Veggie Garden

Jorge and I have lived in the same house for almost 15 years. Built in 1914, it is old, but charming, and I love working on it. It has just enough space to manage a garden. Up until this year I've only planted perennials. Now, in the faces of the hundreds of squirrels that live in the tree in our yard - vegetables. I found a sunny spot in the yard to built some raised beds. This was an incredibly easy looking, yet difficult project. Thanks again to Pinterest, I found another DIY project to build some fencing around the boxes. This was SO much harder than it looked. Oh my goodness. Some tips if you ever plan to work with chicken wire: wear gloves. Since it is cheaper than the hardware cloth, I chose the chicken wire. Not a great choice, but it's done and it keeps the squirrels out.

Project credit: http://www.gardeningworld.org/2013/12/removable-raised-garden-bed-fence.html

Jet Pack

I pin a lot of cool projects for kids on Pinterest. This is something I followed through with and made. Another project for my space kid. Here's a tip: hot glue doesn't work. I used packing tape instead, but I'm sure there is a better glue out there that doesn't melt plastic.

Project credit: http://www.doodlecraftblog.com/2012/04/super-sci-fi-rocket-fueled-jet-pack.html

Intergalactic

For a long period of time, Felix became super interested in rovers on Mars. The planet, Mars was his favorite, and with youtube available, he was inevitably watching one, 9 minute video of Curiosity being launched, then landing and roving on mars. Over, and over, and OVER again. This kid! From rovers then came robots. We showed him lots of different robots in books and TV, but this one robot in the Beastie Boys Intergalactic music video was his ultimate favorite. This is his Intergalactic video watching outfit, which he wears while shooting lasers from his fists. An easy cardboard and duct tape project.

and this is how a robot eats a PB&J.

The Stars and Planets are Yours

While Felix slept early Christmas morning, I hung a string of planets and stars over his bed. I made the planets with shredded newspaper, flour and water, slopped on to balloons of different sizes. Saturn required a ring, which I managed to string around the globe. Mercury was just a wadded up piece of newspaper. Oh, this was tedious but fun. The painting was the easy part. I cut the stars out of typing paper, using a cardboard template, then taped them along a fishing line with scotch tape. 

 

The Rocket Has Landed

When Felix was not yet, but almost a year old, he opened a little board book and saw a picture of Saturn. The real Saturn, not a drawing. He completely flipped out. It was obvious to me, who had been observing his every movement and sound for the past 11 or so months, that he was into this. I thought to do a search on hulu for some space themed documentaries with lots of images of planets. I found a series called, Cosmic Journeys and he was transfixed. We never pushed space on the little nugget, he just lit up like crazy, and talked on and on, whenever he saw a galaxy, a moon, a planet... how could we not feed that fire? He is almost 3 years old and it has not stopped. So for Christmas I made him a rocket out of cardboard and duct tape. Happiest boy in the world that morning, and of course, Santa got all the credit.

 It's a pentagon, 5 sides (with wings), and 5 triangle pieces to form the top. I cut a hole for a window, and a door in the back to come and go. Goose tape to hold it all together.

Se Feliz

I haven't been making art lately. Wait. Yes I have! I make things all the time. Out of cardboard. Pipe cleaners. Paper Mache and wire, paint. And the most essential one of all the little things I create for my son... Duct tape. or as he calls it, "Goose tape". I love him. The next few posts are things I've created for my son. I completely do plan to get back to illustrating, but that will just have to wait a bit longer.

Before Felix was born, his Dad and I wanted to collaborate on a painting for his room. Jorge came up with a sketch as we talked about what we wanted it to have - robots, monsters, animals... and more than anything in the world, we agreed, we would always wish him happiness.

I took the sketch, transferred it to a 20x30 canvas, and painted it with acrylics. This all came together over about a year - it began before he was born, then a few things happened: I closed my shop and birthed a baby, then never slept again. His 1st birthday was coming up and I promised to finish it for that day. I did! 

Flowers

Another watercolor! This one is for the same friend-to-be-married - for her bridal shower card. I am really liking the low maintenance of the materials. I needed to draw up some flowers, so I went to the internet for reference. I combined a couple different images to get what I wanted, then traced over them in Photoshop to get a line drawing, which I then taped to my light table. There were moments while painting where I felt like I was totally rocking it, others, not so much. I got to experiment with some line overlays and color adjustments after the "real" work, until I was happy with the results.

Original scan

white line overlay

ochre line overlay

blue (this was the one they used)