Abby Painting

Tissue Paper?

Yesterday, Abby and I were watching Mr. Rogers. Or I should actually say, I was watching Mr. Rogers. (I love Mr. Rogers. I grew up watching him and even watched him sometimes in high school. Right now, Abby is like "Arthur, Arthur, or Bob, Bob." Not Saying Fred, yet.) Well on the episode we were watching there was a segment with Eric Carle of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, and of The Very Hungry Catipillar fame. I was fascinated by his art process. So after Abby went to bed I did some research and last night bought some tissue paper so that we could experiment.

I am so excited. I want to do some more. LOL Abby actually had a lot of fun painting the paper. We ended up painting 2 sheets of tissue paper. Then she was done because she dumped the rest of the paint.

After she ended up going to bed I made little cards out of the tissue paper. It has a very nice delicate look to them.   We are going to put these cards up in our etsy shop and add a few other sets once I get to make them.  They would be wonderful Christmas gifts.  Of course you can always whip out the paint and make your own.  It is so much fun.

We haven't been feeling...

Too Crafty lately. :) Or maybe it is momma hasn't. All Abby wants to do lately is watch cartoons...I know we are turning her brain to mush. Actually we have cut back on tv quite a bit the last week. It has been hard with it getting colder out to do things outdoors and when she comes home from school she should nap. Though she has been fighting it a lot. We rented some videos the other day and one of them was the Office for Sheldon and I. Abby kept asking for Mickey Mouse...so we rented her a Mickey Mouse Club video. She likes it but losses interest pretty fast.

I think today we might make some play dough when she comes home. That will be a nice change of pace. She really enjoyed the bread I made yesterday.

Also, on Wednesday we went to storytime. I think it was the best one yet, it was all about colors and Ms. Karen did a lot of flannel board activities. Abby didn't get off of my lap once. Then we painted. Well Miss Crafty didn't really paint as she doesn't like water colors in the box...but she loved the water. So a good time was had by all.

Yesterday, Abby and I were feeling a bit playful. She sat with me on the front porch after school and we took pics. She loves to look in the camera right after to see the pics. Well none of them didn't turn out very well...but it was fun.

What a fun website....

I think I could be in trouble here...



It is a website that takes your "art" and turns it into fabric. Unique handmade fabric. Not that much more than paying for the regular stuff. Well it is...but it is unique.

More new art....

Abby and I have been gone for a week visiting grandma and grandpa in NC. It was a very nice visit. We are very lucky we will get to see them again for Abby's birthday at the end of the month.

And yes, that is Abby doing flips.  :)  After getting through the initial "hookup" she loved the  jumping.  Grandma is in the background with the biggest smile on his face.

While we were in NC we talked with a store about potentially selling some of our cards. They seemed to like the quilted cards...but wanted to see some more samples and have a pricing list. Yikes.

I decided to try and make some "easier" cards. I took Abby's art and am now weaving it. It turned out pretty nice. At first I thought it was pretty plain but once we backed it on cards and sewed them together they turned out nice.

I have always been wanting to make myself a paper quilt...but instead I took a larger section of some new art that we made last night and it turned it into a weaved wall hanging.

Thanks for looking. Hopefully more to come soon.

Hi

I have posted this also on Jen & Sheld's Life page...but I am now part of the Twisted Sketches family.

If you get a chance, check out their great site and all the talented cardmakers & scrapbookers on there.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Abby and Mommy have been busy.  We have decided to open an etsy shop.  And so while Abby is napping Mommy has been working at getting some items started for the shop.  Also, to increase exposure we made some cards to share with the local Quilters Guild.  I took one of Abby's finger paint paintings and cut it into 9 square blocks and then turned them into a disappearing 9 patch.  I love how they turned out because with the dimension of the paint and different colors it makes the square look like a full sized quilt.

After all that cutting and gluing, I decided to sew them also.  That was a lot of fun.  The finishing touches were a little bit of bling and vintage button hair pins.  Those are the main "sell" and I think they are gorgeous.

Later this evening I worked on some butterfly cards out of another piece of Abby's art.  She loves butterflies.  Whenever we are outside and she sees one, she signs butterfly and loves to watch them.  Also she loves to see them in books and she calls them butters.

I will be posting those cards and other pics tomorrow.

Have a great night.  Below is the original idea I came up with before I used Abby's artwork.  It is very pretty but I love the look of hers better.  I am probably a bit biased but the bold colors pop.

Busy Day a Painting...

Hi,

Today was a busy day. Mommy was hosting dessert club, so Abby had to hang out with daddy for most of the day. Though, I am not sure if she felt that was a hardship or not. At 4 when it was all over, I asked Abby if she wanted to paint and she said yes. We have run out of painting paper. (I know, bad mom.) However, we have a bunch of canvases, I wasn't thinking very well and decided to try to use some of our watercolor paint on an acrylic canvas.

The end product is very nice, but the process along the way was a bit iffy. I had grabbed all the watercolors and put a little in each section of the paint palette. One of the colors was black and Abby decided that she definitely liked black and brown. So it was starting to look very dark. i will admit we blotted down the color a couple of times and she let me add some color at the top...the blues and reds are mine. (Everything else is Abby.)

Then we did a larger canvas using acrylic. Abby started off using the paint brushes but towards the end she wanted me to squeeze a little paint out and just let her scrap it on. :) She kept calling the white blue (even though it was in a green container) and the red, green. We are definitely hoping it is just learning colors and not that she is colored blind.

Thanks for reading...and hope we produce some more art soon. SHeldon wanted to give grandma Mary the first dibs on these paintings, but I told him I really like the small one. They both look like they are birds in them to me. An owl, and a humingbird. Can you see it?

Abby Creates

Abby loves to paint. When she was little I would ask her if she wanted to paint---She says, "paint", and walks over to the area where I have laid everything out at and sits right down. Well now that she is a "big" girl of 22 months she is still very much the same. Every day she would paint if she could get the chance and she is very particular about what colors and how much paint she wants.

Some days she will do a 5 minute painting and have tons of white space left. Other days you cannot remove the paint from her hands as she layers coat after coat. When she does this I tend to make monoprints out of her art. Well they actually turn into triple prints because she uses so much paint.

Sheldon and I love to look at her art, as it is so abstract and we can usually see lots of movement in her art. It will be so fun to talk to her about what she has drawn when she is older as now we say--oh here is a "blah" "blah" "blah...and it will be fun to hear her say...no it is something totally different.

One of my favorite things that I do with Abby's art is turn it into cards for family members. I usually cut it into 4ths and sew them to card fronts. I have been thinking about selling some on Etsy as we have so much art and I would love to share it with others.




The above picture of Abby & Daddy painting with some finger paints that grandmamama brought with her on her last visit. I think this was Abby's longest painting session to date and she enjoyed painting on daddy as well. Plus, she was such a mess that at the end we just ended up throwing her in the tub with her clothes and all on. She enjoyed that too as she loves water. Which is probably one of the reasons that blue is one of her favorite colors to paint with right now. However, we are finding that she is using brown more and more. I wonder if she knows that fall is around the corner.

You will also see that Abby didn't want daddy to feel left out of the painting project as she added a little blue paint to his knees.

Have a great day.

Jennie & Crafty Abby