homeofthebudds

Glassine envelopes tutorial

I posted my very first tutorial ever over on at the table today - go check it out and leave some comment love! :)

 

 

Things I'm working on...painting edition

I've been wanting to experiment with recreating this photo with paint for a while. A couple nights ago, I got the chance!

It's actually mixed media - the bird is a paper silhouette.

I think I need to try again - the angle of the bird is off just enough to change the feel of it.

Watch out.

We're studying the Greeks in History this month. Shields are a very necessary part of Greek history.

We've also been studying Star Wars.

Alright, fine.

Just watching it - a lot.

But Isaiah still takes the fine skills he learns in school (studying something...why not make a craft from it?) and makes himself lightsabers.

He also makes light sabers for Ellen and Brennan.

He's a good guy that way.

Here's Bren getting ready to give me his fierce face...wait for it...

Awwww he's too cute to be fierce.

Next time buddy.

(Ellen and Zaiah both painted intimidating warriors fighting gynormous monsters on their shields.

Brennan, however, felt the red was intimidating enough.)

Ellen, on the other hand, has fierce down. Look at those eyes.

Yikes.

So, now they have lightsabers and shields and they whack each other all day long.

That's the down side.

The upside is they consider themselves knights and call me Queen Sarah.

I kinda dig it.

:)

Things I'm working on...

That right there is a free-motion foot. It's slightly tricky. I'm trying to get the hang of it.

Here's my first attempt at painting/collaging.

It's made of canvas, burlap, cardstock, twig & paint.

It's about 3" x 3". 

I need to figure out how to finish the edges and sort of seal it.

See? watching movies can inspire creative play. I knew there was a reason I liked kid movies.

The kids were watching Bob the Builder the other day and were inspired to do some building of their own.

They had long winding roads.

Which Brennan thought looked like a lot of fun to make.

And houses too.

Have I mentioned I love my new camera?

The kids did some painting today.

Ellen asked me to take some pictures so she could blog them.

I obviously happily obliged.

And then I was strictly prohibited from posting any pictures of Ellen painting. She doesn't want any duplicate posting.

Top Secret

Ellen has been working hard. Very very hard. She has plans. Super big plans. For a tree house to be exact. I'm not allowed to show you the exact blueprints she's working up cause they're top secret ya know. But I can tell you she's put a lot of thought into this tree house. There's a birthday cake. There's balloons. And a dog. And a cat. And a special mail conveyer belt to get the mail delivered straight to the tree house. And a couple other top secret things.

It's pretty sweet.

dave's soap

the other night, Dave made (melted and reformed) some soap for his annual work white-elephant christmas party. his masterpiece:

who wouldn't want a bar of soap with dave scowling at you.

And then he started going through my spice cabinet saying, "Why can't I add all this stuff? this is gonna be awesome.

(Last night was the party - I heard the soap went over well.)

Even more school stuff (are you bored out of your mind with it yet? Sorry. I'm not.)

We've been talking about Mesopotamians in our history discussions. I reserved several picture books from the library, mostly stories about Gilgamesh (which have been big hits around here, let me just tell you). But we also got an activities book for Ancient peoples. The first bit that caught my eye was of course, dressing up. It doesn't get any simpler than this.

Here's "bored Mesopotamians"

And the always necessary "silly goofy Mesopotamians."

And then for science, we decided to do some more playing with water.

This time they were experimenting with air pressure and creating vacuums to move water. (It's so much more fun with colored water.)

I gave them a straw and a pipette (and I was supposed to get a siphon going too but I just didn't make it happen) and let them figure out different ways to move the water and discover which was the most efficient (and fun). Isaiah decided to combine the two options to create a super long pipette. I must admit I didn't think it would work, but it totally did.

And then they really wanted to do water drop races,

and then they wanted to morph it into their favorite 'experiment' ever - find-things-from-the-baking/decorating-drawer-to-mix-into-random-things-in-cupcake-papers." I'm afraid I put a stop to that one, although I did let them transfer the water to the cupcake paper things (what are those called anyway??) which they then wanted to "harden." They thought about leaving it out, but ultimately decided to freeze it. So then we had a bowl-of-blue-water-with-cupcake-paper-holder-inside-hardening-in-the-freezer experiment.

I think I like science days.

School this week (pt 2)

When we went to the library this week we found this book in the kids craft section.

The kids looked through it and decided this was their favorite idea (yeah, mostly that was Isaiah deciding.)

And produced some skateboard soap!

We're (I'm) still perfecting my don't-make-bubbles-in-the-soap technique, but the kids are super impressed. They could not wait for bathtime. Until Isaiah couldn't find his particular red soap and did not want to use a silly yellow colored one. Ellen's already making plans to sell them.

We used up all the soap we bought, but once we run out (or sell it all, who knows?) look at the possibilities that await us!

Unfortunately I got a rather massive headache from all the soap smell, but the kids didn't seem to mind it. So they are eager and ready for more soap. Who knows - you might get some eyeball soap for Christmas! :)