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A few weeks ago I helped my dear friend finish her kindergarten classroom. She moved classrooms, so got to pick some new crazy colors for the wall. (And yes, I realize there’s a typo on the wall. It’s been fixed. Of COURSE I forget the apostrophe on the wall of a classroom. Of course.) This tree was a little tricky because it covered 1/2 a white wall and 1/2 a yellow wall. I think we pulled it off. Also, since everything is better with a little sparkle, we glued on some rhinestones and brushed on some Magical Glitter Highlights.

We added about seven bees flying around the classroom (how many do you see in this picture?) (Don’t strain your eyes, there’s only one. Next to the door.) And some flowers for the bees to visit.

…here they are close up so you can admire the *BLING*.

In case you can’t tell, her classroom theme is “Busy Bees!” She asked for a beehive. But when I first painted it, the interaction of the colors I chose with the orange wall make it look more like a pile of dung instead of a beehive. This is what it looked like after the 3rd attempt. Try, try again!

Have you ever tried to paint a mural on a brightly colored wall before? It was kind of a challenge! But fun. The last mural I painted was in E’s room when she was a baby. That was SEVEN YEARS AGO. Dude. (Add nostalgic sniffling here).

I have one more thing I want to share with you. We’ve been in our “temporary apartment” for over a year now, and I decided we needed to revamp the girls room. To make things a little more festive we hung up….

PENNANT BANNERS!!! And twinkle lights! And I jerry-rigged the paper parasol in the corner to make a lovely & delightful lantern. (I love $5 projects that completely change a room!) The pennant banners were made with a combination of fabric scraps and vintage pillowcases. And I AM IN LOVE and plan on making about 100 more.

What are you in love with?

Hello Friends! How’s summer treating you?

I’ve been super busy with lots of projects, which is great! (You know, except for the piles of laundry that may or may not get done this week…) And I’ve had a pretty big variety of jobs lately. And lots of animals. Animals are always fun to draw.

Here’s an illustration from an educational book I finished up this week. Happy fun times with animals!!!:

And an article for a magazine about what to expect when you have to put your horse down:

The art director said, “What can you come up with for an article on euthanasia?” Gulp.

So tell me, what would you have done? And what are you working on?

Here’s images from a project I JUST finished. (Like 10 minutes ago! Woo hoo!!!)

Once upon a time there were two friends who liked fun and adventure. They were 10 – 11 years old. One of them climbed trees.

They went camping. They told scary stories around the campfire.

Hey! Let’s go for a walk alone in the woods! Ok! First it’s super fun. Look, a green beetle!

What the…is that a BEAR?

I’m so glad my friend ran off and left me to get my head eaten! Oh wait, it’s just eating the berries! Phew.

THE END!

Action packed, let me tell you! This will be a very dramatic story for children learning English. We’ll see if any of them ever go camping…

So how are you? Working on any fun crafts or projects? Do share!

Hello Friends!

I’m in charge of the crafts at my mom’s group, so once a month we ladies get together to make something (hopefully) fabulous. I’m sharing because when I started doing this about three years ago, I couldn’t find a good list of ideas all in one place. Hopefully these will be of use to you. If not, just pretend.

Our budget is about $2.50 per person, per craft. That, my friends, is not a lot. Especially when you consider my lofty goals:

LOFTY GROUP CRAFT GOALS
Not Clutter: Make something that I’d like to hang in my home or that I can give away as a gift
Fairly Easy: Make something that everyone can do independently with limited “help” (since there’s only one of me to go around)
Accessible: The ladies will be able to complete the project and feel proud to show it off
Inexpensive, not Cheap: (See Lofty goal #1 + budget above)

I’m not saying every craft achieved those goals, but here are the most successful ones we’ve done lately:

FAMILY TREE

(I would upload a template for the tree, but I drew it freehand. Sorry…. )
We used 12×12″ scrapbook paper, but cut two pieces to create an 11×14″ standard-frame-size final project. It looks nicer if the leaves are color that contrasts with the background (light background, dark leaves or dark background, light leaves.)

NOTES THAT MAY HELP: The hardest part of this was figuring out how to add the leaves. They look better if they’re not RIGHT ON TOP of the branch, but kind of fanned out. The order I put our family on is grandparents at the bottom of the branch (closest to the trunk), parents coming off of them, siblings at the end of the branch with my husband & I meeting in the middle & our girls on the very top. Does that make sense? It actually took me WAY TOO LONG to figure that out, so don’t worry if you’re not following me. I wasn’t even following me at the beginning!

BIRTHDAY CALENDAR

(Confession: We haven’t actually done this one yet. It’s coming up after our Organic Gardener Guest Speaker)
I got this idea from my Mother-In-Law, she has a similar one that hangs on her fridge. It’s nice cause you don’t have to update your calendar every year, and it’s pretty enough to keep hung on the wall. (It will even be MORE helpful when I actually fill in our family & friends birthdays on there.)
The final craft is also standard frame size 11×14″. I made a grid template on 11×17″ (Tabloid) size paper. I cut squares from scrapbooking paper that are 3.7″ wide x 3.5″ tall. I printed a separate page for the white “month” squares. Glue-sticked it all together. Ta da!

Here’s the background grid template & month squares to download:
CalendarLayout
MonthSquares

SHRINKY DINK SILHOUETTE BROOCH

Seriously? I think my favorite craft we’ve ever done. I literally wear mine three times a week. See this post for my notes (scroll past the sea captain).

GLITTER WORD BANNER

Everything is better with Glitter. We used 12×12″ glitter cardstock from Michaels. It was pricey! ($2 a sheet!) But it was worth it. There was minimal glitter shedding, and it is just so dang fancy. I found that a phrase 13 letters or less worked the best. I laid the letters out in Illustrator, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, flipped them backwards, printed them on 2 separate sheets of paper and puzzle-pieced them together on the back of the cardstock so we didn’t waste any bit of it. After glue-sticking them lightly to the back of the glitter cardstock, we cut them out and scotch-taped them to a string. To get the little holes cut (like the inside of the “e” or “o” or “a”) we just cut right through a portion of the letter. The glitter was so forgiving that you couldn’t tell the “a” or “e” or “o” was taped back together. I gave each lady a file folder to wrap their banner around because these things tangle easily. You will want to say lots of bad words when you get home and they’re a jumbled heap of sadness. But if it’s not tangled, you can hang them up on your wall and feel proud.

MITTEN HANGER

I got packs of wooden hangers from Ikea and shoved them in our supply cabinet till I came up with something brilliant to do with them. This is the result. We used one inch “S” hooks from Home Depot and man-handled them onto the pine crossbar thingees. It’s kind of tricky to figure out, but once you get the first one the rest will be easier. You have to kind of push-and-twist them on. But it was either this or pre-drill 60 holes into that 1/2″ dowel for screw hooks. So “S” hooks it is! (I went to Home Depot to look for hooks and there was a nice helper guy there. I didn’t want to explain what I was trying to do. I was embarrassed he’d be all, “Um, whatever lady.” But he opened the pack of “S” hooks so I could try it out and then he was SO IMPRESSED. He told me I should patent this. But since it’s a wooden hangar and an “S” hook, I’ll just share it with you instead.)

The nice thing about this craft is that it’s versatile. Some ladies were going to use them to hang aprons. Others as a key rack. We had leftover ribbon, so we also had this option for storing/displaying barrettes:

(Dude! This post is long! Almost done, swear.)

GREETING CARDS

You can print these out, just click on the image, click again to enlarge and right-click to save. Here they are in color (for the tentative crafters):

And here’s the plain ‘ol lineart for the Advanced Crafter:

I suggest you make your cards 4.25″ x 5.5″. Because that’s a sheet of regular cardstock folded in half, then cut in half. Dude, 2 cards out of a sheet of cardstock. That’s crafty AND thrifty.

GLITTER GLUE IS NOT OPTIONAL. See how I made all the cute polka-dots on the backgrounds? They’re for you to dot glitter glue onto. You don’t have to go overboard, sometimes less IS more, but seriously, everything is better with glitter.

Random Bullet Pointed Tips:
* Size A-2 envelopes are 4.375″ x 5.75″, and fit cards that are 4.25″ x 5.5″. Do a google search for A-2 envelopes & find lots of lovely options.

* I buy reams of card stock to make my own cards, but craft stores carry nice little 25-page packs in a variety of colors that are lovely. I use a paper cutter to cut it down to the right size. If I’m really ambitious, I’ll use a butter knife to score where the paper will fold before I cut it. Then I get a pristine fold line. It’s very satisfying.

* Coloring Your Card: I think Colored Pencils are the best. Watercolors will work too (if you’ve laser-printed the designs, but if you printed it on an inkjet printer it will smear.)

* Again I say it, glitter glue is your friend. Embrace the glitter glue. For best results, color the design in first & then enhance & highlight with the glittery goodness.

Here’s a few of the cards we made for the Kidslink Project:

Phew! I think that’s it. I hope you find this useful and HAPPY CRAFTING!!!

Hello Friends! I forgot to post my Christmas Greetings to you before I left on our whirlwind holiday extravaganza. So pretend it’s 2.5 weeks ago:

And no, my kitchen doesn’t look like that. But my three year old does.

Since we’ve gotten back from our Holiday Travels, I’ve been working non-stop. I finished three projects this week! Dude! But luckily I’ve really liked everything I’ve been working on. I did a baby announcement for the CUTEST little guy:

So fun! Then I finished an early reader about a poor socially rejected cactus…

..who later learns that you need to bloom where you’re planted. Awwwww…

I’ve got about four different book ideas floating around in my head, plus another three projects I’ve been neglecting, so I’m excited to now have a few hours to work on them.

What are you working on? I want to hear about it!!!

I have two things to share with you, first up is this little spot I just finished for a magazine game page.

I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. I used cold press paper (I think it was Fabrino, 150lb.) Half way through the watercoloring, I stopped to ink in the lines with a #8 Pigma Micron. Then I finished the rest of the painting. (It’s amazing how much you lighter your watercolors will look once you’ve got a big fat black line next to them…)

I liked this so much that I made this year’s Christmas Card with the same technique. But you can’t see that yet, you have to wait! It’s not even Thanksgiving yet!

For my Mom’s Group, the craft this month was SILHOUETTE BROOCHES MADE FROM SHRINKEY DINKS!!!

I found this idea online, but when I went back and searched for it, I couldn’t find the link again! So thank you, random internet crafter. Great idea! I had the ladies email me pictures of their kids in profile and laid them out like this:

The ladies traced the print outs with fine tipped sharpie markers, we threw them in the oven & then hot-glued pins on the backs of them:

If you do this craft, let me warn you, Shrinkey Dinks can shrink down crazy-jacked-up sometimes! If they curl up on themselves & get stuck DON’T PANIC! Carefully un-stick them, put them back in the oven, and when you pull them out the second time, flatten them with a spatula or wooden spoon. Practically half of our ‘dinks would have been ruined, but when I re-baked them, they ALL turned out fine. (Also, “fine” doesn’t mean “perfect”. They’re melted plastic. They look awesome and are SO fun to do, but they’ll usually be slightly warped. But look how cute! I know!)

So what are you up to? Crazy crafting for the holidays?

Hello Friends!

It was a crazy summer. Which transitioned into a crazy fall. I was lucky enough to have more work than I knew what to do with. First I finished up the finals for a story about a village getting a new well through a missionary project (look how sad this girl is that she has to get water from the river. I would be pretty sad about that too…)

Then I did the poster for a flower show (the actual finished poster is HUGE. Like 19×24″ huge!)

Luckily they liked it enough that they requested a “Night Version” of the poster:

Then I got an email requesting 17 new illustrations for a story I finished illustrating 3 years ago (it was BEFORE I had a Gretchen! That’s crazy!). Here’s the Dad proving his manhood by crushing cans (while wearing protective gloves, of course. Lets not get crazy!):

The mom in the story is one busy lady (running, doing dishes, shopping, babysitting, “fixing things”… Wait, this all sounds familiar…):

And my favorite…I mean my nightmare… She has FIVE BABIES. (Don’t get me wrong, I love babies. But in a one-at-a-time kind of way):

Now I’m going to start sketches for my Halloween mailer. And possibly sleep at some time. What are you working on? I want to hear! Any fun new crafts and/or projects?

xo

I have two things to share today.

1. I finished this announcement for my friend Gabby today. It’s currently on it’s way to their neck o’ the woods. Congratulations on your SIXTH BABY! You are amazing.

2. And since I’m leaving town, of COURSE I couldn’t just mass produce the invitations for this baby shower. Of course I had to hand draw it, then copy it on cardstock so I could watercolor little bits of each one. And then add glitter (remember, everything is better with glitter. Even if you can’t see it in this scan…)

We’re off to Salt Lake City for the OR Show (anyone else going? Anyone?)

What are you up to?

Here’s a few images from the other book I finished last week. The manuscript maybe had vocabulary of five different words, mostly about this sweet little boy’s toy that got lost. The art director asked for really really really simple pictures. I tried something a little different this time, to add visual interest to fairly simple images. I did a really subtle collage. You maybe can’t even see it here, but in the boy’s shorts there’s a denim texture. And behind the color in the images is a very faint parchment background. And the fur of his stuffed alligator is real fur texture. (I know, you probably can’t even tell here, but it’s really there, I swear. I was hoping this would help the images look interesting while still keeping them simple.)

It was a super fun project. And when I was done, instead of sitting on laurels and catching up on Glee, I decided to go on a SUPER CRAFT EXTRAVAGANZA!!! I know I said I didn’t sew before, but apparently if you keep trying over and over again, eventually something turns out. My sister in law made Ella a fabulous little pillowcase dress last year. It’s so cute. So I totally copied her and tried a few of my own. I went to Savers and found some awesome old vintage pillowcases and used grosgrain ribbon in lieu of binding tape to finish off the top, waist and arms. This one we made for Ella’s friend (who luckily is the same size. Thanks for the fabulous modeling job, kiddo!)

I made this little one for my niece Teagan. I was hoping the green waist ribbon would give it a little kick. I’m thinking about maybe making her some matching green ribbon flowers. We’ll see how ambitions I am… (Also, don’t be jealous of my mad photography skillz. I know, I know…)

Then I had a baby shower. I’m obsessed with old man hats, and wanted to see if I could make one for a baby. I chose to make it out of fleece since it doesn’t fray on the edges. It’s pretty forgiving for people who really just pretend to know what they’re doing (you know, like me…)

Then I ripped off my amazing sister’s idea and embroidered a matching onesie. Ta-Dah!!!

I know, I know, I’m almost done. Then I made a necklace and matching earrings. I think the earrings turned out particularly well, just simple ones that hang from a studded post that I bent and filed down into an earring hook.

And that’s it. Now we get to go start our summer vacation. So what have you been working on? I want to hear!