Art for Grandma's house

So my mom and dad recently moved to a new house and are taking their time in decorating the place.  One thing Grandma REALLY wanted was grandkid artwork, so my sister and I got together and the kids painted some canvases.  Since the ages range from 2 months to 5 years we kept the pieces similar by using the same size of canvas and paint colours for each one.

The 3 older kids used a paintbrush and went at it.  I'm really excited about Ashton's (bottom right) since he has not really drawn or painted anything in his 4 odd years.  He's a typical type A, so everything has to be perfect or he'll get upset, but it looks like his hands have finally caught up to his imagination!  For the babies we just did some foot prints.  Olivia did hers in the jolly jumper, but I think she had more fun jumping in the bucket of water afterwards...

I had done some high key edits of my kiddos to put on my walls, which made my mom think that she wanted b&w photos of all the grandkids on her walls.  So while my sister was over we also did a little photoshoot for her 3.  A little photoshop later, and we have some great high key photos for grandma's walls!



Pretty pleased with the final product, although it would have been nice to get a good shot of all five kids together.  Unfortunately we tried at the end of the day, and got one, count it ONE shot where all the kids were looking at the camera.  And only one of them looked normal on that shot.  Guess we'll be giving that one a go another time...

A few past crafty things...

So at the moment I'm trying to paint the basement in the half hour cat naps O's been giving me.  While my crafting is on hold, I thought I'd give a peek at a few things I've done in the past.

  I sewed these Noah's ark animals for Christmas 2009 (?) It took a LOT of time, but was really fun to do!  I bought the pattern online from Three Score Ten (sorry, no link, can't find it back...)  So it was a multi-step process making these: first I sewed them all (most tedious part of the process) then I primed them with gesso twice, then painted all the underbellies white (with acrylic paint - NOT the craft stuff)  The fun part was painting them all!  I then used embroidery floss for the manes of the zebras and giraffes and all the tails, and some weird rope-ish wool for the beard, hair and the lion's mane. Lot's of fun, but of course Ashton was more interested in all the store bought toys he got that year...  Two years later I'm still waiting for DH to make a wooden ark to store them all.  When I stuffed the dove I put a magnet in it's bottom, so when he gets around to the ark I can set a magnet on the top of the ark so the dove can perch on top!

  REALLY easy craft that anyone can do - all this is is scrapbooking paper and foam letters from Dollarama.  I had this frame which wasn't being used (I keep a large collection of frames and change my photos out fairly often - people change over time you know!) and was kind of scratched from the last move, so I just scratched it up a little more.  It now hangs in Olivia's yet-to-be-used nursery (she finally sleeps well in the bassinet, so I'm keeping her in there as long as possible)  The nursery is blue and classic-Pooh themed (the book, not Disney)  I'll probably have a post about muraling a little later on...

  Ashton's room is truck/construction themed (gasp! Really?)  Not sure how long he'll be into it (although his obsession with wheels started at 6 months and shows no sign of stopping) so I didn't do any murals in his room, but painted this little grouping of canvases for him.  I just bought a cheapy set of pre-stretched/gessoed canvas at Michael's and used an overhead to sketch them on.  I really like creating my own artwork for the kids' room, saves me a lot of searching for stuff that matches...
  Speaking of matching, have you ever felt that overpowering frustration when searching for just the right night-light?  Well I sure have!  So I upcycled this old Ikea lamp (you've probably seen them, with the paper?)

 The paper was ripped, so I took it off, then glue-gunned the fabric onto the rings.  No need to be perfect in the length, because it stretches to fit!  It's a flannel, which isn't technically fireproof, but I only put a 25w in there, and it doesn't seem to get to warm.

Anywaysssss...wish me luck on the basement.  By my calculations it should take me about 3 years to paint the whole thing...