The Artful Parent

Flower Stained Glass

We brought a bit of the garden inside a few days ago, making another flower stained glass window—this time for the kitchen door. As before we used flower petals and contact paper. Super easy! And flowery beautiful, of course.

Sometimes we like our bouquets two dimensional.

I also like how it provides a level of privacy yet lets in more light than a curtain to our otherwise windowless kitchen.

I had this set up as a simple after school project to do with Maia and Daphne.

Making Garden Wish Flags

We made a new set of garden wish flags this past week, as part of our plan to increase the magic of our gardening space, and hung them in the backyard. These flags carry our wishes and hopes for the garden and for the gardening season. Let's hope they do the trick!

We first made garden wish flags a couple years ago (and blogged about them here) and absolutely loved them all season long. However I didn't hold on to them, figuring that they were best made fresh each year. We made a different kind last year, using the glue batik method. They were pretty awesome, but sadly we used the wrong kind of paint and they never made it out to the garden.

This year we went back to the good old fabric crayons for our wish flags.

Washi Tape Suncatchers: Experimenting with Different Ideas

Okay, so I meant to post about these suncatchers before Easter since some of them are sort of Easter-y, but I guess it's still relevant since it's mostly about how to use washi tape for suncatchers.

Washi tape (at least the kind from Discount School Supply; can someone confirm if regular Japanese washi tape is the same?) is very thin and somewhat transparent and so works well for suncatchers in theory since it looks beautiful with the sun shining through.

Washi Tape Easter Eggs (i.e. the Eight Eggberts)

We've been exploring and playing more with our fun washi tape—decorating Easter eggs (shown here) and making suncatchers (which I'll share soon).

The washi tape is so thin and somewhat transparent, that it lends itself well to decorating small, odd-shaped items such as eggs. Maia used it to create her large Eggbert family and I used it to fancify a few humble Easter eggs.

More Easter Egg Decorating! Stickers + Sharpies

We did some more Easter egg decorating over the weekend (and will likely do even more before Easter). It's so fun to try new egg decorating ideas and to transfer some of the art ideas we've done in the studio to the egg "canvas."

This time we did some more sticker resist (like tape resist art), using dot and star stickers rather than the hole reinforcement stickers, but added sharpie drawings as an extra design element.

A Colored Tissue Paper Bird Nest

We made colorful tissue paper bird nests last week, partly just to try it, and partly to hold some of our Easter eggs. This is a simple Easter or spring craft for kids or adults inspired by the many shredded paper bird nests I've seen on blogs this past year. I don't own a shredder, so decided to try this quick variation with materials that we had on hand.

Our bird nests are rather bright, but you can make yours as subtle or as colorful as you like, depending on the tissue paper you use.

Here's how we made these nests:

Easter Egg Decorating and Dyeing with Hole Reinforcement Stickers

We used our favorite hole reinforcement stickers this past week for some fun Easter egg decorating and dyeing. It was a simple, toddler-friendly project and equally as rewarding for grown-up me.

It was also a complete experiment—I hadn't done this before and wasn't sure how well it would work. Wasn't sure how well the stickers would stick to the eggs and wasn't sure how well they would stay on in the dye bath.

But they worked well!

Washi Tape Art with Printed Masking Tape

I finally placed a long overdue order to Discount School Supply to restock some of our key art supplies. I told myself I was going to keep it to the basics (always hard for me) but couldn't help noticing some fun new printed craft tape—DSS's answer to Japanese washi tape apparently.

I've been wanting to try washi tape forever and so couldn't stop myself from adding this set to my cart.

I'm so glad I did, because it's been inspiring all sorts of fun tape art!

No Cook Versus Cooked Playdough

You know how much we love the cooked playdough recipe we've been making forever. It's the play clay from MaryAnn Kohl's First Art, and I've posted about it here and here as well as probably about 20 other times. It's awesome. The texture is smooth and playdough rubbery, the batch makes a more than generous amount to play with, and it lasts just about forever.

How does no cook playdough compare?

We've made five different no cook playdough recipes so far. Some use cold water, some use boiling hot water. Most of the other ingredients are the same but vary slightly in amounts. The recipes with the cold water are grainier and a bit drier in general. Here's the recipe for the no cook playdough I like the very best, using the hot water method.

Heart Applique T-Shirts for Valentine's Day

I made these heart applique shirts yesterday as Valentine's gifts for Maia and Daphne. While they were last minute in execution (and luckily very quick), I have intended to make them for quite a while now.