Duct Tape Journals

Mail Me Some Art hosted a duct tape journal swap, and the creations were inspirational.  So many beautiful and stunning journals of all sorts of styles.

Here's the journal I sent off (ignore the not-photogenic hands):

The swap was not exchanged between two people, but instead, the coordinator mixed up it for extra fun.  I was the lucky recipient of this gorgeous journal with hand-painted pages and three sewn-in signatures from the talented and color-happy Corinne at Sparkle Days Studios:

Dolls and Dementos

What to do, snow day after snow day?  We found this fun popsicle stick doll idea and, luckily, had everything on hand to make them. (We could not drive anywhere snowy streets.)

Tofu Girl made one and then another and another.

This craft is great for boys as well.  Mischief Maker created a set of his own quirky, demented-cute stick figures.  He thinks that the hypnotic one will be quite useful. 

 The beautiful painted papers in the background of each photo were treats received from the Mail Me Some Art swap.

Kids' ATC Received

A few months ago the kids participated in the Kids' ATC Swap.  We posted our outgoing cards here.  Here are some of the cards that Tofu Girl received from little artists from Oregon to New York:

This next group is from the older children's group that Mischief Maker joined:

We really enjoyed this swap.  Some of the participants generously included stickers and postcards from their state.  Hope the art swap will be held again this year! 

Snow Days

Another snow day today. Wet, gloppy, heavy snow.  Peter says it is good for making snowmen and for skiing.  Not so fun for shoveling or driving.  The kids did not have school today and spent the morning sledding. This storm is named David.  The photos below are from Storm Charlotte which called off school for several days.

Little Ninja's Adventure

By Mischief  Maker

A peg doll ninja can be very sneaky. Be cautious. 

 From in trees...

...or behind them, they can strike at any second...

YAAAAAHHHHH!!!

THE END ( OR IS IT?!? )

Visiting the Peabody

We were drawn to New Haven by food.  We started with afternoon snack of dim sum, which was curbed momentarily when our boy found some metal in his food.  Fortunately, he was not eating ravenously and happened to be chewing slowly.  Clunk!  I thought it was a bone fragment hitting the plate, but nothing from a shrimp makes that noise.  Peter said it was half of a washer, so some machine in the kitchen was missing a washer.  ...And the other half was somewhere else.  Thank goodness our child was fine, but we were concerned that someone else might find the other half in an unpleasant way.  We hope that the staff dug through the food for the other half, but in the meantime, we have not yet convinced Peter to return.  The rest of us have promised to chop our food into itty bitty pieces, and we might be crazy for risking our teeth and digestive systems.  Decent dim sum is hard to come by around these parts.

Our next food-related stop was a food exhibit as the Peabody Museum.

Can you believe that the average American consumes all this in one year?  We couldn't either.

That amount of food seems more suitable for one of these bears instead, right?  Look at those paws!

Small and cute, both of them.  She liked the squirrel's ears.

The Peabody's natural history collections are astounding and beautiful.  Our girl especially likes birds, and this display was stunning.

The Dodo.  Looks like it stepped right out of Alice in Wonderland, doesn't it?

Even Harry Potter's owl was here.

Massive sea turtle

Dinosaur Hall

ATC Swap = Fun Mail

A couple of months ago, the kids participated in the Kids' ATC Swap 2012 which was generously hosted by two sisters.  They organized the exchange groups by age, and the swap was open to children around the world.  Each child was asked to make an original artist trading card (ATC) for the others members of the group, the number varying.  (Tofu had nine in her group, while Mischief had five, I think.)

We started with sheets of heavy watercolor paper instead of painting nine small backgrounds.

The boy wisely did this splattering of paint and India ink outdoors.  He waved me over: "Mommy, look at the black on silver. So cool, like marbling."  He has sharper eyes, but eventually, I saw the it too.  He was watching the just-splashed India ink swirl on the silver acrylic paint.  I really liked the stripes. 

Tofu Girl has liked sparkles and glitter since babyhood.  We found a set of Martha Stewart's beautiful, fine glitter on Halloween clearance which made all of us very happy.  The girl started her cards with squiggles of glue, followed by generous sprinkles of super-awesome-not-your-regular-old glitter.  Then, she had an a-ha! moment and saw a red dot as a nose, which inspired her to make smiley faces on the remaining cards.  (Actually, she said, "I know!"--but in a happy, fun, no-attitude way, this time.)  

The older child was so taken by the ink that he made a quill-and-ink drawing on each card, but he had artist's block for a while.  He wondered/guessed/pondered aloud what each recipient would want, until I suggested that he just draw whatever he wanted.

However, we realized that his creepy cute art style might not be all right with everyone, so he tempered it with some of that fabulous glitter.  Glitter is good, making even demented pumpkins charming.

Next up: the cards we received.