Rainbow Cat

This morning, I was going through my children's art books and I stumbled upon Let's Paint A Rainbow, by Eric Carle.  Immediately, my son was drawn to the simple story of two workers painting rainbow stripes on a building.  We went through the colors of the rainbow, until we hit the color brown, and then pink?  Ok Eric Carle, what were you smoking in the Eighties?  The story ended with a picture of a big cat who's tail was painted like a rainbow.

Anyways, in true art teacher fashion, we made a mini-lesson from the story.  I drew him a cat (just like the end of the story) and I had him identify each color he saw in the rainbow.  He then proceeded to color his cat.

Rooftop Skyline Painting

My friend Yianna hosted another Smock (TM) party the other day.  This time the theme was the Chicago skyline.  On the hottest day of the year, we went up on her roof to draw the skyline, and then painted it.  I was really trying to keep the colors and lines simple, while keeping the perspective somewhat accurate.  In the span of two hours (and three vodkas with lemonade,) this is what I came up with.....

How are you staying creative this summer?  xoxoxo

Instagram Pics of the Week- Chicago Cityscape

This week I spent some time enjoying the city.  Enjoy!!!

Union Station

Under the El

View from Northerly Island

A Day in the City

We took a family field trip to Millenium Park, in downtown Chicago.  It was a fabulous 85 degree day, complete with a train ride, getting wet, and a wonderful vodka drink at lunch.  Not to mention the beautiful scenery...

A Big Wave of Mutilation

When my little brother was four, he had traced a large self-portrait of himself.  This hung on the back of his door, until he went away to college.  I remembered this, after seeing a similar project listed in 30 Creative Toddler Craft and Art Projects.  The art teacher in me got inspired to teach my children the basics about facial feature placement.  First, I rolled out some white paper, next I traced each childs' body.

Simon was able to draw eyes, a nose and even his hair. Vivi, well she just made crazy marks.  All of our enthusiasm and excitement went downhill pretty fast!

The markers didn't quite stay on the page, and the kids had more fun drawing on themselves.  In the end we had a really big wave of mutilation!

P.S. I have to credit my husband for taking some of these pictures..

Up, Up in the Air

I was cleaning out my hard drive (that's full of edited and unedited pics).  Here are a few funny pics I took with my Nikkor f/1.8 50mm portrait lens.  Even if you have an entry level DSLR (like me), you can take some amazing photos with the proper lens. What are some of your photography tricks??

Prinstagram, Not So Instant

A few weeks ago, I wanted to print out my Instagram photos.  In the meantime, I quickly realized that traditional photo sites would really distort the photos' aspect ratio .  I wanted the charm of a perfectly square photo.  This is when I discovered Printstagram!  I was in photo heaven....  I quickly uploaded my favorite photos, paid for my order, and waited, and waited, and waited.  They said it would take two weeks, but does it really?  Finally, the other day, they arrived from Hong Kong!!  They claim to be a California company, but who knows?  Overall, I am completely thrilled with these prints.  I took a few pictures to share with all of you.

What To Do When There's No Caillou?

Most of us, across the Midwest, have suffered scorching heat this week.  My children have been restless, and stir crazy.  To make matters worse, our internet was out, so that meant no Netflix. My poor children could not watch endless hours of Caillou. Instead, I decided to research some toddler crafts, where I came across this great blog on Pinterest, http://handsonaswegrow.com/2012/06/simple-straw-threaded-shoestring-necklace.html.  Based on this craft, I decided to have the kids create ribbon necklaces with straw beads.

I gathered up some colorful straws, ribbon, a plastic threading needle, and children's scissors.  My son,  obsessed with scissors, intently cut each straw.  

With help, each child easily threaded the straw pieces on their piece of ribbon to make a necklace.  This was a really fun and easy craft, which kept them occupied for over an hour!