New designs!

Appearing on clocks and art blocks at my next event! Stop by the Waldorf School of Philadelphia's Holiday Fair on November 18th from 6-10 and November 19th from 10-5. This show is always fun, with arts and crafts for the kids and yummy homemade food. Oh! And of course there are fabulous artists selling their wares! Hope to see you there.

Perfection

Perfectionism, anyone? I'm feeling it today - I've been trying to work on my new seahorse clocks, but I cannot get the design the way I want it. It's one of those days. I'm putting it aside to go teach the after-school art club at my daughter's school, and hopefully be inspired by a bunch of young artists!

Seahorses!

I love this new image I finished yesterday and can't wait to use it on clocks! Maybe it can go on some art blocks, too… What do you think? What else would you like to see this on?

Sneak peek of new images!

Every once in a while I create new images to use on my clocks, art blocks, notecards and pendants. It usually happens around the start of the school year, since that's when Malayna is in school all day and I can spend most of my time working on milkshake crafts.

Here's a sneak peek of some new images I'm working on. This is the first phase - I draw the images on paper with a black marker, then scan them. I then use Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to clean up the lines and play around with color and pattern inside the images.

 

The Lola Show

Yes, I know that my banner up there still says "summer 2011." That's because I'm in denial about it being fall and summer being over. I'll change it soon.

In the meantime, here are some photos of Lola to make you laugh. This little photo project started out at Malayna's bedtime a while back. She would make me wait outside her door, and then dress Lola in something silly. Being the control freak that I am, it turned into me bringing costumes from her dress-up bin up to her room and us dressing her together. We would sometimes come up with a theme that day, and think of all the things we could put on her. Some of these crack me up.

I've had some requests from friends on Facebook to make these into a calendar. If I do, I'll donate a portion of the proceeds to the rescue that we got Lola from - Puppies and More in New Jersey.

 {Back-to-school}

 {Happy Labor Day!}

 {Sexy beast.}

 {Facebooking.}

 {You've got a friend in me!}

 {Borrowing her sister's stuff.}

 {And my personal favorite: Prepared for the hurricane.}

Back to school and back to making!

School starts here for Malayna on Wednesday - just two days from now! I'm always torn when September rolls around. On the one hand, I'm sad that she's going to be gone all day and we won't be free to do what we please (trips to the shore, playing outside all day, swimming in our pool…), but on the other hand I'm happy to be getting back to a routine.

As far as milkshake crafts is concerned, I don't do any shows past early June, and the amount of making I do in the summer is slim. I do teach art classes in July & August, but that's different than sitting at a desk all day making clocks!

I'm looking forward to getting a list together for all that needs to be done by September 18th - my first show since June! Milkshake will be making an appearance at The Clover Market in Ardmore that day. It's a great show, with antiques, vintage and handmade. But I have a lot to do before that…

This is my studio. It needs to be cleaned up.

By the way, I'm having a back-to-school sale on my website right now. Enter code SCHOOL for 15% off!

Summer art class: Georgia O'Keeffe-inspired flowers

{Artwork by Malayna}

One of my all-time favorite artists is Georgia O'Keeffe. I've loved her since I first saw her work back in high school. It seems like her work is on everything - calendars, notecards, t-shirts, coasters, umbrellas, etc., etc. Despite the over-saturation, I still love her style. She was one of the most important artists in the 1920s (and one of the only famous females). Because all of my art class students are girls, a Georgia O'Keeffe-inspired lesson is inevitable!

 {Lola is wondering if the flowers are edible…}

Before class started, I went out to my yard and cut some fresh flowers. I looked for simple shapes, and wound up using black-eyed susan and rose of sharon (both white and purple). I put a few of each in little vases and placed them on each work table. (Unfortunately, we were experiencing a heatwave in this area, so we weren't outside for class.) I had several books about O'Keeffe's work that the girls could look through for inspiration. We read Georgia O'Keeffe (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists). Some of the girls couldn't understand why she was only one of a few famous female artists, so we talked a bit about what girls and women were doing in the 20s. They thought it was very "unfair" (Malayna) that most of the famous artists we've heard about are men. I agreed!

{Busy at work!}

Before they sat down to work we talked about how O'Keeffe basically zoomed in on flowers and didn't necessarily include the entire flower on the page. I told them they should fill their page with the drawing and could even have the petals going off the edges. I first gave each girl a small piece of paper to do a trial drawing. I wanted to be sure they knew what I meant by filling the page with the flower. This was an important step, because some of them made their flowers teeny tiny, and it gave them the chance to practice drawing big. When the drawings were finished they used watercolors to fill them in. 

 

Summer art class: little huts

I'm so glad I have creative friends! It helps when those creative friends are artists who have also taught kid's classes. My friend (and fellow MamaCita member) Diana Trout gave me the idea for this little hut project. It was perfect. Just the right amount of time, easily done with markers or paints or crayons or colored pencils…anything, really! We used markers and wallpaper scraps from sample books (for the roof). I got the books last year by calling a wallpaper store and asking if they had any books they were throwing away. They were happy to give me a bunch.

Before the class started, I cut two pieces of white paper for each child. One measured 5.5" x 17" and the other was 8" x 8". I used cardstock so the huts would be sturdy. I had the wallpaper books out so the girls could choose a sheet for their hut's roof.

We read the book My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken and Me, by Maya Angelou. I pointed out the patterns on the houses and we also looked around my house for patterns. There were lots! They even pointed some out that I hadn't noticed. There were patterns on the pillows, in the artwork on the walls, in the rug, and the curtains. They noticed subtle patterns, like the wood grain on the coffee table.

The first thing they did after reading was to take their long piece of paper and draw patterns on it with pencil. I find that sometimes drawing with pencil makes them slow down and really think about what they're doing. They each had a piece of scrap paper to practice patterns before drawing on their good paper. After the patterns were drawn they colored them in with markers. There were very detailed patterns and some very simple patterns. After the patterns were drawn and colored, the sheets were stapled together to make a circle.

When they finished their patterns, they worked on the 8" x 8" paper, which would be the ground for their hut. They could decorate these any way they wished. The third step was to choose a wallpaper sheet that would be used for the hut's roof, which they traced a large circle onto and then cut out. A long cut was made in the circle so that it could be stapled into a sort of cone shape.

We put them all together with tape - taped the hut to the ground, and the roof to the hut. Some girls chose to leave the roof loose so they could make furniture for the inside and play with the hut.

Summer art class: drawing dogs

This week's class was very small. Lots of people on vacation or at camp. It was kind of nice to only have four kids to teach! Definitely a very different dynamic. This was a good project to do with a small group - it was very organized and the girls had to pay attention to each step.

The book we read for this class was Doggone Dogs by Karen Beaumont & David Catrow. I love the illustrations in this book. They're silly and exaggerated and had the girls laughing.

After the book, I gave each girl an 11x17 piece of paper with two lightly drawn lines - one in the middle going vertically and the other in the middle horizontally. I also had a piece so I could show them (along with explaining) the steps of drawing a dog. They each got a template for the head to get the size correct. I wasn't sure how well they'd do with the proportion of the entire dog without the template. I think that they would have been fine without it.

We went very slowly - drawing first the head, then the nose, the eyes, etc. I did it along with them so they had an idea of what it could look like. Fortunately, no one copied mine! That's always something I'm afraid of when showing a sample.

After the entire dog was drawn, they could paint. The only direction I gave for that was that no one could paint their dog all black. I was afraid that if they did paint all black, it would cover their pencil lines, and they'd lose their drawing. They did a great job! (The first one says, "I'm insane!" It's my dog, Lola.)

(Thank you to Kathy Barbro from Art Projects for Kids for the idea and instructions! Check out her website - lots of great ideas for art projects.)