Books made with our homemade paper

Today we used our homemade paper from last week to make covers for little books. Levi's comment when we were done was, "It's like making the paper, it's so fun I don't want to stop." He completed 3 books. I made six, four to give to my friends at my book club, one for myself and one more to give away.

We used these directions for 5-stitch bookbinding from Zum Gali Gali Rubber Stamps. We first learned to make these little books a few years ago at the local Asian Festival. It was so fun that I came home and made lots more books. I made them for place cards for dinner on Chinese New Year, I gave them away, and I carried them in my purse to jot notes on.

Our paper measured about 5.5 x 8.5, so we used one sheet to make the front and back covers of our larger books. For the smaller books we cut (or tore) our paper into four sections and made 2 smaller books. The smaller books are perfect for keeping in a purse to jot notes to oneself. When Levi was smaller I kept one in my purse so that if he said something cute while we were out and about I could just record it in my booklet, knowing that if I didn't jot it down I would probably forget it or get it all jumbled up. It's fun to look back at the little notes I've written.

Levi's books

The red flecks in the orange paper are scraps of red napkins.
The dark purple flecks in the blue paper are also napkins, the yellow flecks are dried flower petals and the sparkles come from glitter added to the mix.

mini books for my friends at book club

The white stitching is done with dental floss, and the brown
stitching is done with linen thread.

mini book for me

These are lots of fun to make and not too hard if you read the entire instructions.

Sharon

First Friday Art Walk

Levi and I had a really enjoyable evening last night at the First Friday Art Walk.

We started at 5 PM with a light dinner and dessert at Perugino. (I used a Groupon to get a great deal, $15 in food and drinks for just $7.) After our delicious panini sandwich, baklava and brownie we headed over to the first stop on the Art Walk, Opus VII Gallery. Wow was it ever busy! We'll have to go back again so we can actually see and savor the artwork in their new exhibit by a local graphic designer, David Funk, and the artists who have worked for him over the past 30 years.

Next stop was the Jacobs Gallery at the Hult Center. The current exhibit is called "Surface and Silence" by Wesley Hurd and Rafael Perea de la Cabada. It was interesting but not particularly my style. I didn't quite "get" some of their abstract art. We met Wesley Hurd and he was a very nice guy.

Island by Wesley Hurd

by Rafael Perea de la Cabada

From there we went on to Karin Clarke Gallery to see work by LaVerne Krause (a deceased artist) from Oregon. Some of her work was very detailed and other pieces were more impressionistic. After following along on the tour we decided to break away and just go to the galleries on our own because they get pretty crowded during the tour stops.

a woodcut by LaVerne Krause - I loved the detail as well as the simplicity of the subject

painting by LaVerne Krause

Next up was the Oregon Arts Alliance. They had a fundraiser, the "2nd Annual 6x6 Benefit Show" going on at the time. There were probably 100 small works of art for sale at $30 each. Some were nice, others not so great. As we came to the end of the pieces to view I saw one that I really loved and it had not yet been claimed. I was so happy to be able to buy this beautiful tulip painting by Demetra Kalams.



We had to leave the piece hanging until 7:30 PM so we went on to our next venue and then came back to claim our painting. When we got back, the man-who-seemed-to-be-in-charge introduced me to the artist and then asked if he could get our picture together. Of course I asked him to take one on our camera as well.


We headed over to the New Zone Gallery and introduced ourselves to Tad's friend, Eagle Park Slim, who was there performing music. This is probably my least favorite gallery, it's not very classy and sometimes has some art that I find disgusting, but I do know a couple people who display their art there so it's nice to look at their work.

Slim - (sorry for the poor quality photo)

Forest Snow by Robin Marks-Fife
(Levi took a watercolor class from her
through HomeSource.)

We stopped by one other location, Olive Grand, but it was SO crowded for its small space that we could hardly view the art. I think we might stop by another time we are downtown so we can take in their exhibit, "The Magic of Ireland", photographs by Anne McRae. They also had live music, but the crowd was so noisy it was difficult to hear and enjoy the music.

Around 8 PM we were definitely ready to call it an evening. We had left the umbrella in the trunk of the car when we arrived downtown during a light rain. That light rain turned to a downpour and we ended up soaked before the evening was over. We both had a great time and think we will enjoy it even more on a nice warm, dry evening in the future.

Hope you have enjoyed a small sampling of the art.

Sharon

Home Depot Kids' Workshop

The first Saturday of the month means one special thing to Levi, it's the Home Depot Kids' Workshop. We have gone nearly every month since May of 2009. He has assembled (built) some pretty neat projects over that time and has quite a collection of pins on his apron to show off what he has done. (Unfortunately, today he left his apron home as we rushed out the door to take Cole and some other athletes to track practice so his photo shows him in a borrowed apron.)

Today's project was to assemble (with glue and hammer) a model of Home Depot's #20 race car. The wood was pre-painted and the stickers were provided. This made it one of their simpler projects, but fun nonetheless.

Levi and his finished project.

Next month's project is a planter/basket, I'm sure we'll be there.

Bird Drawing

Today we worked on drawing. We started with some warm up exercises, practicing the basic elements of shape. We then read 3 fun books: ish, and the dot by Peter H. Reynolds, and Tico and the Golden Wings by Leo Lionni. I then read an excerpt about Leo from the book Artist to Artist. Using pictures from Tico as his inspiration, Levi drew his bird picture. We talked (I suppose I am the one who talked) about looking for those basic elements of shape and considering them as he drew.

The drawing was done with black fine point marker and then colored in with markers. We NEED to get more blue markers, but even if we had them I don't know if he would have finished coloring in the sky. It is HARD to draw with markers. Our instinct is to want a pencil so then we can fuss with erasing and getting everything perfect. The drawing book says to learn with pen so that you don't do all that fussing and you learn to think it through more before putting the pen to paper.



Our paper from yesterday is drying nicely. Right now it is under a dictionary and a Dutch oven with 4 pounds of weights inside so that it will dry flat. It has a tendency to really curve and not dry very nice at all if left alone.

Sharon

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss and Paper Making

I've always loved Dr. Seuss and his magical books. Cole and Levi have also enjoyed his books over the years. I like to celebrate his birthday by serving green eggs and ham for breakfast. I think the boys get a kick out of it.



Today we read several of his books: Green Eggs and Ham, The Lorax, The Cat in the Hat, Hop on Pop and My Many Colored Days. I read Green Eggs and Ham as Levi ate his breakfast. Levi read the next two out loud before we went on to other work. As he did his vocabulary and spelling assignments I made some little candy eggs with green yolks.



Levi decorated his folder for this month's paperwork. I traced the Cat with black Sharpie marker and he did the rest. (I got the template here, at the Art Projects for Kids blog.) I love the way the hat turned out! He looked to a few of the books for his color inspiration. He noticed as he looked through the books that each one used only a few main colors. Being March, I gave him a little lesson on drawing shamrocks. It was harder for him than I had imagined.



I had planned to do a drawing project for today but changed my mind part way into our reading. After reading the Lorax we talked about the message of the book and I then pulled out some fliers we got at the Oregon Logging Conference this past weekend. While reading one about recycling, Levi commented that it would be fun to make paper and I decided right then to do that project today instead of drawing. Making paper was on my to-do list anyway.

We will actually be using this as a 2 or 3 part project. Today will be the paper making day. In a day or so, after the paper has sufficiently dried out, we will make a book using our piece of paper as the cover. I will fill the book with drawing paper so that he will have a nice little sketchbook to put in the car or his pack.

I happen to have a mold and deckle, pulp remnants and lots of tissue paper and napkins for paper making. I got it years ago after taking a class at a local rubber stamp store. It's been several years since I have done anything with it.

We put a few cups of warm water into our blender and added some of the pulp remnants (these are hard chunks of white paper pulp). Then we added scraps of colored napkins to color our mixture. After blending it for a few seconds we floated our mold and deckle on a large bowl of cool water and poured our pulp over the mold. After jiggling it around a little bit to be sure it covered evenly we removed the mold from the water. The deckle was then removed and a piece of fabric was pressed against the wet paper to wick out some of the moisture. Then we removed the paper from the mod and put it between 2 sheets of fabric, layered it on some towels and rolled it with a rolling pin to extract the excess moisture. The paper was then set aside to dry.

Levi making a piece of paper. "This is fun!"

Paper pieces drying on top of the mini trampoline.

You can google paper making to find more specific instructions if you need.


Don't forget to check back to see what we do with our paper.

Sharon

Drawing with Children

Today we did drawing. I got my ideas from Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes, founder of the Monart method. I like her book, it's very encouraging, but I find it HARD to use as far as getting lessons from it. I found a site that has her program broken down into easier to read lesson plans, you can get them here.

We did several warm up exercises because it has been a long time since we just focused on drawing. We talked about the 5 basic elements and then did some pattern drawing. Then we practiced drawing these recognizable objects.

These are Levi's. The original is the lighter version, Levi's is darker. All is done in pen
so you can't erase. Helps you make better observations.

Then we did the guided drawing of a bird. I read from the book what he was to draw and he followed my directions to finish the bird. Then he added the tree and colored it all. It's a very basic bird style. It helps reinforce the basic elements: dot, circle, straight line, angle line and curved line.

Robin and bluebird in tree by Levi

Be on the lookout for more drawings to come.

Sharon

Levi's first watercolor painting

This was Levi's first ever watercolor painting, done at age 6.

I thought he might like to try watercolors so I just told him to think about something he would like to paint. I think that he chose birds because he was sitting at the dining room table and we get a lot of birds in the trees just outside.

I instructed him to draw lightly on the paper with a pencil so that he would know where to paint. If I remember correctly I also encouraged him to add leaves to his branches, but other than that he came up with the composition on his own. When it was time to paint, I gave him a few pointers about mixing colors and about wetting the paper first if he wanted the color to flow more in some areas.

As kids will do, he gave me quite an explanation of his picture when he was done. He was sure to point out that the father, brother and baby boy birds were the brightly colored birds and the mother and baby girl were the brown birds.

Thank goodness I had scanned his art right away as the original is quite faded now. I learned the hard way that watercolors fade quickly when they are in the bright light.

Levi was awarded a blue ribbon at our county fair in 2008 for this painting.

Sharon