Fall Leaves

• Make a tree trunk (another option is to trace your child's hand including the arm. The fingers=branches, the arm= the trunk)
• Stack some colored paper to easily and quickly cut many leaves
• Hand the kids glue sticks

Go Fish

We used:

• Juice can lids
• Wooden dowels for the pole
  
• A drill with a bit to make a hole in the dowel
• String
• Magnets with a hole in the middle

I may replace the "fishing line" with some stiff twine. That would be better at keeping multiple fishing poles from getting tangled together.

See our other version HERE

Colored Rice

Wow.

This one is right up there with playdough.
Just as fun, just as messy.
But messes can be cleaned, right?

We used:

• large cookie sheets
• liquid food coloring
• sandwich bag to hold rice
  
• about 1-1.5 cups of dry rice per bag (regular, short grain)

Preheat oven to 200 degrees

Squeeze generous amount of food coloring into bag of rice and close.

Smoosh and shake the contents around until rice has reached desired color.

Spread colored rice onto cookie sheet (I lined ours with foil, creating sections for different colors). Put in oven to dry the rice for 15 mins, stir it around and leave for about another 15 mins or so, until all food coloring is dry.

Pumpkinheads

We used:

• pumpkins that randomly sprouted in our yard (right in the middle of our lawn weeds!)
• funny face printouts

I printed the facial features on a heavier paper and "laminated" them with packing tape before I cut them out. The kids used tape to adhere the different features to their pumpkins. We also tried adhesive velcro (since I had it on hand) to make the parts a little more interchangeable.

Illustration Friday: 'Fro + Zen = Frozen

So, maybe it was a little stretch...

I'm still getting used to using the Wacom (Intuos 3) tablet. It feels like trying to walk on ice and when I "slip" I start to miss the friction that happens between the tooth of paper and a good old Sharpie.

On the other hand, I love that it saves me a bunch of time, allowing for a quick creative exercise minus the mess.

In other news:

This week I'd like to spray paint a bunch of stuff, start a slip cover for our couch and maybe start a sewing project or two.

There.

Announcing my plans to the planet may help me to actually get it checked off my list.

Illustration Friday: Flying

I think I've made about a hundred paper airplanes for my son in the past 3 days, so I took this week's IF theme as a sign that I've got to do more drawing!

Want

ALEGRIA by PG Lite.
Unfortunately you are on my "wants" list, not the "needs" list.
Boo hoo