Finding My Photography a Home

Well, it's not even really photography. I mean, some of it is--I have a whole set of the alphabet created from photographs of cemetery headstones that I'm working on this week--but most of my printwork consists of handwork pieces scanned at super-high resolution and cropped and color-corrected in my usual photography workflow.

What do you call that? Mixed media? Still life? No idea.

Anyway, with my vintage buttons alphabet I've had several download options available on my pumpkinbear etsy shop for a while now, but for a while now I've also been looking for some good print-on-demand options. My printer has good color and tone, and I'm reasonably happy about using it to print stuff for myself, and especially using it hard to print on freezer paper and fabric and whatever (knowing that if I do eventually break it from making it print on something weird, I'll get to buy myself a new one, yay), but I'm not confident enough in the durability or stability of its work to print so much as a greeting card for a friend with it, much less an art print or something to sell. At two different craft fairs this year, the same woman wanted to buy some prints I'd made for the girls and just had on display, and I was all, "Um...no."

I also don't particularly desire, anyway, to make or buy prints of my work and then sell them--my overall goals in life as well as crafting are to sell stuff and get rid of stuff, not buy stuff and then keep it on hand hoping to sell it later on.

So, yeah. Print-on-demand.

I decided (finally) to try out ImageKind, because I lurve their main company, CafePress--it's another overall goal of mine to someday woo my overworked graphic designer husband into putting some of his cooler free-time sketches on CafePress, but strangely enough, he balks at being stretched too thin.

After much futzing and fiddling, I got a profile (I'm Pumpkinbear there, of course), and a gallery of my vintage button alphabet:

I mostly imagine it being used for its high-quality printing process on greeting cards and notecards and postcards, but I have to admit that it is pretty fun to play around with all the high-priced matting and framing possibilities, and then get a preview of the fanciness that can be had for just a couple hundred dollars:

High-falutin', huh? And I'm quite happy to have this checked off of my to-do list, because now that I have a place to put them, I get to start on some other pieces that I've been wanting to start on...

Don't you love how completion of a to-do list leads to another to-do list?

Babies in Diapers, Babies on Film

Babies in diapers sitting:
Babies in diapers fleeing:Babies in diapers with Velcro:

Babies in diapers with snaps:

Babies in diapers getting bribed with whatever I have around to bribe them with:

I did a little photo shoot over at Barefoot Kids this weekend for a cloth diapering tutorial that I'm writing up. It made me realize that just as I didn't take enough photos of my baby girls breastfeeding, I didn't take nearly enough photos of them in their comfy cloth diapers. I still have a few of their diapers for my teaching stash, but not any of my own handmade wool recovers (what did I do with those? Who was so awesome that I gave them my own wool recovers, and yet so un-awesome that I don't even remember anymore?), and I have absolutely zero breastfeeding mementos, although to be honest, I NEVER, NEVER WANT TO SEE MY OLD NURSING BRAS AGAIN!!! I didn't even try to pass them on, or take off the bands or the elastic or the snaps to re-use. I JUST THREW THEM IN THE TRASH!!!

To be fair, I was nursing one to two people continuously from 2004-2009, so those bras and I were done with each other by the time Sydney weaned herself.

And also? You should totally see my new bras. Underwires and everything.

Two Girls, Two Elaborate Skeletons

This comes directly on the heels of Halloween, but it isn't really a "Halloween" activity, except that, you know, it involves skeletons and I got the idea from somebody else who was doing it as a Halloween activity. So okay, it's probably a Halloween activity, but we did it more in terms of human biology than Halloween.

So there you go.

Anyway...I was inspired by the skeleton puzzle over at Chasing Cheerios enough to dig out (after Halloween, of course) a really cool pdf of another put-together skeleton that I had downloaded and saved almost two years ago. Do you do that? See cool stuff on the internet and save it, even if you don't know when/if you'll ever do anything with it? I have an external hard drive, with something like a terrabyte of space on it, pretty much just for that and my itunes and my digital photography compulsion.

So two years ago I found this really cool skeleton pdf online, meant to be put together with brads as a Halloween decoration but pretty detailed as to its bones and stuff, and I saved it to my hard drive. And yesterday, I printed out two copies of that skeleton and gave it to the girls to color. The girls get really perfectionist and self-judgmental when it come to cutting, for some reason, so they made me cut all the pieces out. Which I did. I'll have to think about whether or not I should go cold turkey on the cutting assists in the future.

And today I got out some of my cheap stash scrapbook paper (I just remembered that I should have used my huge sample book of super-brittle wallpaper that I got from the Upcycle Exchange and that almost ruined my Cricut, it was so brittle. Shoot) and let the girls pick out pretty papers, then gave them glue sticks to glue the skeleton parts to the back of the pretty paper. While I cut that out (again), I gave them each a page on which I'd printed all five pages of that same skeleton all teeny-tiny on one page. They colored the teeny-tiny skeleton parts and I cut them out (ugh).

The girls arranged the big skeleton pieces, colored and backed with pretty scrapbook paper, sandwiched in the pockets of laminate, and we laminated them. Then, while I cut out those laminated pieces (definitely going cold turkey on the cutting assists), the girls glued their teeny-tiny skeleton to a new piece of cardstock, which we also laminated. Sydney made a lovely abstract arrangement of bones, but Willow made, as I encouraged her to, a teeny-tiny skeleton put together correctly to use as a key in putting together the large skeletons.

I had wondered if the whole fun of this activity would be in the creation, but the girls actually then spent quite a bit of time on the floor together putting together their skeletons. I had also assumed that each child would put together one skeleton, but I was pleased to walk by later and see that they were both working together on both skeletons:

And making them hold hands, no less, and go for a walk together.

Such friends that sisters can be sometimes.

Another Halloween for the Record Books

The clown costume was FINALLY finished:I could write books about that yarn wig, let me tell you. And the logistics of actually SEWING, on the sewing machine, with two little girls whose heads are about to explode, they're so excited. Made my head just about explode, too, if you know what I mean. But I digress.

The pumpkins were finally finished, too:

Although Matt had to take over that one after 1) I decided it would be a good idea to try to carve using my Dremel but without the Dremel pumpkin carving kit and turned the livingroom into a pumpkin slaughterhouse and 2) it was discovered, a little too late, that Willow's pumpkin was starting to go bad on the inside and, you may remember, I've had a little thing about smells and just grossness in general after being hyperemetic during both my pregnancies. Matt is now, officially, the yearly Pumpkin Parent.

Makeup was applied judiciously:
And then, with great glee, not so judiciously. Made Will a bit more of a horror film clown than I'd been expecting, but it worked.

It was a perfect night for trick-or-treating:
Our stickers were not exactly the hot item of the neighborhood (One kid, seeing Matt about to drop a handful in his bag, actually pulled his bag away and quickly said, "Uh, no thanks"), but we didn't get egged, either, so there you go.

Of course, all our neighbors are more awesome than we are, so OUR kids got plenty of candy.

Even some candy to share:
When they're too old to share candy, I figure they're old enough to start making their own costumes, don't you think?

With my kids, hopefully it'll never come to that.

One Deer Down, One Clown to Go

This year for Halloween, my baby wanted to be a "baby deer." Good luck finding yourself a toddler fawn costume at a costume shop, but we are crafty people, and we can make that happen:
Once again, as with Willow's zebra costume last Halloween, I used a long-ago thrifted Old Navy fleece romper as a pattern to sew a Sydney-sized romper out of tan stash fabric. I even sewed in a zipper, for goodness' sake--
--referring back to a handy zipper tutorial or two (the glue stick method=AWESOME!).

I ironed some stash white flannel to Heat n' Bond iron-on adhesive, freehand cut it into fawn spots, and had the girls help me lay out the spots-- --and then iron them down. And also? I am NEVER buying Heat n' Bond adhesive again. I thought it would be quicker just to bond the applique to the romper instead of sewing each one down. What I forgot is that heat-set applique is fiddly, in that you have to, you know, follow the RULES for it, and I have the constant companionship and assistance of two small children. What the use is of something that a three-year-old can't do correctly I just don't know. At least when you sew something on the sewing machine with a three-year-old, even if the stitches are sloppy or the seam wobbles, that thing at least has a fighting chance of STAYING SEWN. Heat n' Bond? Blech. I'm sorry, Heat n' Bond, that I was incapable of ironing you down with moderate heat for 8-10 seconds per section, overlapping slightly, but seriously, you're going to fall apart on me?

Seriously?

I've already had to take a glue stick to about half of these appliques after my child was instructed to show up at her gymnastics class in costume, so we'll see if the damn things last through tomorrow's school party and the Bloomington Area Birth Services party and the pipe organ concert, and Saturday's festival at the Mather's Museum.

Oh, and trick-or-treating. Can't forget that.

Anyway, the applique was simple to do before sewing the romper up, but I wish I'd taken the time to actually do them right.

I freehanded and sewed up a tail and attached it to the outside of the costume (it's white on the underside, because Sydney's a white-tailed deer fawn)--
--but I used a pattern for the hood of the deer costume, a vintage Simplicity 5739 that I scored during the Upcycle Exchange at Strange Folk in September. Hopefully, when the girls are between the ages of 10 and 12, they'll really want to dress up as some sort of faux-fur rompered creature with a tail and a furry hood with ears, because that's what this pattern is for. I freehanded the ears, but fortunately the hood, even though it's super-large, still fits fine:

Even skipping all the niceties that I ran out of time for, such as trimming the neckline with bias tape or lining the hood or adding elastic to the wrist and ankle hems, etc., I'm still quite pleased with the outcome, and fortunately, so is Syd.

And if all her applique does fall off before Saturday, I can always just fashion her some pipe cleaner antlers and make her a buck, I guess.

Autumn in Indiana

What does Sydney have in her hands?A ladybug, of course:But if that one's too hard for you to see, just look around--there are approximately a billion ladybugs all over everything.

One kid likes to swing low:One kid likes to swing high:I like the view straight up towards the sky:The hill currently being used for careening down like maniacs on bicycles will, in a couple of months, be used for careening down like maniacs on sleds:But as long as they can careen around somewhere like maniacs, they're happy enough:

About Those Halloween Candy Houses...:A Tutorial

As I thought they would be, the Halloween houses were the hit of the children's Halloween party. The gingerbread house's redneck cousin, the Halloween house isn't for a child too under the thumb of the sugar police, but it's really not the sugar orgy you'd expect. Frankly, I like to encourage my children to use food, especially candy, as art supplies--you still get much of the same sensory pleasures as you would eating the candy, but it allows an entirely new way to experience the candy that is creative and aesthetic instead of gluttonous.

But yes, they do eat quite a bit of candy while making these Halloween houses, so you have been warned.

The color scheme of the Halloween house is primarily black and orange--you can do a full-on "haunted" Halloween house with an older kid, but I clearly do not have that kind of kid yet. The beauty of the color scheme, however, is that it leads you straight into the awesomest kind of candy--chocolate.

For the infrastructure of the house, we usually go with chocolate graham crackers, but anything chocolate will do. Think about any kind of chocolate cookies, chocolate Little Debbies or other snack cakes, chocolate ice cream cones (they make super turrets), chocolate candy bars, chocolate doughnuts.

You could use icing for these, like you do with gingerbread houses, and some colors of icing would look really cool here, but I like to use peanut butter instead. It's super sticky, super easy to apply, and it's one less super-sweet thing for the kids to shove in their mouths while they work:
When I set this activity up for a party, I spoon peanut butter out into little bowls for each kid, and give them a popsicle stick for application. It works perfectly. I also give each kid a paper plate to build the house on, just so that each kid can take her house home. The paper plate leaves enough work area that the kids usually make little candy yards for their houses, as well.

And when I do this for a party, I usually ask each person attending to bring a small bag of something edible for decorating the house, to share with everyone else. This makes for a good variety. Some of my favorites:

• pretzels
• raisins
• candy corn and candy corn pumpkins
• marshmallows (they make good ghosts)
• Reese's Pieces
• gummy anything, especially worms
• novelty candy items, such as candy bones or spiders or whatever

One kid brought Jelly Bellies to our party this weekend, and they turned out to be a huge hit--each kid really liked picking out specific colors to use in their own art installations. One kid made a swimming pool using only the blue Jelly Bellies, for instance, and one kid made a grassy yard with the green ones, and one kid made "a big puddle of blood for the witch to fall in."

Ahem.

Other awesome people who also make Halloween houses (amazing how you can think that you invented something, and then here comes the internet to disabuse you of such naive notions):

• Make and Takes
• Amazing Moms
• How Stuff Works
• My Little Gems

The only other picky things I do are to ask the party kids to wash their hands before they begin, and to clean up and hide all the candy supplies as soon as everyone is done. Because you get kind of sick of candy when you're playing with it and it's right in your face, but run off to do a little pumpkin pounding or dress-up or whatever, and ten minutes later you'll find yourself thinking, "Hmmm, I wonder if there are any more Reese's cups over there?"

Which there totally are, because even though I packed up all the candy for Matt and BEGGED him to take it to work with him, he forgot (HOW could you forget candy?).

I really should probably go eat those last Reese's cups, now that I think of it.