We made a magic wall in our kitchen - ok, actually it's magnetic not magic... But, it's still pretty cool and gets lots of curious inspections from visitors. (=


Riley likes to arrange the clothespins into houses. (=





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

Labels: Shena and Riley

I'm taking a brave step into using my photoshop program. I'd like to play around with digital illustration, but I find the whole photoshop process terribly overwhelming. Today, while playing around I discovered that I can create coloring pages from digital photographs in just a few steps. Kenzie prefers this one, although there were other photos better suited to the process.

To make your own coloring pages:
1. Open an image in Photoshop and size to fit your paper. I've been using an 8x8 size.
2. Create a "duplicate layer."
3. Make sure your foreground is set to black and the background is set to white.
4. Go to Filter--> Sketch --> Photocopy and adjust the detail and darkness settings.
5. Clean up the image by adjusting the levels. Go to Layers--> New Adjustment Layer --> Levels and move the slides accordingly until the image is crisp.
6. Print!!

*** You may need to tweak these directions depending on the photo. Some photos required that I "reverse" the image with: Image>Adjust>Invert. Whatever, the case - don't ask me!! I'm truly a photoshop novice.

I'm imagining coloring books, which would be supersweet gifts to cousins or a great memento of a birthday party or other big event... You could create a book of family members that aren't seen as frequently as you'd like... This could be a fun playdate activity, etc.

We're off to color Kenzie some purple hair!!

**P.S. I'm sure this a "been there done that" concept for many of you. I, however, was thrilled to end up with anything usable from my first photoshop experience. :)

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

Labels: stacy d.

The Woog and I decided to make some magnets today. She drew the picture (just scribbles) and then helped me glue them to the back of marbles. Her favorite part was playing with the marbles and then putting them all up on the fridge.

These are her's:



And here are the ones that I made.

By: Holli & Walker, age 3
a girl who creates

Labels: holli conger

It was an adamant and persistent request that we make art. That we make an elephant today. RIGHT NOW. Frankly, my heart wasn't in it, but Kenzie's sure was. I'm glad I played along though - she does enjoy this so much.

She chose the junks. She did the paints. We both worked on gluing the bits down to create this (which was extremely difficult to photograph for some reason):



A close-up of Mr. Elephant:




By: stacy & kenzie, age 3
Mama's Doodles

Labels: stacy d.