Category Archives: Arts

Art Every Day Month – Day 1

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This is my fifth year participating in the monthlong event. I’ve been ambivalent about it this year; every year I feel a butterfly rush in my gut, but this year I’ve waffled about doing it at all. What stymied me is my personal requirement that I create one complete piece every day. AEDM is not structured this way — Leah (the originator of AEDM) particularly encourages rule-breaking — but I don’t want to relinquish this one goal. However, with travel in late November, how will I create and upload daily? Well, I decided to break one rule. Since I will be gone the last 8 days of the month, I’ve spent the last 8 days of October making art for those dates. This way, I will have made art for 30 days and still have work to share for the month.

I decided to work in a very small format — 2.5 x 3.5 inches, also known as Artist Trading Cards or Art In Your Pocket. These mini canvases call for simplicity, and one would think they would be quick to make, but they aren’t for me. Just as writing a short, concise document requires careful thought and editing (and therefore time), working with space constraints presents challenges that take time to work on. As Leah said,

“A lot of people have mentioned being a little nervous, a little jittery. Me too. It happens every year. And I think it’s interesting, but also telling because I think those things that give us a bit of the jitters are also those things that are very important to us. So notice if you feel those jitters and know you’re on the right track. And then go create.”

Without further ado, here’s my first piece.

art every day month 2009 - day 1 - house

Home / 2.5 x 3.5″ collage on card stock

Less Mess

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While I love getting the paints out for Bean, sometimes the paint cups are more ambitious than I want to tackle. They are spill-proof, but they are big and messy, and I am constantly moving them around so she can reach them. The other day we took a preschool field trip to a pumpkin patch where she got to paint a mini pumpkin; they used small plastic boxes with dividers in them to hold paint. The boxes held many colors and yet contained most of the mess. So we went to Michaels yesterday in search of something similar. I looked at the bead storage boxes, and most of them had moveable dividers, which meant the paint would seep into the other spaces. But I did find one that had 12 little containers, each with its own screw top, all of which can be nestled into a box. I filled them this morning and look forward to using them frequently.

paint box

Pumpkin Fun

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When we went to the pumpkin farm a couple weeks ago, I decided not to buy big pumpkins. Bean picked out a teeny one for herself. Since literally no one comes to trick-or-treat at our house in this town home complex, I haven’t carved a pumpkin — especially since my last attempt (in 2007) ended up with a slashed thumb due to my overtired condition.

I want Bean to have the fun of pumpkin carving and lighting, but I’m not sure I’m “up” for it yet; besides, she’s still young. The other day I saw pie pumpkins on sale, so I bought four for Bean to paint. It’s washable paint, which means after Halloween I can wash, bake, and puree them for pie (and for Bean, who really likes to eat plain pureed pumpkin).

She is still a little under the weather — she got an ear infection in the past week — so she spent the day in jammies and stayed inside. Here are the results:

painted pie pumpkins

Creative Frugality

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Once you have a child (or children), you find yourself going to a lot of birthday parties. Buying gifts can get pricey, so I want to conserve a bit where I can. Starting with 2010, to keep track of who gets what and keep from going insane, I’ve decided to select a “book of the year” as the birthday gift for every child we celebrate. I’ll choose a book that is less common than some so as to (hopefully) not give a duplicate. Then I’ll buy the books in bulk and save some money. I like that idea very much.

When I was pregnant, I bought a huge roll of butcher paper for future crafts. I assumed I’d be going through a lot of paper in the next five years. I was right. Now, what does a mom do with the swaths of painted and colored paper? I decided they would make excellent gift wrap, thus saving me money on wrapping paper. Until Bean is actually painting a picture of something that she might want to keep, we’ll make use of her creative endeavors this way. (Except for Christmas, in part because I have a ton of holiday paper, and in part because I don’t want Bean to receive gifts in paper she wrapped; it seems a little Oliver Twist to me.) Here’s a photo of just-wrapped gifts:

homemade wrapping paper

Not Too Spooky

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Halloween is a fun time of year, but for very little kids I think avoiding realistic ghoulishness is a good idea. They aren’t capable of discerning between real and pretend. So this year we’ll focus on construction paper pumpkins, bats, and maybe a few ghosts. I drew and cut out the bats, and Bean squirted glue and smeared it and then sprinkled glitter. I like how they curled up as they dried; the look more three-dimensional and interesting to me.

bat up close
halloween bats

Fall Fingerprint Craft Tree

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Bean and I did a craft suggested at the All Kids Network. Because I couldn’t get her to splay her fingers when I traced her hand, the branches were a bit lumped together. She has the tiniest hands and arms.

I set up the picture by gluing construction paper to the white paper and then clipped that to her easel. I put a small dab of red, orange, and yellow paint on a paper plate, and she went to town. She started out doing the fingerprint (a dab here and there) and then her exuberance took over. She said she was painting leaves, and then she swooped her hands up and said, “I’m painting a girl. She likes the leaves.”

Great messy outdoor fun on a hot (95 degree) afternoon!

hand-traced trees & finger paint

The Joy of Discovery

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Today we took Bean to the Children’s Discovery Museum, and she had a grand time. She played with water, climbed ramps, painted, crawled, turned things over, looked in mirrors, climbed inside boxes, danced, painted her face, and generally filled her brain through all her senses. We bought a family membership, and we’ll be going frequently from now on, especially with rainy season coming.

Bean likes to play the beep-beep nose game (sometimes Mommy just needs to have her nose beeped). She’s getting more vocal about things she doesn’t want; “Mommy won’t make that noise!” She named her stuffed doggie animals (previously known as black doggy and brown doggy) “Pepper” and “Puff” respectively. Everything is mommy, daddy, and baby: buses, pieces of food, stuffed animal toys, cutlery. She needs everything to be in threes like that. She sings many songs, some of which she hasn’t heard in months (the persistence of memory!) and often is nearly on-key.

Bean is two weeks away from turning two, and it’s been an amazing journey so far. I’ll be posting more in the future about the fun projects we do and the resources and ideas I discover on the way.

at 23 months (in 4 days)

This Morning’s Project

Yesterday Bean went with her father to the hardware store, and she saw paint there, and of course she came home obsessed with a desire to paint. It was too late in the day to start since we had company coming, and I promised her today we’d do it. She was thrilled this morning when she saw the setup. Here’s a little movie of her painting, and below that is a photo of the output. She said here she was painting a picture of Maria and Abby (from Sesame Street). I think she was also saying at the end of the movie, “My painting is lovely.” We painted wrapping paper.

homemade wrapping paper

I Love Her

As the family photographer, very few photos get taken of me, especially me and Bean. When my mother-in-law visited around the new year, she took a bunch of photos. (She is an avid photographer and quite good!) I asked her to send some of the images so that I could post them on Flickr, and here are two I thought I’d share with the world. They were taken in January at the SF Zoo. (You can see and purchase more of her work at her website, Kay Harper Photography. All rights on these photos are reserved.)

i love you
momma and child