Fabric crayons for drawings that iron onto tote bags:






Homemade playdough and an assortment of cookie cutters, rollers, and found objects:





Handpainted thank-you notes, containing recipe for playdough:




Mocha cupcakes, with sprinkles and crazy glitter icing:





"Happy Birthday to You" and a "3" candle:




Sidewalk chalk, even though it's dang hot:







Party food, including the birthday boy's favorite chicken nuggets and pretzels

A post-party rest (this was *after* his post-party nap, by the way):




And a friend without young kids to help out... this may be the most important ingredient of all! Thanks, Linda!

I'm blogging the party because I'm avoiding clean-up. The house isn't nearly as messy as I had thought it might be, but I definitely don't have the mental energy to tackle the playdough table yet. It was a major success, though. And I daresay Kent had an awesome time with his friends. I really loved planning this party and helping him celebrate.

I think I might need a beer to celebrate the facts that he's nearly 3 (next week), I'm still alive, and I'm not a crazy person. Yet.

(a thousand thanks to Amanda and Jean for the inspiration)

Labels: art, getting older, Kent, photography

• posted by erica 6/26/2010 03:22:00 PM
•  4 comments

Kent and I had a little experiment on Friday: we made blended crayons in the oven. I read a tutorial somewhere on the net in the past year, but I can't remember where, unfortunately. I peeled and roughly chopped all his extra restaurant crayons, since they feel softer than Crayolas or Melissa & Doug crayons and I remember reading that it's important to use the same kind of crayon so they melt together easily. I put the different colored bits in mini muffin cups: some with greens, blues, and purples; some with oranges, reds, and yellows; and some with all the colors mixed together. Kent liked helping with that part. I then "baked" them in the oven at 200 F for 20 minutes. I think it might have been too long, but I won't know for sure until I try this experiment again.

I pulled them out after 20 minutes and was very dismayed to see that they looked kind of muted on top (see photo to the right), so I wasn't sure what they would look like when we used them to color. Happily, once they cooled and I popped them out of the muffin tins, I realized that the bottoms looked amazingly cool (see photo at the top), and the tops were just brownish and a softer color because the crayon matter had separated and the thinner part rose to the top. I wonder whether a higher-quality crayon might not separate, or if I leave them in for only, say, 10 minutes, if that would prevent the separation. More experimentation is necessary. Anyone else have experience with this?

The crayons of similar color families make an interesting effect on paper, but it's not as pronounced as the all-color ones. The green-blue-purple ones would be great for coloring an ocean, for example, but it's not as obvious that there are different colors in there. I think I like the all-color ones the best — you can see where I wrote our names at the top in an all-color crayon, and I think it's very cool. If I figure out how to do this better, I know some small people who will be getting some as Christmas gifts. It's way fun to make them and even more fun to color with them.

Labels: art, craftiness, photography

• posted by erica 8/30/2009 09:40:00 AM
•  6 comments

Making the most of our unseasonably comfortable day, Kent and I went outside to paint this afternoon. He experimented with the foam paintbrushes on a big sheet of easel paper, and he kept narrating which color he was using. During the video, he says, "little bit green" as he puts a dab of green on the paper, then "little bit blue," and later, "little bit purple". Watching him paint like this definitely put a spring in my step all afternoon, and Jack was pretty entertained when he came home and watched the movie.

Labels: art, Kent, video

• posted by erica 5/18/2009 09:30:00 PM
•  4 comments

My attachment parenting group has had two really fun craft playdates with our kiddos, one for Christmas and one for Valentine's Day, and inspired by this, I thought the kids would also enjoy getting to just run wild with paint. Controlled crafts are fun and make great gifts, but I think that free art is where learning and exploration really flourish. Thanks, Jean.

I put the idea out there of having "messy art" playdates at my house, at least in the spring and fall when it's not too hot to be outside. Painting might work well in our kitchen for a small group of kids, but I felt a lot better about inviting people over if we could have everyone out in the backyard. Our first messy art day consisted of letting the kids paint on a half-sheet of watercolor paper, then after it dried, the moms cut Mardi Gras masks out of the colorful paper and let the kids decorate their masks with feathers and pompoms. It was such a success! I had cut a mask out for Kent from a piece of paper he'd already painted, so I had a model to show everyone, and the kids had a great time painting. We also put out some easel paper for them to paint for fun, and I suggested that the moms could use it as wrapping paper, like I did for Jack's birthday.

Here are some photos of our adorable kiddos and their masterworks. Braden and Savannah are over age 2, Kent and Taylor are just over one and a half, and Gregory just turned one last week, proving that tiny people CAN paint! Gregory had never painted before, so we put him in the high chair like we used to do with Kent, and he mostly used his hands to smoosh around the paint. I think he thought that paintbrushes were for sissies. Heh.



Braden and Savannah paint on their easel paper


Braden works with a foam stamping brush


Savannah demonstrates that the materials are much more fun for toddlers than the finished product


Gregory, cleaned up after his paint explorations, eats lunch


Braden and Taylor play ball while we wait for the paint to dry


One-year-old Gregory's first painting, ever!


Kent's painting (which I'm keeping as is, because he doesn't need another mask and I'm quite fond of what he made here)


Braden's finished mask

Labels: art, Kent, photography, SAHM

• posted by erica 2/22/2009 11:25:00 AM
•  2 comments

 I forgot how much fun it is to paint. Actually, I don't think I ever knew how much fun it is. I have no memories of really enjoying painting when I was a kid; I have a lot of memories of looking around the art classroom at the few girls who were good at drawing animals and faces, and thinking, "Well, I'm no good at that stuff, so I must not be good at art." All of my art experience as a kid seemed to be about objective representation, making a painting or drawing that looked exactly like whatever the object was. I don't remember a teacher ever encouraging me to just paint something, make a mess of color, and *enjoy* myself. Happily, I've figured out how to do that as an adult — I've learned to let objectivity slide when I need to, to make a mess when I want to, and to throw some stuff around and see what happens — but I didn't know I could apply it to painting until today. I've applied these lessons to cooking, knitting, parenting, and creative writing, and I think I'm better for it, but I think I needed to know great art and understand the many ways in which it can be created in order to let myself go. They just don't teach enough impressionism, abstraction, and modernism in elementary school classrooms, I've decided.

 
We got Kent some watercolor paper, new brushes, and big bottles of paint for Christmas, and after he painted a lovely piece of art (seen to the left here) on his awesome red table from Jack's parents, Jack took him to the bathtub to get cleaned up, and I started messing around. Just mixing colors in the egg carton cups was phenomenally exciting, and then dabbing it on the paper, mushing the brush in different shapes and blending colors on the paper... it's all just such a breath of fresh air, replacing my bad memories of elementary and middle school art class with something calming and fun.

 
And here's what we're working on tonight. The last present to assemble. These are all the parts for his play kitchen from my mom and Bill, who are coming for a visit on Tuesday. I told my mom that we'd wait to give it to him until they're here, so we're assembling it in secret while he sleeps, then looking for a place to hide it until their arrival Tuesday around lunchtime. I can't wait to see his face, and I knew they'd enjoy seeing his reaction, too. He goes crazy over the play kitchens at other kids' houses, especially the microwaves, which are like his favorite thing ever. We went to a holiday party at a professor's house, and the whole time we were there, Kent kept running back to the microwave in the kitchen, pointing excitedly and shouting, "Mah!!" at which point our kind host would lift him up again so that he could push the buttons and open and close the door. We'd take him into another room for a little while, and then he'd do it all over.

 
This is really a lot of parts, isn't it? When we were opening the box, I joked that I hoped it was in 117 parts, which turned out not to be too far off. It's coming together pretty quickly, despite (or perhaps encouraged by?) the wine we're working on. Wine and toy assembly go quite well together, we're learning.

I know Kent is just going to love this kitchen, though. I love it already, and it's only halfway built. Christmas is still alive and well here, between all the new things we're playing with and the one gift yet to be enjoyed. If only it weren't so dang hot, it'd be perfectly Christmasy.

Labels: art, holidays, Kent, kitchen adventures, photography

• posted by erica 12/27/2008 11:28:00 PM
•  2 comments