of impatient reminding on my part.)
Fold petals back, and you should have a flower with two layers of petals.
I tried to make each flower different by varying the cuts. :)

By: stacy & kenzie (age 3)
Mama's Doodles

Labels: stacy d.

My guys are all about amassing armies. They can use anything — scraps of paper, marbles, etc. Here we downloaded and printed 2 different transformers from the San Jose Mercury News site. They did some of the cutting, I did the rest. We folded them together and voila! Let the battle begin!

By: Laura, Kiyon 9, & Josh 6
Creative Whimsies

Labels: armies, Laura Zarrin, transformer

By: Shena and Riley (age 4)
Mommy and Riley

Labels: Shena and Riley

I found some really great & cheap fingerpaints with built in sparkles the other day. We tend to make a huge mess fingerpainting, so we took our antics outside.

The colors were lovely, and SPARKLY. We commenced with making sheet after sheet of painty goodness. Both of us dug in, albeit I was a bit more restrained than the child, given that I didn't want a sparkly camera after the ordeal. :)

While painting we started drawing lines in the thick paint. And then we begun to see accidental subjects, calling them out to one another. Another injection of creativity into a simple exercise.

We saw:
A race track (me)
A giraffe in a rainstorm (kenzie)
peppermint candies (me)
a snake slithering through grass (kenzie)
a kangaroo tail (kenzie)
leggos (me)
rainbow hands (kenzie)
fairy dust (kenzie)
a checkerboard (me)
crazy lady hair (kenzie)
...and this was only a few.

Amazing, how my mind went to the tangible - and Kenzie saw more visionary imaginative findings. It was a most excellent mess.

By: stacy & kenzie (age 3)
Mama's Doodles

Labels: stacy d.

Riley and I recently discovered Artist Trading Cards (ATC) and he's super excited about them. I'm not sure if it's the fun of creating cards for people, or the idea that he is going to get fun mail that makes him more excited. (=

Today we created a Signature Card to mail out with all the swaps we do. We decided it would be cool to make it look like magnetic poetry, so Riley told me what words to use and where to place them. Then we signed it with our blog name. We did this in Photoshop so we can easily print it out to go with our handmade art when we mail it.

Riley has already started working on his cards for Jo (see "Introducing Wendi and Jo below) and is so excited about them (we won't post them until after Jo gets them in the mail so we don't ruin her surprise though). He would love to have more people to share cards with, and Wendi said that Jo would love to have more people to swap with too!!

If anyone else is interested in joining the Kids ATC swap just reply to this post and we'll share addresses via e-mail - that way they won't be on the internet for everyone to see. We hope we get some takers! (=

Don't know what Artist Trading Cards Are? Here's some info we copied from the Internet:

Basically Artist Trading Cards are any handmade art on card stock weight material. The only rules are they must be 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" ( the same size as sports trading cards) and they must be signed/dated by the artist on the back of the card. Artists then trade their cards for ones from other artists, just like kids trade sports cards, pokemon cards, etc.

Signature cards: Many ATC artists create a "business card" ATC that features a self-portrait on the front and a fact sheet about themselves on the back. They then send it out with sets they are trading. This is a lovely idea that allows artists to get to know each other more.

By: Shena and Riley (age 4)
Mommy and Riley

Labels: Shena and Riley, Shena Leonard

Onward into summer, it appears that we need at least a craft project per day now that it's blazing hot outside. We've got an arsenal of craft supplies, on the ready.

For Big and Little Art, we had much begging to do another collage. Each week, I keep wondering when we might waver from the animal theme. Not this week. A "rhinoceros" she said. "Oh, and some flowers."


Painting and each flower handstuck by Kenzie. Wonky Rhino, missing a horn...by Mama.



And some handmade critters of the foam variety. This time, we (I) managed to get all the body parts in the right place.

By: Stacy and Kenzie (age 3)
Mama's Doodles

Labels: stacy d.

Hi! Thanks for letting us join the blog - and thanks to Elizabeth Dulemba for telling me about it. Instead of posting a particular project here I'm going to introduce my daughter and I by showing the gallery of "Dots" we've been making - inspired by The Dot by Peter Reynolds - one of our favorite picture books. Don't know The Dot? It's awesome. It's about a girl, Vashti, who thinks she isn't good at art and refuses to even try. Her amazing art teacher encourages her just to "make a mark" and Vashti jabs a marker at the paper and shoves it at her teacher. Her teacher (really - amazing) looks at it carefully, and hands it back for Vashti to sign it. The next time Vashti comes to class her picture is hanging in the front of the room, all framed in swirly gold! Vashti decides she can make a better dot than that and embarks on a whirlwind of creativity - all dots.
Jo and I love the book and we'd been looking for some fun projects to do this summer - and so the Vashti Project was born. You can click on the Vashti Project link to see the individual dots we've made so far - using markers, crayons, collage, glitter glue, melted crayons, and fabric. Fun!

By: Wendi & Jo, age 4
Gratz Industries

I hope we get some takers, Riley said he would "LOVE to do those cards, let's get started."

By: Shena and Riley, age 4
Mommy and Riley

Labels: Artist Trading cards, Shena and Riley

Since it's Independence Day today we did more of a collage with junk rather than the things we normally do and instead of painting the Woog had the job of "sqiiiiiisshhhhh-ing" the glue and gluing on the fireworks (aka buttons). I decided to stick it in a frame and it's new home is in the kitchen. Happy 4th!

By: Holli & Walker, age 3
A Girl Who Creates

Labels: holli conger

Today, Kenzie was very specific about what to make for our project. How about these "giraffeses?"



I decided to make this more of a collage piece rather than again copying Holli's Junk-a-doodle style, so I gave Kenzie bare cardboard and asked her to announce the colors we'd need based on viewing our subjects. She painted these tones, which I then cut into the forms to make the giraffe's. Kenzie however insisted on a few found objects mid-way through and collected the junk herself. So, that's how we got to the outcome (after a final bath in glitter glue):



By: stacy & kenzie (age 3)
mama's doodles

Labels: stacy d.

I've been wanting to try collage knowing the kids would enjoy it. I had thought to just paint a plain, textured background and then create a collage on top. The kids, of course, had other ideas. They're boys, so volcano's, destruction, and mayhem are key. Here's the result. I gave them some color mixing advice, they did the rest. Josh's is on the left, Kiyon's on the right.

By: Laura Zarrin, Kiyon age 9, Josh age 6
Creative Whimsies

Labels: collage, Laura Zarrin, volcano