The Artful Parent: The Intersection of Art and Parenting

We sent pressed flower notecards to the mothers and grandmothers in our family. Here’s one just for you. Happy Mother’s Day!

I’m in love. Or obsessed. Maybe both. Freezer paper stenciling is so FUN! And addictive. My friend Sarah and I decided to see what the big deal was and to jump the learning curve together this past week. We bought fabric paint, freezer paper, and fresh x-acto knives. We armed ourselves with SouleMama’s post about freezer paper stenciling (In looking for the link, I just realized I copied her post title in my last post! Oops. Maybe I remembered it in my subconscious. Or maybe freezer paper stenciling is just THAT good!). We also opened my copy of The Creative Family to Amanda’s chapter about it. 

First we printed out cool images from the web that we wanted to stencil. A bird for me as well as some designs from the so-cool urchinmama’s flickr photostream; an eiffel tower, peace sign, and skull-and-crossbones for Sarah. We cut the designs out of freezer paper with x-acto knives, then ironed the freezer paper onto our plain shirts, shiny side down (with another piece of freezer paper shiny side up underneath the fabric). We brushed on our fabric paint, and waited impatiently (overnight!) for them to dry so we could peel off the freezer paper and see our new shirts. We oohed and ahed then heat set the designs with an iron.

I wore my shirt yesterday, and waited for Maia’s nap so I could start all over again. Not just two designs for me this time! No sirree. I had to cover every flat area in the studio with drying freezer paper stencils.

I decided to try using both the positive and negative images that I cut out of the freezer paper. And when I ran out of plain t-shirts to stencil, I raided my fabric stash for remnants to stencil.

My studio looks like a store now! And, Sarah, I promise I’ll want to do more next time you come over!! I still have to stencil shirts for Harry, Maia, for gifts, bags, skirts, etc., etc. Who needs chocolate when you have a hobby (vice) like this?!

More soon…

On Wednesday the kids painted the plaster of Paris sculptures they made in the art group last week. We put out several colors of tempera paint and many brushes. The paint got mixed, as usual, and the brushes went ignored. The kids are really enjoying painting with their hands these days–and just getting lots of paint on their hands and squishing it around. Stella is painting above.

Here’s Marlise’s sculpture.

And Henry’s.

Maia threaded the rest of her big beads onto a pipe cleaner. I folded the pipe cleaner back onto itself after  the first one, in order to hold them on, and she threaded the rest very easily.

She immediately called it her caterpillar. It’s a nice colorful one, isn’t it?

Maia and I made a batch of Easy Big Beads last week from MaryAnn Kohl’s First Art. First we made the self-hardening playclay with flour, salt, water, and cornstarch and shaped the beads. Maia rolled a few into snakes, but the dough was a little crumbly and hard to work with, so I ended up shaping most of the beads while she poked the holes with a bamboo skewer.

They took a few days to dry completely, then Maia painted them (she loved this part). 

She started out with tempera paint (which the instructions call for), but also tried some watercolors that we already had mixed up with water.

After the paint dried, Maia helped string the beads. She wanted a necklace so we just used some wool yarn–not sure what else would work well for a necklace. Any ideas? The instructions call for thin plastic lacing or tubing but we didn’t have any and I’m not sure where to get something like that. She loved her necklace (she picked the watercolor-painted beads), but the beads didn’t last long. Within a few hours of wearing it (and taking it off periodically to swing around or bang against the walls), each bead broke.

I think I’ll let her string the rest of the beads onto a pipecleaner (easier for her to do herself) and then hang them up in her room to avoid breakage. Although I imagine she’ll want to play with them…

We had an informal little reception for the kids’ art display that just went up at the bakery. Between muffins and cookies, we got them to line-up on chairs for a photo. You should have seen all the cameras! From left to right: Stella, Henry, Maia, Thalia, Caleb, Marlise, and Vivi. This isn’t the complete line-up of kids because Justin and Nathan are out of town this week.

A couple more pics just for fun… Stella, Henry, Maia, and Thalia above.

And here’s Marlise, Caleb, and Vivi.

We hung the Toddler Art Group’s paintings at our neighborhood bakery yesterday. I think the kids (and families) will be excited to see their artwork up–especially in a place most of them visit often.

These two are recent paintings on canvas by Marlise. The one on the left is from when we did texture printings with various household items, including a potato masher. She painted the right canvas at home using a paint roller first with the green, then adding the blue brushstrokes afterwards on her own volition.

I love seeing how these kids are really beginning to explore the materials and techniques on their own and to create such original pieces of art!

We had to try this project out last night after seeing it on Art Projects for Kids. It looked like a fun and rewarding project that even a toddler could do (and that I really wanted to try myself!).

Maia splashed, splattered, and dabbed the watercolor paint liberally onto the paper. I encouraged her to make big blocks of color the way the activity was presented, which she did to some extent but also enjoyed (as always) mixing the colors.

She LOVED wrinkling and adding the saran wrap to the paintings! We left them to dry overnight.

Cool, huh? I just think these are great. They look kind of like salt crystals in 2-D form. I would never have thought to combine saran wrap and watercolor paint, but it’s very effective.

 I imagine we’ll be doing this again soon. I wonder what else we could use besides saran wrap? I think next time we’ll try a different variation–maybe bubble wrap.

Have you read Frederick by Leo Lionni? I know it’s been around for a long time (1967!), but it’s fairly new to me. I just love it. Frederick is a little mouse who isn’t scurrying around collecting food for the winter with the other mice. When they ask him why he isn’t working, he says he’s collecting sun rays, colors, and words. The other mice don’t value those things and keep badgering him.

But that winter, after their food runs out, they get cold and depressed and Frederick’s sun rays, colors, and poems brighten their spirits and save the day.

I love the message about the value of art and the sometimes under-appreciated artist.