gelli printing with a kid

 One of Taylor's favourite activities when she comes to my house is Gelli printing. I have 2 plates one is 6x6 and the other is 3x5. For the 6x6 I just give her pieces of newsprint or white paper to use for her prints. With the 3x5, she uses blank index cards that are the same size as the plate. 

She uses Princeton Catalyst tools (these are one of my favourite tools to use), recycling I've collected for texture and fluid acrylic paint from the dollar store. I showed her how to use some of the tools when she first started use the plates but now she just experiments with different colours and tools. I usually use whichever plate she isn't so she will often ask me how I did something on my plate and try it out on her own.

These are 4 of her last prints. 

fabric dollhouse

Amelia made this fabric dollhouse a few weeks ago and it was a huge hit. We followed the pattern here. It used hard plastic mesh lined with batting inside the fabric. It took one class (2 hours) to assemble plus another little bit for me to hand sew the velcro in place. We spent her next class decorating it with felt.

 The back.

Inside.

Complete with curtains, a table (an empty spool of thread) with a bowl of apples (red beads hot glued in place), a rug...

...and a fish pond!

baking soda paint

 I tried this recipe for baking soda paint with Taylor. You mix up water, baking soda and food colouring to paint with. Once your creation is down on paper (use water colour paper if available), spray or drip vinegar on the paint to create the fizzing reaction. It was a neat activity but once dry there was a lot of baking soda flaking off the paper which made a bit of an extra mess.

Her colours.

Her two masterpieces.

messy bags (another kid edition)

This is becoming one of my favourite project to do with kids and to do on my own. 

 I did it again a few weeks ago with Millie. I forgot to take a lot of pictures as she was working but did get the finished product!

Mille painted a large piece of canvas and then turned it into 5 one of a kind pouches. These are the front and back of each.

 

 

 

 

hand painted art journal

I tend to be very "uptight" when I paint. It took me a long time to get over my fear of having brushstrokes show and not have everything perfectly blended. I love the look of other people's "messy" work but it wasn't something I could get into for myself. I have been on a journey for about the last year to learn to embrace a more messy and loose style. It was a frustrating process in the beginning. A few months in I found a few artists online who I absolutely fell in love with and started to emulate their styles in bits of my own work. I found having someone's work to look at and study was a lot easier than trying to come up with my own completely original ideas. I think I'm now at a place where I have started to incorporate both styles into different areas of my art. I still like my perfectly blended areas but I'm also okay with splats and drips and brushstrokes too.

One of my absolute favourites is Alisa Burke. Check out her blog here: http://alisaburke.blogspot.ca/. I love her style of doodling and have taken quite of few of her online classes. One of the biggest things I have learned from both her blog and classes is to learn to let go and to allow the process to happen without being caught up in the final result, particularly when doodling. About a week ago she did a post on creating a hand painted art journal. I was all over this project because I have wanted to buy one from her online store but can't because she doesn't ship to Canada. Boo :(

I started with a Canson Mix Media sketchbook. The paper is a little thicker than a regular sketchbook so the paper doesn't buckle quite as much. Quick tip: you can iron the pages with an iron on low heat to get them to flatten out.

I painted all 60 pages of the book using acrylics and watercolours. I used different sized brushes, drips, splats and my fingers to create a variety of pages. Here a smattering of what I did in the book:

Finally I painted the cover.

I love my new art journal. I've started drawing in it and I must say it is far less intimidating to draw on a colourful messy page than trying to achieve perfection on a crisp white page.

messy bag (kid edition)

 Amelia (different one than before) wanted to make a gift for her mom's birthday. Having just finished all of my own messy bags, I thought this would be a great project for her to do especially because she loves to paint. It took about four hours to complete. Two for the painting one day and two to sew it another.

She painted a big piece of canvas with acrylic paint (and white house paint to make it spread and reduce the amount of coloured paint required). She also drizzled with the white house paint.

She printed on it using bubble wrap, toilet paper rolls and other recyclables. 

She also wrote on it with thinned out paint and used ink to create coloured drips.

Again I had a denim needle on my machine. Amelia added pockets to the inside of the bag with the left over fabric. She finds it difficult to sew without the pieces being pinned together but we discovered to painted fabric is too thick for pins. Instead we used the black bulldog (or binder) clips to hold everything together. They worked like magic. The fabric was also quite heavy so I held the fabric up while she sewed so it wouldn't drag and pull off the straight line.

She opted for plain canvas straps. 

All done.

fruit (kid edition)

Another piece by Amelia. She wanted it to look like a smilely face. See it?

flower vase (kid edition)

Amelia finished this piece a few months ago but I am just getting around to posting some of the stuff I have been working on with my students.