April flowers

Headed from one meeting to another early this morning, I had the pleasure of taking a shortcut through Central Park. I saw a pair of cardinals, robins hunting for worms, loads of flowers, and even the boat pond is open--which is great because Tsia and I have our wooden toy sailboats at the ready and have been toting them along every Sunday morning in the hopes that we'll get to launch them. At last, we can!

Sadly, all the real daffodils are finished blooming for the year, but I've been playing around with making them out of construction paper, just to make them last a little bit longer. Also some primroses--or my rendition of a primrose, anyway.


They're quite easy to make, and I got the idea from some simple paper flowers that Tsia's class made in art class. The cutting and gluing of this fancier (and smaller) version are a bit fussy for little hands, so they're more of an adult paper craft, but patient and dexterous kids could certainly make a go of them.

Here is a quick and dirty template of the shapes I used, with dotted lines to indicate folds. I think you can probably figure out how to do it yourself, right? Especially with a few photos to help:






Happy spring!

little designers

This morning it was my turn to talk about my job at Tsia's school, so we talked about clothing.

The kids were very excited to show what they were wearing and to discuss design details. This week at school they're celebrating spirit week with pajama day, backwards and upside-down day, and crazy hair day. Today was cultural heritage day, so one little girl was wearing a Flamenco dress and another was wearing a kimono. We discussed collars, ruffles, stripes, buttons, and pockets. I showed everyone my sketchbook so they could see my first sketch of the Jump Rope Dress, a sample of which Tsia was modelling.




Then we all got busy drawing. I gave everyone basic garment shapes outlined in dotted lines on a sheet of white paper. From there, they all went different directions. The boys designed lots of clothing with spider webs:


Some of the children really enjoyed adding details:

And others added color:




I was amazed at a few of the designs. One little girl who wears a lot of color had some spectacularly vibrant and detailed designs that fit her personality and style perfectly. Two of the children wanted to give me their drawings so I could go home and sew their designs for them. I was sorry to explain that we were just drawing this time, not sewing. And several of the children started cutting out the clothing and making paper dolls for themselves!

If you know anyone who would like to make some designs for him/herself, here is a pdf of the clothing silhouettes we used. Have fun!

functioning, barely

I got nailed by the flu last week and am still under the weather six days later, so not much of anything has been done around here recently. However, Tsia and I were making a few final Valentines yesterday afternoon and accidentally discovered how much fun it is to watercolor paint on paper doilies.


I'm not sure what we'll do with these, but for now I'm just enjoying looking at them. Especially since that's about all the energy I have these days.

valentines

We took our Valentine's Day preparation cues from Brooke this year and wrapped matchboxes with decorative papers. The inside of each box is also lined with a little piece of colored paper onto which Tsia wrote a personal message for each recipient. She really enjoyed this project, and it took use most of a Sunday afternoon but was very easy to do.


We hand selected the Jelly Bellies to fit our color palette, as we are wont to do, from Economy Candy.



Brooke just mentioned that her idea has also been featured at Brides.com including a pdf for the patterned paper she used.

post

My friend Michelle has been doing a lot of letterpress printing for some of her recent art projects, and she clued me in to these fantastic deckle-edge cards by Fabriano. They're inexpensive and support all sorts of media gracefully. Tsia and I have been using them to make our own Thank You cards with watercolor, pen and ink, and whatever else we have on hand. I love the texture and weight of the paper. It feels very luxurious.



I should point out that the cards are a rather unusual size, and it isn't easy to find matching envelopes. Believe me, I tried. I thought I'd find some fun colors to pair them with, but it wasn't meant to be, despite trying our fantastic local paper and envelope supply shop. So the coordinating envelopes are well worth the additional cost. Just keep that in mind...

telling stories

One of Tsia's teachers is an actor who, one morning a week, works with the kids on their presentation skills. By this I mean that they have Show and Tell, practice introducing themselves and greeting adults, and focus on telling stories and doing little performances.


I wanted to build on what Tsia is learning by helping to work on her narrative skills, so we've been making little books together in our spare time. These aren't elaborate projects, by any means. I make every effort to rein in my designer instincts when we make our books because I want them to be spontaneous and let us concentrate on telling a story rather than getting all fancy in the making of the physical book itself. As she grows older and develops a longer attention span maybe we'll have the opportunity to spend more time on the production and creation of the book. But for now we simply keep a stack of typing paper cut into quarter sheets, and we grab them along with the crayons whenever the mood strikes us.

We've been using two different approaches to our books: For the first one, Tsia dictates and I write. Then she illustrates the page before we progress to the next one. This works pretty well, but I've been noticing that she continues to develop and narrate the story as she's illustrating, so by the time we get to the next page we've somehow missed important elements of the story along the way. I'm finding ways to fill in a bit, but I was hoping to take straight dictation and it feels a little like cheating when I start to help with continuity. Our most recent book felt, Todd told me, like some sort of surrealist tale when actually there was a certain continuity in the story that got lost during its inscription.


The second approach we've tried is a fill-in-the-blank style of narrative, which I've learned works really well when I'm keeping a group of young children entertained at her school. If I tell part of the story and have them fill in missing words, their attention is terrific! The other day we collaborated on a rather long-winded tale about a duck named Duck who put on his swimsuit and went to the park to meet his friend for a picnic. However, as far as the book-writing project goes, this approach lasts for a maximum of two pages before Tsia really gets going and takes off on her own, leaving my sorry narratives behind. So I think she's too old for this approach. But it might work well with younger children who need a little help developing a story.


We use colored card stock for the covers of our simple books, and we've tried several different binding techniques from this book to assemble our finished pages. Most of the time we simply staple or use Japanese bookbinding technique. We haven't really settled on a favorite method yet, and I still want to play around with some of the fancier techniques when she gets older.

Tsia always write our names on the cover--since I guess we're the authors of the book.

I'm excited to see where she'll take this activity as she grows older, and it's rewarding to have a tangible little book at the end of our story-writing sessions. They're a lot of fun to read, and I think they'll be even more fun to look back on over the years. I'm making sure to date them for future reference. Eventually she may have a full library of books to review, from every age of her childhood.

more cards

Do you remember our annual cupcake-themed birthday cards? Last year I decided it would be better to wait until after the fact to show them (so as not to ruin the surprise), so these are our cards from 2008. They're simple images I created in Illustrator and was then able to recolor and print out for each family member.


Ideally, everyone would have gotten a unique cupcake image despite their having been created in digitally.In real life, that wasn't entirely accurate due to time constraints and the weird pinks and reds that result from our printer's limitations. But I did make several versions of the cupcakes so that people received several variations of the cards.


Sadly, I haven't had a chance to create our 2009 card yet. And many family birthdays occured in February, so I've really fallen off the card-making wagon this year. But I haven't given up all hope yet. I know what I want to do and have all the supplies on hand. Soon, soon.

handmade cards

We needed to make a bunch of thank you cards today, and Tsia has become so independent in her art-making that I knew any collaborative effort had to be quick and dirty or it would never happen. I cut out basic shapes from fabric scraps, slapped some glue on the back of them, and handed them to her to assemble (with a little help). Quick indeed. Here are the six we completed in short order.


And this is a card my Mom recently sent. I had to look at it several times before it occurred to me that she had made it. And I think it's made from other recycled cards, right Mom? Some of it appears to be hand-stitched to cardstock, which she then stitched to the front of the card and hand-tied the thread ends at the inside to keep it neat. My clever Mom. She's got me looking at fabric and paper bits with a new eye again.


It's been a while since I did any card-making, and I love stitching on paper. I would have had at those butterflies with the sewing machine were it not for the short attention span of my crafting partner. I think it's actually becoming more difficult to collaborate on these projects as she grows older and becomes more independent. But she did tell me that she wants to start using a sewing machine, which has me fantasizing about all sorts of projects we can make together. Something tells me I'd better slow my imagination a bit for this, however.

new to me

One of the items we included in our family Christmas packages this year were these clever printable calendars from Little Brown Pen. I love the shape of them: you print onto stardard letter-sized cardstock and then cut the pages in half lengthwise to make two months from each page. I punched a small hole near the top, threaded a ribbon through the hole, and off they went. Lots of fun for a tiny price.


Well, Little Brown Pen, I just learned, also has a really sweet blog. Nichole, the author, lives in Paris (oooooooh, jealous) and takes great photos. She also offers some free printable items on the right side of her blog.

Turns out, her husband does the illustrations for their wonderful products and Nichole write the copy. Love that.


I'm currently admiring their Valentines. It's difficult to decide which I like best.

P.S. All photos belong Little Brown Pen.

waaaay back when

You know me, stress, and closets. And trust me, our closets are looking very spiffy these days; January was a crazy month.

I was looking through the bedroom closet the other day for Tsia, who wanted some black paper for a project, when I came across my old design portfolio. I honestly hadn't looked at it in ages--at least seven years--and it was fun to reminisce while re-examining it.

Included in the book was this project from my last school project: the one that got me my first job.

I feel a little weird showing it to you. I mean, it's about ten years old and completely irrelevant to anything at all. But it's an interesting concept for a final project. I'm glad my professors assigned it, and I thought you might enjoy seeing a design-school graduate's portfolio, especially since I had never seen one before I graduated.

The concept was relatively simple: we were told to select a target company or designer and then to design a collection for him/her/them.

I chose Ralph Lauren.

My collection was inspired by two recent trips to Scotland. I love the highlands and traditional Scottish culture: kilts, tartans, Charles Rennie Mackintosh's exquisite architecture and designs, cozy pubs on dark evenings, ageing bed-and-breakfasts, and stopping the car to let sheep to cross the narrow twisty roads as we made our way over the terrain. It all seemed like a great starting point for a fall collection.



The first step of the project involved collecting inspiration, swatching fabrics, and developing rough sketches of our initial designs. These designs were then collected into a book that was included in our portfolios to show our design process (meaning how we approached our designs and our thought process in developing the designs). The project required dozens and dozens of sketches and designs. Once I had a stack of sketches, I scanned and colored them in Photoshop to reflect the fabrics I had chosen for my collection.



The next step was to select our best designs for the portfolio pages themselves. I'm no illustrator, so I feel a little naked showing these to you. But we drew our best designs in greater detail to reflected our (so-called) drawing abilities, demonstrate our design sophistication (meaning, how our designs reflected the look of our target company), and illustrate our color and fabric choices.

And then came my favorite part of the project. We were told to select one element of our collection and highlight it in a separate book that further elaborated on a theme. This was sort of a trend-forecasting project.

I chose kilts.



This project was the most fun because it had the fewest requirements. I work well with restrictions, but I especially enjoyed breaking out and giving this all sorts of attention. The book opens with a brief discussion of kilts and the role they play in fashion.

Then each page featured a landscape photo from a Scotland tourist brochure, and within the spread I attached two vellum pages: one of a garment "flat" (literally, a technical illustration of a garment laid flat, like we show on the back of the Oliver + S pattern envelopes so you can get a better idea of the details of each piece) and an illustration of someone wearing the outfit, theoretically walking a runway. I had so much fun pulling together the various elements of this book.

And guess what? I got the job.

(More photos of the projects here.)

wrapped

I like the simplicity of brown paper with red ribbon or baker's twine for Christmas gifts. We've been wrapping in this style for a few years now. The other day I gave Tsia some white colored pencils and she's been going to town, drawing her own Lee Bontecou's on the paper before we wrap. (Her inspiration, not mine. I just thought the white pencil would look nice on the brown paper.)


So the post on Design Sponge about Trader Joe's bags as gift tags caught my attention, and we had to try that ourselves. I thought it tied back to Tsia's drawings and enhances our new wrapping media: recycled brown tissue sewing patterns (no, they're not Oliver + S patterns. We use a different paper for ours).


Now to get these packages into the mail!

mini her

Tsia and I made this project together a while ago, but I don't think I've ever shown it to you.


I purchased a magnetic sheet at the art supply store, and then we enlarged the Oliver + S paper doll (which she knows is modelled after her. She and Todd were looking at the website one day when she pointed to the Bubble Dress and said, "I have that dress. Size 3. Fits me now!") and glued it to the magnet. Using tracing paper, I drew the outlines of clothes and copied them to the magnetic sheet. Then Tsia selected fabrics and papers for the outfits, and we glued the patterns to the clothing outlines, cut them out, and decorated them with trims and hand-drawn details.


We discovered that tissue paper makes great pleats and gathers, and we used little scraps of paper from magazines and catalogs for many of the clothes. Tsia likes to look through the scrap bin at the studio for fabric pieces, so she enjoyed selecting her favorites for dresses.


Once the clothes are made, you can layer them to create fun effects as well. Tsia likes to put the purple skirt underneath the red dress for a petticoat appearance.


I think it would be fun to make magnet dolls using photographs instead of the illustration. You'd just need to take a full-length photograph in good light, probably against a solid backdrop so it would be easier to cut out once the photo is enlarged and mounted on the magnet.

Tsia has obviously played with this one a lot; maybe we'll use a photo for the next one. Which, since the original is losing her head from so much handling, may be quite soon.

Paper stuff

I just discovered this half-written post in my box and remembered all these great links I wanted to share with you a few months ago. So if it's too hot outside today, break out the cardstock; here are all sorts of fun things to do with your afternoon:



Look out! These little printable patterns are totally addictive, even if you have way too many pressing deadlines. Print them directly on cardstock for hours of fun. And yes, I meant to sound like a cheesy late-night commercial there. But seriously, this is an amazing site. Everything seems to be free, and it's all cute!

Sweet drawing style and fun illustration, colored or not.


I love this idea: a little paper boat at the end of your tea bag string. What better way to prevent the string from getting sucked into your cup when you add the water?

Thanks to this link, we're all sporting the Philip Johnson look around here.

Cute paper dolls to print and color.

Independence crafting

Tsia is done with preschool for the summer (Does school finish this late everywhere? Growing up, we were always terrorizing the neighborhood by Memorial Day, as I recall), so I'm experiencing life as a full-time stay-at-home mom and simultaneous corporate mogul (yeah, right) this week. The stay-at-home part has given me an excuse to do normal things like grocery shopping, going to the playground, playing games, and doing little crafts: the sorts of activities I haven't had much time for during the past year while launching a small company. And I'm loving it, never mind the stress levels as we're preparing to go to press with the fall line. That stuff waits until after bedtime for a week or two.

Today we made pinwheels. Remember these? We made loads of them as kids. You could, of course, use fancy scrapbooking papers and the like, but we went a bit more organic here, decorating our own papers with markers and crayons.

Tsia likes to do her own cutting, of course (she's three!), and she's quite good at it. So I drew the lines and she cut many of them. Independence, indeed.

We used map pins because they're shorter than regular sewing pins so the points don't stick out the other end of the pencil eraser. But I have to say that our pinwheels don't spin very well. We tried gluing the corners to the center to see if that might help, but no matter how much we blew they didn't make much movement. Maybe we should have used a heavier cardstock?

No matter. The pencils themselves are much more fun to draw with when they have a decoration on top. And now I know how to use our extra chopsticks, too! They would make terrific "magic wands" for the pinwheels, and I wouldn't lose all my trusty old Mirado Black Warrior pencils to the craft bin either.

I think I know how we're spending our Independence Day weekend, now that Miss Independence has caught the pinwheel bug. I'll report back if we make any breakthroughs on the spinning front.

Happy Valentines' Day!

Seen in the window of a florist on University Place:


Given to friends at school:


Tsia did the fingerprints, I did the drawings, and we both did the gluing (with LOTS of glue):


Given to teacher (do you remember doing this? You cut little squares of tissue paper, wrap them around the end of a pencil, stick the tip in a little glue, and afix it to the paper):


Stitched for grandparents (grandparents, your Valentine's are late! But at least you get to see what's on its way to you...) Tsia's very first embroidery, with almost no help from me:


Given to Tsia:


I think she was a bit disappointed there wasn't a surprise wrapped inside her quilt:


and given to Todd (or at least one like this--these are actually my little birthday cakes from the other day):





We hope your day is filled with hearts!