crayons and paper

The girl's conversation went something like this the other day:

Grace- "Me and Maeve never stop drawing, we love it sooo much! We never stop drawing, do we Maeve?"
Maeve- "Well.....we do stop for lunch sometimes"

And that pretty much sums it up at the moment. Two girl's in love with their crayons and paper, endlessly drawing at every possible moment. The house littered with trails of artworks to be found in one room and then the next, and so on...and so forth. Paper everywhere. They love it.

Maeve has taken to copying whatever it is that Grace is drawing and I find it interesting how her attention to detail has come along in the last two months. We went to look at some Chicken's with friends of ours recently, they were hoping to buy some new hens. We were merely dreaming. One day when we are some place bigger and quieter, yes indeed we will have chickens! For now we will just continue to dream and of course draw.

Top: 'Rooster, chick and hen' Grace 6 1/2yrs

Bottom: 'Rooster' Maeve 3 3/4yrs

Left: Grace's butterfly

Right: Maeve's butterfly

They are both big on butterflies at the moment. We have many of these drawn then cut out carefully around the house. We are trying to photograph their creations to keep a record, without having to keep all that paper! I would be interested to know how other parents keep their children's artworks. Do you file them, stick them in scrapbooks, keep only the best, bin it all? Don't forget, if you have the time it's always a nice idea to turn them into an embroidery that can be enjoyed for years to come. Remember this post and this one?

edited to say: I also forgot to mention the art wire for displaying favorite drawings. Clearing it at the beginning of every term is always a good way to keep it fresh and uncluttered.

I like...

The sun was lovely and warm on the front steps this morning. A very inviting place to sit and finish off my latest embroidery. Jude sleeping, Maeve making cakes in the sandpit and me stitching. Rare quiet moments like this need to be seized while they last... I am slowly learning.

This is another one of Grace's drawings. Very special because it was one of the first sentences she wrote on her own (without copying it out of a book), that I happened to find lying around the house. The girls would love a pet. Unfortunately right now (and I can see for a very long time to come) three children is more than enough for me to cope with. So sorry kids, pets are just going to have to wait.

 

I have put together some photos for those of you that wanted to see how I attached the linen to the canvas. 

1. Use a cheap art canvas to cover with your embroidery
2. Lay your fabric over the canvas taking care to position it so it looks balanced. Stick a few pins in to hold it in place.
3. Flip it over and start stitching the sides together at the back. You will need a very long piece of strong thread, and may even need to join it a few times if it runs out. If the edge of the fabric is raw it will fray easily. Just turn it under a centimeter or two so you are stitching through two layers. That should make it strong enough. You need to make sure you fabric is pulled firm so it sits nice on the front of the canvas. Mine looks like I have pulled it too tight, but my linen was super soft and needed to be pulled into place.
4. When your sides are done, fold the top and bottom piece of fabric towards each other taking care to fold your corners nicely so they sit flat without looking bulky.
5. Pin the corners in place and stitch the top and bottom edges together in the same way you stitched the sides.
6. The back of your canvas should look something like this. The dog one I did last week was way messier, but hey...no one will ever know! 
7. Then if you like you can put some thread across the back so it can be hung on the wall. I cant explain exactly how I did this...goes something like this though: Knot doubled thread to one edge then knot it on the opposite edge, so it is fairly tight not loose. Take it back to the other side and repeat process so its quiet a few strands thick. Then knot along the thread to hold them all together. 

And you're done!

(edited to say: alternatively, get yourself a staple gun and save yourself half the hassle. Thanks to my wise friend Lissa for the advice!)

wordless weekend #5

a parcel in the post

You can imagine our excitement when this arrived on the doorstep...


Its our creative pack from the competition over at BloesemKids, thankyou Irene and Arrouna! The owl bag from bookhou is just beautiful, and the art supplies are going to get a good work out...actually Grace put them to use straight away to produce these beautiful masterpieces.



Let me tell you about this one first. This is a picture of Grace walking her 'dream' dog. She is drawn inside the world. Its a lovely sunny day...but then it starts to rain (dot dot dot). Later she tells me that the rain drops have actually changed from rain to flowers on the grass. What a beautiful scene!


This one is looking a little more Gothic. Its a picture of me (looking very tired and worn out...none the less, still smiling) and Maeve. I am the one in the middle wearing a blue dress. I am taking the 'dream' dog for a walk and in my other hand I am carrying a worm that I found in the garden. We are also drawn inside the world, where it is raining red. Over to the left is our black circle house with three windows. Superb!

a little leafy art

Our house is in need for some serious decorating. We have pretty much nothing hanging on the walls, and it is starting to bother me a little. I was rather inspired when I saw this leaf lino print on BloesemKids, and thought- hey, that would look awesome painted on a canvas and stuck above the fire place!
To begin with I cut out a leaf stencil on heavy cardboard and traced the design onto the canvas. Then I roughly filled in all the green bits. At this point it looked like some kind of optical illusion and was making my head hurt. Hmm, not good! I softened it out with lots of messy brush strokes, and this seemed to help.
I haven't painted a canvas since high school, so it was pretty frustrating and really I had no idea what I was doing...but at the end of the day I was happy with the results.
While it was in progress Grace kept asking 'so what wall are you putting it on?', to which I replied 'that one' (lounge room). She would then say 'oh no, not that wall mum, it needs to go on this one' (dining room). And of course she was right. It will now hang along side the dining table.