Jungle Paintings

Henri Rousseau painted more than 25 jungle themed paintings. He painted ‘The Dream’ in 1910. Jadwigha, his Polish mistress from his youth is reclining nude on a velvet sofa in the middle of the jungle.

Critics were confused by this. So Rousseau wrote a poem to accompany the work… for clarification.

Yadwigha in a beautiful dream
Having fallen gently to sleep
Heard the sounds of a reed instrument   
Played by a well-intentioned [snake] charmer.
As the moon reflected
On the rivers [or flowers], the verdant trees,
The wild snakes lend an ear
To the joyous tunes of the instrument.

Paula Lehtonen, Jungle 1 – 4

This year, daughter is having a Jungle themed birthday party, so am spending spare moments during baby’s naps and late at night to paint party props. Jungle themed party props in the making…

Dali showed up about 20 years after Rousseau.

Melting clocks, body parts and innards scattered over landscapes… no wonder he blew their minds!

Dali, 1969

Kids Art & Craft Magazines, Australia

There’s something in the water… and it’s not just the shark and box jelly fish! Some beautiful Australian published kids creative magazines are at hand.

There’s ‘Lotta,’ and it’s jam packed with a lotta stuff parents and kids can make together. With a crew of photogenic nieces, nephews and friends kids, Leonie, a  graphic designer from Queensland solo publishes Lotta to coincide with school holidays. Very convenient. Not too long ago we bought the ‘Space’ issue, and it inspired a school holiday long duration of space crafts, from home-made retro space wrapping paper to a new dress up outfit… robot girl!

Recently we discovered ‘Big Kids Magazine,’ which features the work of children and artists side by side. The senior editor Luca (age 10) oversees the hard work done by two professional artists; Perth based Jo Pollitt and Sydney based Lilly Blue.

My daughter loved the recent ‘seed to sky’ issue. Here’s a look at page 15.

RHS is the artists interpretation of seed to sky. As you probably guessed, this is indeed a dream making machine, complete with a pink elephant generator and a giant glazed pink donut maker.

LHS, my daughters interpretation. From the top down; purple lollypops, teeth, balloons, mountains, a fish and fire inside water! The teeth have crosses in them to ward off the fire burning inside the water (ofcourse).

Don’t you just love the chutzpah of these women who put together such beautiful arts & crafts magazines for the rest of us to enjoy, well done ladies!

http://www.lottamagazine.com

http://www.bigkidsmagazine.com

Halloween Window Display

Dancing in a red dress, out on the wiley, windy moors, Kate Bush eerily sang the haunting tale of Wuthering Heights…
Heathcliff, it’s me–Cathy.
Come home. I’m so cold!
Let me in-a-your window.

Inspired by the Emily Bronte novel and an Elena Originals Cathy Doll, I set about making a haunting Halloween window display.

Started off by sketching Cathy onto tracing paper then transferred her to brown cardboard. Used stencil knife to make a Cathy stencil.

Lightly glued the stencil onto a large sheet of butchers paper and made a black acrylic paint and water mix (1:10) and sprayed over the stencil. The ghost of Cathy, tormenting Heathcliff to his dying day…

The brown cardboard bled into the backing paper. Cathy was turning into a vampire!

A banner and a bunch of hanging garlic later and this is what will greet my trick or treaters this year!

Next post will have photos of Halloween decorations and a few how to’s. Here’s a taste..

How to make little witchy hat, click here…

http://mykidcraft.com/little-witchy-hat

Paper People

Malin Koort is a Swedish illustrator, designer and artist.

Her illustrations tell stories, ‘mostly about small people and big feelings.’

These photos are a few from her ‘Paper People’ series. If a picture says more than a thousand words, what do you think is happening here?

Here are some of my suggestions….

Here are a few Malin Koort paper people my daughter and I coloured in with pastels and coloured pencils…

Malin Koort inpired paper family of my in laws, for the kids to colour in whilst mum and dad are having mojitos in Manhattan! 

How to…

Bon voyage (you lucky, lucky lady!!)

Rainbow Unicorn

Four months, x stitches and one baby later and it seems I really can’t do without it. Craft.

When we left for the hospital we left a gift for daughter from pending son (this seems to be the rage in sibling rivalry diversion). A rainbow unicorn waited with her, sparkling through the days and the nights whilst mum was laid up in hospital. Here’s the story behind rainbow unicorn.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful unicorn and a dangerous dinosaur.

Then a superhero came to rescue unicorn and they lived happily ever after. The end.

Then there were two!

If only rainbow unicorn was more like Lady Unicorn from Adventure time – all in one unicorn and superhero!

So much to do, so little time…

A few months back I partook in a great delusion… If I make a ‘To Do’ List, everything on it will get done. Procrastination will be a thing of the past and a shiny new efficient me will emerge. And so I made 7 lists with 7 To Do’s on each (see Feb post: The Big 7). Some of the things listed got done. Shirts were ironed, nooks and crannies were mopped out and the kitchen range hood shines like a copper coin. Towards the end I began listing craft and redecorating projects I wanted to finish off before baby comes.

Now past 38 weeks and waiting for baby to vacate the premises, this is this weeks To Do List….

As I’m having baby any day, it’s also made me think of this blog. Where do I go from here? As I enter a new phase in life, one marked with the annihilation of a good nights sleep, dodgy personal hygiene and a little Mini Master to be on call for, there’ll be little or no hope of coherent thoughts on my part, and so I’ll be taking a break from blogging.

Thankyou for all your likes and comments! It’s been reassuring to know I haven’t been talking to myself these past months. I hope to return to a life where crafty misadventures and writing about them is back on the cards, but who knows what the future holds.

Until then, Moo Cow, Double Quack!

Bring on The Stork!

This is how I feel right now…

Happy, nervous, but mostly waddling!

So pregnant that I’m bursting at the seams (37 weeks), how does one keep up with a boisterous 6 year old??

Craft, craft and more craft. This is what my daughter and I have been doing lately…

Paddle pop penguins using newspaper, cardboard, acrylic paint, pencils, paddle pops and googly eyes!

Bubble wrap Squids Craft… Bubble wrap (hello old friend), paint, illustrated squids, textas, glitter and cardboard…

Birdie Bunting! Cardboard, twine, paint, raffia, hand drawn birds and textas.

Hopefully not waddling for much longer!

Fairy Garden

Tales of fairies and fairy tales date back to the Dark Ages. Originally ‘faeries’ were depicted as tall and radiant beings, or elderly wizened trolls. There were strange and unknowable fairies, and fairies that lurked in logs and stole human babies and substituted them for their own.

Somewhere along the way they started to feature in stories that began with ‘Once upon a time in a faraway land’ filled with goblins, gnomes, elves and trolls, who hindered or helped with a noble quest that ended ‘happily ever after.’ They became increasingly chipper, younger, winged, diminutive in size and lathered in fairy dust.

At my daughters’ school, barrel filled fairy gardens are popping up like mushrooms. With school holidays approaching, thought to make a fairy garden to keep her occupied.

Firstly I sketched out fairies in lead pencil and outlined in black marker pen on very thick white cardboard.

Then I cut them out for a play date where a gaggle of girls took to them with pencils and textas.

We went to a local nursery and chose a selection of cacti and succulents…

Replanted them into a wooden tub and added the green fairy my daughter coloured in!!

Added decorative bits; snail, mushrooms, butterfly and flowers.

Sunlit fairy garden…

For more Fairy Gardens see:

Make your own Retro Space Wrapping Paper

Meet George Jetson! He lives in the future. He works a 9 hour week and travels to work in a spaceship car that folds up into a suitcase. Rosie, his humanoid robot is both housekeeper and child care, which leaves Jane his wife ample time to shop. His son Elroy has school excursions to the moon, while his teenage daughter Judy has a digital diary but no face book account: the internet does not exist. Ironically print media still does!

I grew up watching re-runs of the Jetson’s. The 1960’s look and feel of the show was so playful and optimistic. For an upcoming birthday, have bought the birthday boy a Space puzzle and thought to attempt a retro style wrapping paper using hand-made stencils and paints.

I made two types of paper: one in blue/green, the other in silver/aqua tones.

The two for comparison…

I ended up going with the silver. Here it is in all its’ gift wrapped glory…

If only dinner were a Push button away!

The BIG 7 List!

Why Do People Like Lists?

A list is a schedule, tally, program, outline, or time table.

Lists help us remember things. They relieve stress and focus the mind. Apparently they keep us from procrastinating. If lists are supposed to bring order to chaos then why do I feel Ugh about them?

Apparently our brains can only deal with seven choices before we become overwhelmed. When we’re faced with too many options we’re more likely to do the opposite of what we need to do (Scientific fact).*

Yesterday I had a list of domestic chores to wade through and health insurance to sort out. Instead I went shopping for maternity wear and made an Easter Parade bonnet! If I had made my list shorter, would my bank account be k-chinging to the tune of medicare rebates? Hmm, probably not. Nonetheless, rather than bore you (and me) to tears with a list that would read like this: Wipe down all appliances, clean and clear all flat surfaces, iron school uniforms…argh big yawn… I set myself a goal…to make a list that I can bravely attempt to stick to. My goal (if I chose to accept it) is to make 7 To Do Lists, with 7 Things To Do on each, for a period of 7 days.

Why seven? Science states that anymore and my focus will veer off track and straight back into shopping and crafts. Each To Do list is to take no more than 10 minutes to illustrate, and to be in someway reflective of how I feel about lists, and motivational if at all possible.

These lists will probably have my every day To Do’s: the washing of dishes and peeling of potatoes, however there will be no ‘Practice Kindness,’or ‘Eat more vegetables’ in sight. For me they will be much like a trip to the dentist: painful, but necessary, as on each list I will have listed one thing that I have been putting off for weeks and/or months.

Will I share them? Who really wants to know when I scrubbed out the oven or mopped out behind the T.V cabinet?

This is all a bit like a big dare for me, to see if I can really get on top of all the paperwork and grease traps I’ve been hiding behind craft for, for months!

I’ll link this up to http://meetmeatmikes.com/2013/01/52-lists/ where many, many folks are partaking in list making.

Last night I illustrated all 7 To Do lists, and here they are, my wall of procrastination.

P.s. In Spanish ‘Todo’ (To + Do) means ‘everything.’ Ironic?

*Scientific fact sourced from studies in 2000 by US researchers Iyengar and Lepper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology