Whales' Tails

Well, I don't have much time to write today -- I always type that right before writing a ridiculously long post. Then I have to go back at the end to delete it.

Saturday is Mark's weekend sleep-in day. It's also the weekly 11am kids' art class at A.C. Moore in Williston! It's usually FREE (or $1-$5 for supplies). Elle has been begging me to take her to her own art class ever since Auntie Bee and I went to a creature-drawing class at Artists' Mediums a few weeks ago. This was perfect. I made the pom-pom, and she glued on the googly eyes and accessories.

The next class sounds really fun. It's another free one -- making animal creatures out of beads. A.C. Moore's events calendar is a little hidden on their website (Go to this link, here, for the store locator, type in the Williston zip code (05495), click the red View Events link), or stop in the store any time for a flyer listing the events for the month.

After, Elle asked if we could go to the "Whales' Tails" in Burlington. You can see the sculpture from the highway, but I've never walked up to it. "Sure," I said. I'm always up for more free fun activities!

I still can't entirely figure out why, but this little adventure was such a special bonding moment for us. It was like a mini hike to the top of a giant mountain. Like Vermont's version of the Statue of Liberty. There's a long trail you can take that goes through the woods and loops around back to the statue, but we just cut across the baseball field.

There's something so freeing about letting your toddler loose in a giant field. She ran around in circles, played in the sand, screamed, laughed, chased me. There was no saying "No." There were no limits. She got so worn out that she fell asleep early and slept all through the night. Yep, we need more of this!

But more than running free, it was another opportunity to show my little girl how big the world is that we live in, to show her something that looked so small from far away and let her experience the enormity of it up close. Vast fields, huge sculptures, planes landing at the nearby airport. Blue skies stretching out as far as she could see, and layers of varying shades of blue mountains pasted in the background.

"I'm scared," she said, as she stared up the hill, two monstrous whales' tails towering over her head.

"It's just a sculpture, a statue. They're not real whales. Besides, you're a brave girl. You can do this."

She looked up at me, listening intently, then ventured ahead. When we got to the top, she turned back to me and said, "You're a brave girl, too, Mommy."

I hope so. "I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart."

Handmade Doodle Cards

I'm sooo excited to offer a real, handmade product in my Etsy shop this week (HERE)!

AND!! ALL profits will go to help a local Vermont family in need.

I'm hoping to make 20 cards total, so watch your Facebook news feed throughout the week for new designs! If you're not already following me on Facebook (huh? why?), please click here to visit (then Like!) my FB page, so you won't miss the next batch of designs!

Each card is $4.00 and handmade by yours truly! If you see a design you like (or would like a custom phrase or name on your card), please specify when you place your order. Otherwise, I'll send a random design, chosen especially for you!

Shipping is free, so for the cost of a store-bought card, you can get a special handmade/custom card and help a family in our community! Woohoo!

Quirkity Quack

I reeeeally love drawing E's stuffed animals and making them into little cartoons. She has this little duck toy, and I draw it for her a lot in different scenes. She loves it!

Here is a new take on ducky... Introducing, that quirky fun friend that every average duck needs: Quirkity Quack.

Spoiler alert: It's me as a duck.

I used the digitizing technique from my previous post to bring some smooth lines and wild colors to Quirkity Quack's outrageous outfit.

Digital Doodles

Okay, so after spending a good majority of my evenings this week working with Illustrator and my Wacom, I've come to the conclusion that I... hate it. No, hate is a strong word. I just feel a huge block trying to work on the computer. It's strange, because when I design, I need to work on the computer, but doodling/drawing/sketching, I just need to do it on paper, at least for now.

So, I've finally worked out a technique I'm comfortable with -- doodling on paper, then importing into Adobe Illustrator. Surprisingly, as long as the lines I drew were nice and solid, I was able to do a Live Trace in the program and add color.

And, guess how I imported it?? With my iPhone! (Hallelujah! Halllllelujah!) Quick and Easy!

I took a photo in good lighting with my phone then adjusted the levels with the Afterlight app -- The settings I used in Afterlight: Clarity first to bring out the black lines, then Brightness to lighten up the paper, then Contrast to bring out both the highlights and shadows. That order worked best.

Then I just emailed the file to myself, copied the image and pasted it into an Illustrator doc. I used Image Trace to turn it into a scalable vector image. I'm not opposed to tracing the images by hand using the pen tool or brush tool with my Wacom tablet, but I was happy for this quick fix now. Here are the settings I used:

Open the Image Trace Window to adjust settings.
I used default values, except for:
Threshold: 200
Paths: 90%
Corners: 90%
Noise: 25px

I'm assuming I'll need to use different values for different images, depending on the level of detail drawn, but I think this is a good starting point.

Once the trace is done, Object > Expand will reveal the paths around your image. You can select the shapes and color them or use the Live Paint feature to make it a little faster.

I'm really happy with how clean the final product is and can't wait to digitize some of my new doodles and zentangles!

Thanks YouTube!

Just a quick try of a new technique thanks to some YouTube tutorials!

Going to have a lot of fun experimenting with this tomorrow! Can't wait!

Play Time!

Just playing with some more digital illustrating tonight... I'm still not 100% sure how I want to implement my doodles/zentangles, but I'm getting more comfortable with the Wacom and experimenting with some different techniques.

Next up, some more tutorials for how to bring my hand-drawn work into Illustrator... I have a few ideas, but I need some professional advice!

Digital Doodling

Trying out some digital doodles tonight with my Wacom! I was inspired by Emily McDowell (her site here) to try it out. She makes some pretty amazing prints with her Wacom and Adobe Photoshop. I preferred the Illustrator program, because I like how it smoothed the edges and handled the pressure of the pen.

However, I wasn't thrilled with how the color filled in when I brought the image back into Photoshop. I don't know if you can tell here, but there are some white corners in the leaves.

This is because I used the fill tool, and I even tried to adjust the tolerance of the tool to allow it to group more pixels, but no luck. I really had hoped to avoid drawing colored shapes behind the lined drawing to get a nice, clean color to the drawing. It's just time consuming.

In the second example, I made the lines look purposely a little more "grungy" so that the white looked normal. And, ugh... I'm just not sure how I feel about that, though I do like how "jungly" this image looks. Also, it gave the rose highlights which made it look slightly more realistic.

But, now it's getting late, so more practicing tomorrow night!

Tangle Patterns

This is one of my favorite tangle patterns. I found it through this woman's blog, where she calls it "cockles and mussels" and have used it both plain and with patterns on the circles, like the illustration below.

I really love making beach scenes out of simple shapes and using this pattern as the sea bed or shore.

In my most recent doodle (here), I used cockles and mussels for the star shape, then the pattern I used in the heart was Opus, found here.

I browse for most of my tangle patterns in Doodle and Zentangle books and at TanglePatterns.com.

Let's Paint

This morning, E came out of her room with some poster paints, and said, "Let's paint!" I knew what this would mean -- one big mess! But I couldn't say no to her. We hadn't painted together in so long. It was so much fun, and we managed to get another page complete in our Mess Book!

I love this time with her. She's so content to just make a mess.

We used stencils to make shapes. She's really into tracing right now, so they worked great to easily make some shapes that she loves, like hearts and stars!

Crafts and Chaos

Yesterday, Mark was desperate to get some more work done in the afternoon. With my broken foot and strep throat on the mend, he's had to get Ellie from day care at 2pm and bring her home to me. Then, he works in our home office/bedroom/storage shed into the evening.

On Monday, this didn't really work, because E was much too busy and cranky for me to keep up with. She hadn't had a nap, so she was a beast, trying to escape out the front door, and running back and forth terrorizing us. Recliner-parenting wasn't going to be sufficient.

So, yesterday, I told Mark that I would come up with an afternoon plan, and I set up a few craft projects in preparation of her return. Luckily, he brought me a freshly-rested toddler! As soon as she came in the door, I got her settled at the table with two projects.

One was from my sister's day care curriculum -- a fresh twist on the classic hand-print turkey.

From The Craft Table

Just wanted to say a happy "Hello!" from our craft table today -- where there's more paint on the table than on the paper, our limbs are more decorated than our canvas, and our accidental-art approach takes "mixed media" to a whole new level!

E climbs up on the table -- she insists on sitting on the table top, so all her tools are within reach.

"I want black paper, Mommy. And red paint," she insists, very seriously instructing me on the preparation of her supplies. I happily comply, curious about what she might create. She continues to politely list her needs:

"Some yellow paint here now." She points at the bottom left corner of her page.

"Mommy, can we make orange?"

I quickly show her the two tubes of red and yellow paint and begin mixing. She scoops some up with her brush and continues to work away.

Then blue. It glows against the black paper. She squeals with delight as she spreads it across the page.

"Now I need those paints, Mommy." She points to her watercolors and adds, "Need some water."

I go and fill one of her little play teacups with a little water. She takes it from me and very carefully pours the water across each of her watercolors (and drenches the case). She dips her fingers in paint, then her paintbrush, and begins making dots on the paper. She carefully watches how the watercolors are absorbed by the paper. She tries each color until she finds just the right one.

"Purple! Oooh, purple!" she says. The purple is only partially absorbed by the black paper and creates areas of shadow and light -- a grungy but shimmery effect. She smiles happily, then dots the purple across the page.

By now she tires of painting the page and proceeds to paint the table (ok), pen cup (alright), bulletin board (um, well...), and lamp (wait a minute...). I reach for her, but she squirms away from me, legs flail over her painting, watercolors tip and spill.

I get her in the bathroom for cleanup, which must happen completely by her terms. "No bath," she insists, though standing in the tub to wash her hands and legs is acceptable.

"If you just want to sit down," I offer...
"No, no, no, Mommy."

Sitting down would qualify this cleanup time as a "bath," which may lead to the inconvenient "washing up time" in which there will be no avoiding the torturous "hair cleaning."

Half a bottle of soap later, her hands are washed, a task that distracted her enough to allow me to wipe most the paint off her legs. She runs off to play, and I wipe down the table.

Tomorrow, we'll start again.

Our HappyMess!!

Ok, so I know that I've been saying "More art!!" on the blog for awhile now, but now I have the inspiration to actually follow through!!

Lately, doing art projects with E has been more "mess" than creation -- which is creation, really, I know. And, E has been running around saying "happiness" as "happy-mess" which is, quite honestly, adorable. I wanted to change my entire blog name to "Our HappyMess" and start fresh doing only art projects from now on, but... you know me, next week, I'll be into... um, fly fishing or something.

So, my sister-in-law suggested maybe just making that one part of the blog... She knows me so well. I may even just make it a weekly feature, who knows...

But anyway, the point is... while looking for fun things to add to my Amazon wishlist... I stumbled upon the Art Lab books. Wow! I guess I'm late to the Art Lab scene. The author of the drawing/mixed media Art Lab book, shown here, was -- Carla Sonheim! I had never heard of her, so I Googled her... and do you know what I found out??

She has a BLOG -- the Art of Silliness (and an Etsy shop)! She even posted today! I commented right away, of course. She has online classes, and free online tutorials! And, I'm just so inspired to do more fun, silly art projects with my amazing kid -- more messes, more creativity, less of me saying, "Careful, that's permanent marker!" and more of me saying, "Let's create! Let's explore!"

I just hope that E is up for it this weekend! Maybe some left over Halloween candy at the craft table will sweeten the deal! Of course, I'll post all of our creations here.

Check out this sweet, "blob" illustration from Carla's site, found on her Go Blob Hunting Tutorial page!

www.CarlaSonheim.com

Chalk is Cheap

Chalk is one of the cheapest things you can buy at the craft store. I got one box for $.69. E has a plastic patio table that we use for meals, of course, and craft time! The surface of the table top was perfect for drawing on with chalk, and it wiped right off. Also, washable markers wash right off the table, too, so we can practically destroy it with color then wipe it clean!

Black construction paper for $1.99 wasn't a bad deal either!

After E spent yesterday on the town with Auntie Bee, I thought I could get away with keeping her in today. We did a quick grocery shopping in the afternoon. We threw together a play store when we got home, so E could do her own shopping. She loved pretending to use her own "bebit card."

Dinner time, bath time, play time, story time, bed time. Now, it's my time to rest a bit before the weekend hits!

How I Use My iPhone

This is how I use my iPhone as a mom on the go!

First, I move all of the apps that I don't use regularly to folders and put those folders on the second screen, so I can access them quickly by swiping to the right. This also clears up my home screen for a beautiful photo of my family!

Morning

• I use the Clock app to wake up bright and early at 6:30!
• The Calendar has my appointments for the day, and any morning Reminders pop up. I pull my calendar from my Gmail account. I love this, because it's separate from my work calendar, and I can add any new appointments via my Gmail calendar from my desktop computer (so, no typing in all my appts on my tiny iphone keyboard -- only when I absolutely have to)!
• While I get ready, I check Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Messages, and my blog via BlogGo to approve any comments. I can work while I brush my teeth!
• I check the Weather to see how we should dress for the day and take any cute pics of E's outfit with the amazing new 5S Camera! I tend to use my iPhone camera way more often than my digital SLR mainly for the convenience!

Off We Go

• Once in the car, I can't live without Siri. If I've forgotten anything, I can use the voice commands for hands-free calling and texting.
• E loves playing games on the way to day care. We have a 15-minute drive. Apps she loves:
  Tiny Monsters, Endless ABC, KidsDoodle, Trucks, Real Chalk, Drawing Carl, and Bug Builder.
• Once I drop off E, I sometimes realize that I'm running late. I have my work Email on my phone (but no alerts set up, so I'm not bothered by work email unless I need to be!). I send off a quick message to my team letting them know I'll be 5 minutes behind schedule.
• I answer any text messages from friends asking me to pick up some Dunkin' Donuts, and then I head to the office!

At the Office

• Once settled, headphones go in, and I listen to Music, Pandora, Podcasts, and Netflix shows/movies. My day job involves a lot of email and data entry, so I love being able to zone out a bit!
• Long bathroom visits warrant some games: DoubleDown Casino, Coin Dozer, Water?, Bingo, Yahtzee, and Doodle Fit are some faves!
• Hootsuite is one of my all-time favorite social media sites/apps. It's discrete if you have to check quickly from work, it allows you to post to all your social media sites at once, and it has auto-scheduling. I can write a blog post the night before then auto-post it when the majority of my readers and followers are online. The only downside is that your friends spread rumors about you being a horrible parent for apparently being online all day. Ha!

After Work

• I'm on part-time hours, so after work I go for a walk or run. I use my PRT - Personal Running Trainer app to keep me on task! Or I just listen to music/podcasts while I walk/run.
• Home to pick up the apartment! I use my AppleTV Remote app to put on music or a TV show to clean to. Sometimes I just take 10 minutes to play a game or update my blog.
• Then off to get E!

After Day Care
This is generally phone-free time!

• Maps is handy for finding new parks, directions to new stores or other places we want to visit like museums, the airport, etc.!
• I ask Siri what the forecast is in case there's a chance we may get rained out at the park.
• Facetime lets us have the occasional afternoon visit with Grammie who is just getting home from work.

After E's Bed-Time

• Most days, I can't resist posting at least some photos throughout the afternoon, but I usually reserve photo-editing time for after E's bed time. Here are all my favorite photo apps!
  Instagram -- for all it is! And I like that it shares to Facebook and Twitter simultaneously
  Camera+ -- for editing, sorting
  Afterlight -- for editing, filters
  Diptic -- for making collages
  Squareready -- for cropping, prepping for Instagram
• For design, I like:
  Over (or Overgram) -- for adding text
  Adobe Kuler -- creates a color palette based on a photo
  Flipboard -- design news for inspiration
  I answer all my freelance email on my phone and can keep up with clients throughout the day, even though I work mornings at my day job! Once E is in bed, photos posted, it's time to tackle my freelance assignments!
• Reading
  Kindle -- I use the app when I can't actually find my Kindle
  News -- I haven't really found a news app that I love, but NBC News is okay.
  BBC News -- nice, well-rounded, world-view news!
  TMZ -- shut up...
  The Onion -- news parody!
• Shopping
  Amazon is really the only shopping app I use. I have E's entire Christmas wishlist done.
• Intuitive Apps
  Psychic Tarot is my favorite, and I've had some great readings with it!

And, that's it! Or, at least those are the most important ones -- the ones I decided to bring over to my new phone. Thanks to those of you who asked about the photo apps I use. If you want any more information about which apps I use, help with using them, or advice for photographing your little ones, just leave a comment or shoot me an email at YourMomIsStrange@gmail.com. Happy Apping!

Zentangle Blog

Photo from Zentangle.blogspot.com

No, I didn't start my own Zentangle blog. Aren't you proud of me? Because, I pretty much want to start a new blog every time I start a new hobby. But, someone already has... (pouts) And, "aint nobody got time for that," at least nobody who already has a blog or 2, or 3 (ahem).

But, here are some sites that are doing it better than I could have anyway:
Zentangle Blog
Zentangle on Pinterest
Tangle Patterns (thanks to a friend of a friend)
Zentangling

Now I wish I could stay up another hour and doodle, but I have to get some sleep. Night, night readers!

G

The Art of Zentangle

Earlier this week, I stopped by M’s desk to chat. I noticed what I thought was a new print on her desk. She told me that it was “Zentangle” and that her sister-in-law had drawn it. It was really beautiful, so I of course started Googling it and am now hooked! I’ve done a few of my own, and I find it so relaxing and fun! I’m a doodler from way back and love to do intricate flower designs on ScratchMagic paper. The thought of doodling just for the sake of doodling, to make intricate patterns just to make patterns, no over-thinking, no pressure to complete a finished project… sounded wonderful!

So, now I’m officially a Zentangle master (in training). I’m hoping to save up for a book for some new pattern ideas, and just to have it in the house – I think E will love doing this soon! And what a great way to relax and just create!

In the meantime, I’m scouring the interwebs for ideas and loving just creating my own.

You can buy Zentangle packs with pattern ideas, fine-point pens, and shading pencils… but for now, I’m just using a fine tip Sharpie and index cards. I call it the poor-man’s Zentangle pack. I’ll post more of my designs this week!

Design Inspiration

One of my favorite sites for design inspiration! Poster Cabaret.

I'm not sure why blogger is choosing this fancy layout for these photos...

Here's hoping that E will want to do some art projects with me today!

Rush Gatherer

Saw this beautiful orotone photograph on Antiques Roadshow. It's an Edward Curtis -- The Rush Gatherer. It reminds me of my favorite Remington painting -- The Squall. When I worked at the Remington Museum, I used to stare at that painting for hours... In my defense, this was before smart phones.

Photo from www.edwardcurtis.com.

Design Milk! Answering the Question: What Would I Do With Eternity?

I would funking crochet, cross-stitch, and knit everything. Everywhere. More from Design Milk, here!

Delta Annual Report 1956

Pinterest find... I just love these colors (original pin here)! This entire board is amazing!