If this, then that.

I really enjoy projects/recipes/finds that lead me down a path of creativity and ideas.  Like if you ever make butter, then you're left with buttermilk, so you figure out what to make with that and you learn new things along the way.

After Easter, I couldn't bear to throw out all the egg dye, so I froze it in ice cube trays thinking my daughter could have fun painting with ice.  I had had grand fun with this myself in my days as a preschool teaching assistant, so I was looking forward to sharing the experience with her.

I plopped the first set of ice cubes onto a sheet of newsprint on the back porch and expected... well, more.  :D*  She thought they looked neat and pushed them around a little bit, but didn't like how cold they were, so I gave her a bubble wand to move them with, but the momentum had begun to fizzle.

Juggling her younger brother and a bad back while this was happening prevented me from really getting involved in modeling what one could do with such a boon; but, I thought, surely, my brilliant daughter can figure out how to have fun with this given a few words of encouragement!  She seemed interested enough, so I got out the other trays.  I had lots of different colors and they were all melting differently.

She never really got into it and quickly became pretty non-plussed by the whole concept when she realized that the ice cubes were all going to melt and disappear.  She seemed more attached to the ice cubes as objects than art tools.

Me: (in a half-hearted attempt at reverse psychology) "Well, I'm sorry, I did this because I thought it would be fun for you, I guess I shouldn't have bothered."

D: "It was fun.  But then they started melting."

sorry kiddo!

                                             F+, Mom.  
                                                                

It was still neat (for me) to watch them melt as it became a temporary art installation type moment on the porch.

A few days later:
After making (amazingly tasty) Osso Buco * I kind of fell in love with the oval slices of bone left over. I figured, I save shells for D to play with; why not bones?  I read up on how to clean them and it worked great. You'll notice them weighing our paper down during the ice cube painting.
I had a flash of inspiration and decided to draw sets of faces with chalk that had missing features and have her place the bones to "fill in the blanks".

I enjoyed seeing her placement of the features and we had fun figuring out which feature was missing.  I also drew many different face shapes just to mix up the perceptions and visuals.  She even took it a step further and drew her own face for me to figure out the missing feature on!





It was one of those easy, spontaneous whims that just felt particularly satisfying for this SAHMA (stay-at-home-mom-artist).  When we decided to wrap it up she looked at me and said "Let's go sit in the hammock and watch this NOT MELT."




* I've made this twice and it's actually really easy, forgiving and sooo good.  
I know it's supposed to be veal, but I've never eaten veal.  (changes to recipe) I used 8 smaller beef shanks, a bottle of tomato puree blend something, red wine, dried herbs and I think a little sugar.  I divided it up between two enameled dutch oven type pans.  I really just sear off the meat in some oil, take it out, sweat the veggies, then add everything in together and put the lid on and put it in the oven for approximately 4 hours, occasionally checking on it.

Happy Belated Easter!

Thought we'd share our little pysanky-inspired pregnancy Easter photo with you.  She, of course, couldn't resist decorating her biggest "egg" yet!  We had a wonderful day full of family and laughs and now we eagerly await our next big day, welcoming a new baby into the fold!  Celena is expecting her second boy and is due May 14th.  Hope he likes eggs!

Fun Feet Halloween Activity!

Celena:

Selah and I are always eager to find ways to get creative with the kiddos and a friend or three. We came up with a series of hand/footprint t-shirt ideas for the upcoming holidays and had so much fun with our first one!

Just in time for Halloween!

You should totally try it with your little ones- it would also make an awesome handmade card to send to extended family.

Here is our friend's completed shirt! Her daughter is a ball of energy and she didn't believe that we would get good footprints, but with good timing and speedy optimism, you can do this with pretty much any kid. As with all good crafts, the variation on a common theme is my favorite part. I just love seeing what different things everyone will come up with. ♥ I adore how these yellow toes almost glow. ♥

Have all your supplies ready to go:

white, yellow and orange paints on a tray (we used acrylic because it's what we had and it won't wash out, but fabric paint would be great too)

a few brushes

dish of water

paper towels

dark colored t-shirt(s) with something sturdy and flat inside- we used little plastic trays, but cardboard would be good too

letter stamps or stencils (or if you feel up to hand painting letters, go for it!)

*we also had silver and gold paint for embellishing, as well as some star stamps- you can use rubber stamps if you wash them well, you could carve some potato stamps if you're so inclined*

We set up a playdate with some chums and got to work!

When painting the wee ones feeties it helps to have a positive can-do attitude. If YOU believe that it will go well, they will be much more likely to go along with it. More than one person and possibly some food and/or toys for distraction are also quite helpful. Paint all the colors at once- with calmer more cooperative kids, you can do both feet at one time, but with less patient ones, one at time is best. We were pretty spontaneous with it all, but smocks or old clothes (or no clothes) are probably a good idea for the children and you. Acrylic paint, as I stated, will NOT wash out :)

Your shirts (or whatever fabric you're printing onto) should be pre-washed and dry. Stand the kid up to print their feet- we did this on the tabletop. Wash their feet immediately (especially if using acrylic). We just whisked them over to the nearby sink and sat them on the edge to wash their feet. While it's wet, acrylic washes easily with water from skin and smooth surfaces.

Once you have the feet placed on your shirt you'll need to decide how to lay out your words. We're using rubber letter stamps, here's our good friend getting hers just right:

We all touched up our foot prints a little to make sure each color was bright and opaque enough. Just go slowly and don't get too much paint on your brush at one time and you'll do great. With older or more craftsy children (like the little girl in the last photo) you can let them help out with stamp placement and other decorations on the shirt. Do whatever feels right/looks right to you- bust out some glitter- play with stamping one color over another- just relax and have fun, no matter what- you will be being creative with your child(ren) and that's priceless!

Here are our two little ones (plus a neighbor friend who stopped by) in their completed shirts. Another reason to use acrylic is that it dries quite quickly- this was less than an hour after we painted them. As you can see we have two very different kids and two very different shirts, but they're both adorable and we all had a fantastic time!

Drop Pull eggs!

Celena: I have always wanted to try my hand at an egg decorating technique known as "drop-pull" and I finally got the chance! My favorite pysanky supplier started carrying stuff for it recently, plus I was lucky enough to already have some key items so I got started right away.

The idea is you have a hotplate type situation with multiple pots of different colored wax. Originally these little pots were actually a muffin tin which was probably heated up over fire or on an old stove and probably needed to be reheated throughout the process. Modern technology has brought us wonderful electric batik tools however so that's not necessary anymore. One modern change that's not so good is that you used to be able to use crayons for this, however, they're mostly made with soy wax now which doesn't stick to eggs so much. *sigh*

You may notice the small tool laying near the wax pots- this is a tool I purchased a long time ago and have used as a paper embosser along with die cut metal stencils which is a great technique. Of course after 10 or so of your 75 wedding invitations you get a little less enamored with it- I speak from personal experience, can you tell? :)

Anywho, I thought that I was going to use a straight pin stuck into a pencil, which is what the old-school drop-pullers use and what I pseudo-jerry-rigged for myself at first:

It actually worked better than you may think, I was able to find a small nail with a head and stick it into one of my dowel pins leftover from my bookshelves and got the hang of it pretty quickly. The nail lost heat rapidly though and I kept heating it up with a candle and ending up with black soot in my wax- no fun.

But once I discovered that the new tools being made for this technique are just little metal balls on the end, I decided to ferret out my old embosser.

Definitely different, but pretty great! I am having loads of fun getting into this new technique and they are much quicker to make than a typical pysanka so that's really nice.

It fills me with glee to watch these boxes fill up with jewel colored eggs that I made with my hands. I love each and every one of them. I wish I had all the time in the world to sit perched at my tiny desk full of waxes and dyes and just create one beautiful egg after another.

new sketches

Selah: My wrist is crying out that it needs a respite from the long, tensed hours of work on tinies! I still wanted to make things though, so I decided to get started on repurposing some little wooden plaques I got at the goodwill. They had some horrible little wooden children glued to them and were painted an unfavorably bright yellow for my thinking, but already had little hangers and no problems that couldn't be fixed!

Because they are three of a kind, my mind got to thinking about inspirations. I wanted to do some more of my masked ladies because the only two I made have been purchased and with the show so close to Halloween, I thought they needed to make an appearance. After some thought and brainstorming with the husband, I remembered that I used musical names for my discreet femmes (the titles being Sonata and Minuet). I lit upon the idea of sisters and a 3 part harmony. Haven't quite worked out the naming specifics, but was able to get some solid sketching done, thinking about a family of beauties invited to a grand masked ball. Obviously still at the drawing pad, but thought I would let you all know where I'm at.

My wrist is still sore, but just leftover; the drawing is giving it some rest methinks. I've started taking some glucosamine, but it will be many weeks before I'm supposed to feel much difference. Pooh!

Pysanky Progress

Celena: My dearest husby Jack just finished making the dye hutch for my egging desk and I couldn't be happier with the finished product! I finally have enough room for all these Colorama dyes,there are over 50!

I am trying to squeeze out all the work time I can to get a good stock built up for our first show which is coming up really soon.

I decided to try a new strategy and am working on three eggs at once all of the same design. I thought my new Texas egg design was a good one to start with and I had a fair amount of the double yolk turkey eggs that I like to use for it. Turkey eggs come with dark brown speckles all over them so they require a bit of hand-sanding before they are suitable for dyeing. Even with thorough sanding they keep a slightly speckled appearance and I think it complements the classic Texas feel that I am striving for with this particular design.

I used SO many different shades of yellow for these roses, I can't wait to melt off the wax and see how they turn out! That is still my absolute favorite part of writing pysanky, melting all the wax off at the end by hand with a candle and slowly revealing the intricate colors beneath.

I still need to complete the blubonnets, some red striping, the navy background for those stars and a pale blue around the roses.

Here's hoping my son's nap remains long like it was today! :)

Our first show!

Celena: We recently heard back about our very first joint craft fair application! We're in and we're very excited.

It's set in late October at Leander High School and is benefitting their baseball department. It's an annual fair, so maybe it will be a recurring gig for us? It's very close to our houses, so it would be great if we were able to do it every year.

Selah's been making more of her adorable and fascinating temari earrings and I need to amp up my egg making! We're still in the fledgling stages so we don't have a set booth arrangement yet and we'll be working hard on that as well.

So much to do- all with little ones in tow. :)

Selah: Not really sure what to prepare for, as we're going into this pretty well blind. Don't know how big a show it will be, or how we will fit in with the other booths/venue. Very excited though for being able to get our feet wet and work out some kinks as we hope this is just the beginning of our show/booth careers. I know we will learn so much with this experience and I'm really pumped about the whole thing. Need to make more stuff though, was pretty dejected when I accidentally squooshed an earring that I had almost finished embroidering! Didn't get as much work done on the car trip as I'd hoped, but now that I'm back from our jaunt to Houston; it's nose-to-the-grindstone time.