An Atypical Sympathy Card

 The coloring page that I shared with you yesterday? I used it to make a sympathy card. 

It is very different than sympathy cards I've made in the past. The most obvious difference is the color palette - pinks and greens that focus on celebrating life rather than mourning death. Another difference is the amount of time I spent making it. Sympathy cards always take me longer than other cards, but between coloring and burnishing the image (another thing I learned about after watching Sarah's videos), adding the stitching, and embossing the sentiment, this probably holds the record for the card that took me the longest to make. And that is a good thing. 

As I made the card, I thought about a life well-lived. I thought about a dad who was devoted to his family, who loved spending time in nature, and who always had a smile on his face. I met John when I was 8 or 9, when he and Jonna joined the same Father/Daughter program my dad and I were in. Over the years, our families spent a lot of time together. John helped me move into the apartment I shared with Jonna in college, but even more notably, he helped me move out of the apartment long after Jonna had moved out. I remember the huge smile on his face during my wedding, and the even bigger smile when I introduced him to my baby for the first time. John will be missed by many and I'm glad he was a part of my life. 

"Art Class" #1: Improving My Coloring

One of my creative resolutions for 2021 is to take two art classes. I was hoping to do in-person classes, but here we are in September and I haven't found any that I want to take. I looked at some online classes and found some interesting options, but nothing was quite right for one reason or another. I decided to take a different approach: I would pick two art-related skills I'd like to learn/improve and then I'd search for the corresponding content.  

The first skill I'm tackling is improving my coloring. Besides picking out colors that look good and staying within the lines on a coloring page, what else is there to coloring? As it turns out, a LOT. 

To be honest, it wasn't until I colored the hummingbird gift bag that I realized how much skill coloring well requires. The more I've read, the more I realize how much I have to learn. (Isn't that the case with everything?) With the hummingbird image, I attempted to add shading and texture to the flowers. I had some success, but realized this would be the perfect topic for the first class I'd put together for myself. Since then, I have skimmed dozens of blog posts and watched snippets many YouTube videos looking for a great instructor. I am thrilled to have found Sarah Renae Clark. 

Sarah is a coloring book author and talented artist from Australia. Her blog posts are well-written and illustrated beautifully, but it was her YouTube videos that truly drew (haha!) me in. 

These are three of my favorites. Each contains lessons I was immediately able to put into place to improve my coloring.  

This is the first coloring I've done since starting my 'class.' The image is from the Love Grows Coloring Book (affiliate link). 

It took a lot more time than it used to take me to color a similarly sized project, but the extra time was particularly good for this project. Tomorrow I'll tell you why. 

Splatter Paint Fall Trees

After sharing so many splatter-painting backgrounds, it's time for a splatter-painted foreground. Rather than the thumb-across-toothbrush technique, I used a different method to achieve the dots and drips. It was so much fun!

Splatter Paint Fall Trees

Materials:

• watercolor paper
• crayons (brown, black)
• acrylic paint (blue, orange, yellow, red-brown)
• two paintbrushes

Steps:

Use crayons to draw bare trees on the watercolor paper. I drew four trees, each with plenty of branches and twigs, then added a bit of shadow with the black crayon. 

Thin the blue paint and use it to create a wash of color on the entire paper. These bits of sky will show through between the leaves of the tree. Let the paint dry. 

Put the painting into a cardboard box. I have a designated box I use to contain the mess when splattering, misting, dripping, and spraying. Hold one paintbrush in each hand. Dip one paintbrush into the red-brown paint, then tap it on the handle of the second paintbrush. This will cause small flicks of paint to splatter down. Experiment with the quantity of paint on the first brush, where you tap on the second brush, and how far from the paper you hold the brushes to get different sizes of splatters. Concentrate the splatters along the base of the trees and in the branches, leaving the space along the middle of the trunks and above the branches relatively unsplattered. You may need to rotate the paper to accomplish this. 

Without cleaning your brush, switch to orange paint and use the same technique to add splatters. Switch to yellow, building up the layers. When you have a good amount of splatters in the two main sections of the painting, use a pouncing motion to fill in any gaps between the leaves on the ground. With the same pouncing motion, do the same to add leaves to bare branches (if desired). 

It's up to you how many leaves you want on your finished artwork. I kept going until I liked how the trees looked. 

This really is a ton of fun to do. There's something very satisfying about seeing drips of paint transform into leaves. 

First Day of 10th Grade

The first day of school is always special, but this year's marked the first time in 516 days that Trevor attended school in person. While he enjoyed distance learning and did very well, he was happy to head back to in-person school for 10th grade. 

First Day of 10th Grade (affiliate link)

Of course, school isn't back to pre-COVID normal. Masks are mandatory indoors and recommended outdoors. Students carry water bottles instead of using drinking fountains, and hand sanitizer is everywhere. Staff and students must do a daily self-check for COVID symptoms. Trevor's high school takes place entirely on the community college campus, which opted to keep most of their class in distance learning this semester; consequently, the high schoolers have the whole campus to themselves. Well, almost. Key facilities like the library and gym aren't open. The cafeteria isn't operating, but the district brings in free lunch for all students every day. School drop-off and pick-up are a dream because the parking lots are completely empty. Permits are not required for upperclassmen who drive themselves. Things will change dramatically when the community college returns to in-person learning, presumably when the new semester starts in January.

Found Poem: September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday. I had just woken up and started getting ready for work when my phone rang. A call at 6:00 am is never good news. And this was as bad as news gets. My friend Brenda told me to turn on the TV immediately. What I saw was horrifying.

The drive to work was strange. The roads were empty and I wanted to turn around and go home. But I couldn't. I needed to be there for a class of fifth graders whose parents might or might not have told them what was going on before dropping them off at school. When I got to work, we had strict instructions not to talk about what was going on, to offer brief reassurances only as needed, and to keep the day as normal as possible. It was very difficult for me to stay in the cocoon of my classroom with absolutely no information about what was going on beyond those walls. We had no internet in the classrooms and this was long before smart phones, so we teachers had to wait until recess and lunch to learn anything. 

The drive home was even stranger than the drive to work.  

The following day at school was even more difficult. By then, all the students knew what had happened. Many had seen graphic images over and over on TV. They were scared, they were upset, and they had a thousand questions. There was no hope of having anything approaching a normal school day. To complicate matters, each Wednesday we got a class set of newspapers. The kids and their parents knew that Wednesdays meant newspapers and current events homework. I couldn't just casually send home these papers with their screaming headlines and disturbing photos, expecting them to pick an article and summarize it. 

During my lunch break, I used the paper to make this found poem. 

At the end of the day, I read my poem to them. I announced that homework was canceled, then invited only those students who wanted to take a paper to do so. I gave them an optional homework assignment to create their own found poem, ideally working with parents and older siblings. I received five poems, all beautiful. 

It's hard to believe 20 years have passed. I have not forgotten. 

California Poppies Craft

After cutting off a strip to make my fall leaf bookmark, I still had leftover paper that I'd painted in oranges and yellows. The colors were perfect to use for California poppies. 

Our state flower grows wild all over our golden hills, offering beautiful pops of color most of the year. Fun fact: the petals close at night and open when the sun rises. On cloudy or windy days, they stay closed. Fun fact #2: Today is California Admission Day. Happy 171st birthday to our state!

California Poppies Craft

Materials:

• watercolor paper, painted with oranges and yellows
• cardstock (a sky blue background and green for the stems and leaves)
• microtip scissors
• brown ink
• craft glue

Steps:

Cut petal shapes from the orange paper. You need four petals for the flower facing front and three for the one that is facing away. 

From a yellow section of the paper, cut a small piece that looks like grass. These are the stamens. Cut stems, leaves, and a bud from the green paper.  

Add a little bit of brown ink around the edges of the petals. This will give a sense of depth. Then glue everything together, starting with the flowers, then adding the stems and leaves. Finally, glue the poppies to the blue background paper. 

I love California poppies! 

Fall Colors Bookmark

Check out my new bookmark, inspired by fall leaves. 

I made it to answer two questions: 

• Does a white gel pen write over acrylic paint? (Yes.)
• Does using a tassel maker improve the tassel-making process? (Yes.)

I like trying new techniques on a bookmark because you really can't mess it up. Worse case, you paint over it and try again. Or you live with an ugly (but still functional) bookmark. Fortunately, this turned out exactly as I'd hoped. Affiliate links below. 

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Fall Colors Bookmark

Materials:

• watercolor paper
• Folk Art acrylic paint
• white Gelly Roll pen
• Crop-a-Dile Big Bite
• yarn
• Bucilla tassel maker

Steps:

Dot a generous amount of yellow and orange acrylic paints on a piece of watercolor paper. Gently spread them with a pouncing motion until you are happy with the colors. The surface should be smooth, without lumps of paint. Let the paper dry completely. 

Cut off a piece the size you want your bookmark to be. Doodle leaf patterns in different directions using the gelly roll pen. 

Use the Crop-a-Dile to punch a hole at the top of the bookmark. 

Follow the directions on the tassel maker to make a 3" tassel, then attach it to the bookmark. The folks at Plaid sent me the tassel maker to try. I wasn't sure that I needed it, as I usually just use my right hand to wrap the yarn for the tassel. But I discovered that the tool does indeed make the process easier. It's no surprise that using both hands to tie off the tassel is easier than having one hand literally tied up during the process! 

Tomorrow I'll show you what I made with the paper that was left after I cut off a strip for my bookmark. 

Paper Bag Bison

As promised, here is the bison project I made. The entire thing is made with a single paper bag. Affiliate links below. 

 

Paper Bag Bison

Materials:

• paper lunch bag
• bison drawing
• scissors
• Folk Art paint
• craft glue

Steps:

Carefully open a paper lunch bag. You should be able to peel it open without cutting it. I'm reusing one I got from the store when I bought bagels. It's wrinkled, but that totally doesn't matter because you'll be adding even more wrinkles!

Use scissors to cut out the bison's body from an edge of the paper bag. Then remove the head from the template and use it to cut an extra head. Cut the remaining portion of the paper bag into two long rectangles. 

Trim the horns and beard off the full-body bison. Crumple and then flatten each piece, as shown below. 

Paint one large rectangle with light blue, then add streaks of white to make the sky. Paint the other rectangle golden. Paint the back half of the bison's body light brown and the front half (including the head) dark brown. Paint the horns white. 

When all the paint is dry, glue the pieces together. 

I'm really happy with my bison project! 

How to Draw a Bison

What do you call this animal?

Source

Most of the time, I call it a buffalo. I'm trying to get into the habit of calling it a bison. The American Bison, while commonly called a buffalo, is not technically a buffalo. 

This is a buffalo. 

Source

The American Bison is the national mammal of the United States, as well as the state animal of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. Bison nearly went extinct in the late 1800's following hunting (and slaughter) by settlers during the Westward Expansion. Fortunately, recovery efforts have brought the wild bison population up to around 31,000 individuals.

I had a bison craft in mind, but I needed to make myself a template first. As I was drawing my bison, I realized I should share the steps I took in the form of a tutorial. As always, I drew in Sharpie for the tutorial so that the photos would show up well. There are several places where you'll need to erase foundation lines, so you should sketch lightly in pencil. 

How to Draw a Bison

Start by drawing the bison's body in the center of the paper. That's its hump on the upper right. 

Add the bison's head. It is positioned slightly lower than the hump and is basically teardrop-shaped. Draw horns and a beard.

Now draw the legs in the foreground. The front leg is quite shaggy, so give it some extra width. 

Draw the other two legs, then add a tail, eyes, and a nose. 

Tomorrow I'll show you what I did with my bison template. 

Paper Plate Washing Machine Craft

A big part of my job at Fun Family Crafts is scouring the internet to find clever and creative craft tutorials to feature. Because we only publish crafts that include tutorials, I can't feature a craft that doesn't have a materials list and an explanation of the steps to make it. When I come across a craft without a tutorial, I first attempt to contact the creator and convince them to add a tutorial. Unfortunately, this is rarely successful, particularly if the post is old and/or in a foreign language. When that happens, I make my own version of the project and write up a tutorial. 

Such is the case for this clever paper plate washing machine craft. The post is in Korean; I hoped when I ran it through a translator there would be a tutorial, but there wasn't. So I took the idea and put a fall twist on it. 

Paper Plate Washing Machine Craft

Materials:

• 9" plain paper plate
• markers
• 11" x 14" drawing paper
• tacky glue

Steps: 

Draw and color articles of clothing on the non-eating side of the paper plate. (I know it looks like I used the eating side, but it's an optical illusion.) 

Outline the edge of the plate and the center section with black. Add a black half-circle handle and some black motion lines. Then color the area behind the clothes with blue to indicate moving water. 

Set the paper plate on a piece of drawing paper and draw the washing machine around it. I started with a large square that was slightly bigger than the plate, then added the feet and then the vent at the bottom right. Then I added a rectangle on top with the various dials and knobs. The final step is to glue the paper plate to the drawing paper. 

I drew fall-themed clothes, but you can adapt this for any season or holiday. It would be really cute with Santa and the elves' clothes at Christmas, or swimsuits and towels during the summer. There are a lot of fun possibilities!

The Making of Harry Potter

In April 2019, Trevor and I experienced The Making of Harry Potter at Warner Bros. Studio in London. It was absolutely incredible. We loved every minute. I'd go back in a heartbeat. 

The Making of Harry Potter (affiliate link)

As usual, I really struggled trying to decide which pictures to include on the scrapbook layout. I used 75+ photos for the blog post about the visit, so you can imagine how hard it was to narrow those down to the seven I used!

Once I picked my photos, the layout came together easily. I made my photo grid, constructed the title using three stickers, added a journaling box, and anchored the layout with the sticker strip across the bottom. The last touch was adding the Hufflepuff sticker next to Trevor and the Ravenclaw sticker by me. 

I'm so happy with this layout and thrilled to have it in the album. Only two more pages to go before I've finished scrapping our 2019 Europe trip. 

Fall Tree with Tissue Paper Leaves

The calendar says that fall is coming soon, but here in the Bay Area our leaves won't be falling for another 2 or 3 months. All the more reason to embrace fall colors via crafting! 

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Fall Tree with Tissue Paper Leaves

Materials:

• watercolor paper
• crayons (brown, black)
• watercolor paint (blue)
• tissue paper (red, orange, yellow, green)
• scissors
• glue

Steps:

Use crayons to draw a tree on the watercolor paper. Add plenty of branches and twigs. 

Add a wash of blue watercolor over the entire paper. The wax of the crayons will resist the paint; dab gently with a paper towel if any droplets remain. Let the paint dry completely. 

Use scissors to cut the tissue paper into tiny bits. I cut a few squares from each color, layered them, and then hacked at them randomly with the scissors. Dot glue onto the branches of the tree where leaves would be. Sprinkle the tissue paper bits onto the branches. Repeat until all the branches are covered. Lift the paper vertically to allow any pieces that are not attached to fall. 

Repeat the steps of cutting tissue paper into bits, dotting the paper with glue, and sprinkling the tissue paper onto the glue, except this time do not include any green tissue paper. (Green leaves wouldn't have fallen yet. I thought of this a little late, so you can see hints of green behind the fallen leaves. I'm pretending its grass.)

This project was really fun to make and took a lot less time than I'd originally expected. It's a great way to reuse ripped or wrinkled tissue paper. Give it a try!

Update to the 50 State Album

Trevor added the 35th page to his 50 States Album! 

I love looking through this album, perhaps more than any other. While the other family albums are from my perspective, this from Trevor's point of view. I love looking back at the photos he chose to represent each state and what he wrote about each visit. I can't wait until the album is complete. If all goes according to plan, it'll be finished in less than 3 years!

Cereal Box Grocery List Notepad

I raided the recycling bin for today's project, a grocery list notepad. There's a magnet on the back so that it can hang on the fridge. 

You could use the same concept to make a holiday wish list, a place to write phone messages, a to-do list, or anything else. It can hang from a filing cabinet or inside a locker. Affiliate links below. 

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Cereal Box Grocery List Notepad

Materials: 

• cardboard boxes (I used Golden Grahams, Shredded Wheat and Triscuits)
• lined 5" x 8" notepad
• craft glue
• magnet tape

Steps: 

Use scissors to cut out the letters to spell GROCERIES (or whatever title you want). Cut an extra strip from a cereal box that is the same width as the top of the notepad and long enough to hold the entire message. 

Glue the letters to the cardboard strip, then glue the strip to the top of the notepad. Make sure you are adhering it only to the top strip and not to the paper itself. 

Add a generous amount of magnetic tape to the back of the notepad. 

Now all you need to do is to hang your list. Make sure there's a pen or pencil nearby. When it's time to go shopping, just tear off the top sheet and you're good to go. 

Koala Pancakes

I am in awe of the amazingly talented people who create works of art in pancake form. I'm not sure who was first to popularize the technique of using pancake batter on a hot griddle to draw portraits and other intricate designs, but the first I came across was Nathan Shields. His designs are absolutely amazing. I'm blown away by how he achieves such detailed designs by carefully adding lines of batter at just the right time for them to create the dark and light parts of the portrait.   

My brain does not work like that. This koala is my ability level when it comes to creativity with pancakes.

 

To make your own, make a large round pancake for the face, two smaller round pancakes for the ears, and an oval pancake for the nose. Spread Nutella on the nose, the use dots of Nutella to attach candy eyeballs in place. Add a dollop of whipped cream to the inside of each ear right before serving. 

I wanted to give my koala a mouth, but the only food I had on hand that was shaped like a small smile was a black olive. I don't particularly like olives in places where they belong, so I'm certainly not adding them to pancakes with Nutella and whipped cream. I tried using a toothpick to draw a Nutella mouth, but it needed to be darker to stand out against the pancake. I suppose I could have cut a mouth from an extra pancake, or made a tiny mouth-shaped pancake from the beginning. I'm open to other suggestions!

35 States (So Far!)

Our family's recent trip to Montana inspired this layout. Steve, Trevor, and I have now been to 35 of the 50 states. I marked each state we've visited with a red dot; the date is the first time Trevor visited that state. The blue dots are places we haven't been yet. 

35 States So Far (affiliate link)

We have approximately 2 years and 9 months to visit the remaining 15 states to meet our goal of taking Trevor to every state before he's 18. Several people have told me that we should get an extension on the goal since COVID kept us home for a year and 3 months, but I'm still hoping to meet our June 2024 deadline. I think it's still doable, assuming nothing crazy happens (like, say, a pandemic). 

Whimsical Clay Narwhal

This is not a narwhal. I'm calling it a narwhal, but it's a narwhal in the same sense that Mickey is a mouse and Bugs is a bunny. I've taken some anatomical liberties, to say the least.

A narwhal is an Arctic whale related to the beluga. The body is torpedo-shaped, not round like a ball. A narwhal is not blue; it is white, mottled with brownish-black markings on the dorsal side. Like other whales, its eyes are on the sides of its head, not toward the front. Its most distinguishing characteristic (usually only present in males) is its long, spiral left canine tooth that can grow to be 10 feet long. Since it is a tooth, it protrudes from the mouth, not from the top of the head.
 
If you are looking for a realistic craft about narwhals, this is not the tutorial for you. This whimiscal version plays on the narwhal's nickname, "the unicorn of the sea." Affiliate links below. 

 

Whimsical Clay Narwhal

Materials:

• Model Magic 
• toothpick
• embroidery floss
• craft glue
• black Sharpie
• googly eyes

Steps:

Use the Model Magic to shape the rounded body of the narwhal. Its tail fin should be gently forked. Form two small triangular pectoral fins. Set all three pieces aside to air dry.  

Coat a toothpick with craft glue and twist a piece of embroidery floss around it to form the narwhal's tooth. Set it aside to dry completely. 

Paint the narwhal's tooth an off-white so that the toothpick and the embroidery floss are the same color. Let the paint dry. As you can see, I didn't paint the one end - that's the end I was holding and that would be hidden once I inserted the tooth. 

When everything is dry, assemble the narwhal by gently pushing the toothpick into the narwhal's forehead (again, we're going to "unicorn of the sea," not realism). Glue the eyes in place and give the narwhal a Sharpie smile. Glue the fins to the body. 

If you're looking for other narwhal ideas, check out my ideas for a narwhal-themed party and a Twinkie narwhal. And then look at this fabulous tea infuser - so much fun!