One Inch World

Catch up art activities. We’ll be packing for the next month, so things are falling behind everywhere, but this is a no-apologies blog, so we just keep going!

Salt watercolors – we painted with diluted liquid water colors using brushes, and sprinkled flake salt over them. Always pretty and fun. I was experimenting with the amazing dilut-ability of liquid watercolors – I think I diluted them about 10:1, and got colors as strong as the girls often get with dry water colors, reasonable pastels that is. Thinking about it makes me want to put out a color mixing activity for today. (^_^)

This was a variation on working with starch packing peanuts, I thought it would be fun to use tempera paint to stick them together instead of water. The girls seemed less inclined to mash the peanuts into the liquid until they were mostly dissolved lumps, I thought that was interesting. They are more used to gently dipping things into paint vs soaking them in water I think. Because of that the building went a little more predictably. Anya delicately made very long twisty walls, Rebecca randomly mushed hers into puddles, and Felicity decided to use hers as dissolving paint brushes. Same materials, vastly different outcome!

I’m back from vacation in modem land, and I have a lot of catching up to do on this blog! I think I need some kind of schedule, craft, homeschool, and kid art once a week on their own days, but I haven’t gotten there yet!

This is a carrot. Carrot leaves look nothing like that in reality, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a soft carrot with a realistic top. Only plastic ones.

This carrot is a basic cone pattern, with velcro patches holding it together. I’d really like to get some colored velcro for projects like this, and making sushi rolls, I’ve seen some really cute patterns that use colored velcro. I used random orange fabric patches to make the pieces I cut the cone sections out of, which I like. The construction is pretty messy though! I tried to get away with sewing the tiny circles on with the sewing machine. That never works…

Merry Christmas from Vermont, (vacationing with the in-laws, much more satisfying than California!)

I just got my copy of One Yard Wonders, which has my origami organizer pattern in it, and it is SO AWESOME! (The whole book!) I admit, I thought it was a little kitchy when I first heard the proposal, projects using 1 yard of fabric? My prediction was it was going to be half bags and half aprons. But they managed to keep it to 5 things I would call an apron/smock, and a similar number of bags. There is really a lot of diversity. And the really magic part is that now I know I can indulge in a yard of fabric whenever I want, and there will be some awesome pattern in this book that is just right! I hadn’t realized that the true power of this book would be to enable future fabric purchases, hahaha! I know how much fabric to buy now! One Yard!

Going in I also really wasn’t sure how they were going to make all these patterns and tutorials from different people fit together and look cohesive, but then, that’s their job, isn’t it? I should have had more faith. They did a great job! My pattern looks nothing like it did when I submitted it, it looks much better! They took my photo tutorial and turned it into an illustrated tutorial, that, except possibly for the tying step, is probably easier to understand. So now I’ll have the confidence to do this again, if I ever see another call for proposals. In the mean time I’m forging ahead with my next pattern for my Etsy store. LEDs, conductive velcro, and felt…

We had our sort-of annual gingerbread house making party yesterday, and it was a lot of fun. This year I skipped the nervous breakdown inducing making of 50 billion slabs of gingerbread, and we all used graham crackers. They work better than 3/8″ thick slabs of gingerbread anyway, they aren’t as heavy, although they don’t taste as good. I tried calling a local bakery, but they laughed at me. Someone mentioned they sold slabs at Nobb Hill, so maybe I’ll try that next year.

Anyway, there was plenty of candy and icing and graham crackers, and at least 10 houses constructed. My best friend and I collaborated on Donaldson Castle, complete with body hanging from the ramparts…

Today, through Kiva.org, I loaned $50 to a tailor in Ghana. Join me in my December drive to give a helping hand to people in poverty.

We needed something to do, so we made this clothes line out of a pipe cleaner and some cardboard triangles, and some paper clothes to hang up. I cut out the clothes and Rebecca drew on them, then hung them on the clothes line with mini clothes pins. To get the clothes line to stay up we had to put some rocks in the cardboard triangles, maybe someone has a better idea for how to make a clothes line? This one is pretty simple.

Today, through Kiva.org, I loaned $50 to a sweet maker in Mexico. Join me in my December drive to give a helping hand to people in poverty.