Painted Ceramic Tile Coasters

For Christmas, my mother gave me a set of markers to use on ceramics. Combined with a bunch of white ceramic tiles that I bought back in the spring as a possible craft project for Sydney's rainbow birthday party, the girls and I had a little ceramics painting party of our own:

 
I didn't know what to expect from the project, as I'd never used ceramics markers before and didn't recognize the name-brand of these particular markers, but they turned out to be pretty fabulous. The colors are really bright, and although the ink doesn't run or bleed, it seems to be liquid enough that it smooths out after it's drawn on and looks more like paint than marker:

After our paint party, I let the tiles dry overnight, then I baked them as recommnended in a 150 degree oven for 40 minutes. The result is a pretty nifty set of coasters that, although not particularly necessary on any of our battered furniture, adds just that much more ambience to our evening incense:

Decoupage on ceramic tiles is what I'm really curious about--guaranteed that it requires a much more sturdy varnish than mere heat-setting, but I'm pleased that I'll have these ceramics markers to add to my decoupage project, once I do figure out how to do it.

D.I.Y. Dinosaurs

For kiddos like mine, who love realistically-molded plastic animal models (especially dinosaurs and horses), I think that the paint-your-own model kits that some companies sell now are just great. They're basically the exact same realistic toy animals, only unpainted.

No worries about lead paint? Score.

Kids get to exercise their artistic and creative muscles? Score.

Kids get to take ownership over the look of their toy? Score.

Kids get to use the same toy in more open-ended ways? Score and score.

These dinos that I bought the girls for Christmas are pricey, so I can't say that paint-your-own animal toys are going to be a constant in our homeschool stash (I need to buy a big set of labeled slides first, for one thing), but I can see a new set making its appearance at a variety of gift-giving occasions. The dinos that we do have, however, have been thoroughly enjoyed thus far.

Painting them is an all-consuming pastime, as you can see:

 
 
 
 
  

After the paint dries, I put a coat of the provided varnish on each dino and let it dry again. Often, when the girls receive a kit with paints, I substitute my own craft acrylics for the cheap kit paint. However, the paint sets that came with these dinos is really nice--Willow, who at first declared that she was going to paint all of her dinosaurs realistically, was quickly wooed away from that intention by the numerous metallic paints that came in the kit. So far there's still plenty of paint left for the rest of the dinos, but I can't imagine that there will be enough for every single dinosaur to be as generously covered as my girls have done so far, so I'm just planning to add in my craft acrylics as needed, and I can already tell that there's going to be nowhere near enough varnish in the kit to coat all the finished dinos. The varnish I will have to make a special trip to the craft store to look for the next time I have a little disposable income (HA!).

My favorite part of this toy, however, is that the fun doesn't stop when the painting does. For my little girls, it's just the beginning:

 
 
 
 
I'd say that these painted dinosaurs are ALMOST the kiddos' favorite plaything of late:

But that competition for first place in the babies' hearts? Really not a competition at all.

Tutorial: Painted Peace Flags for the New Year

Here's an homage to Tibetan prayer flags that my girlies and I put together over the last couple of weeks. It involved several pleasurable Project Mornings and Project Afternoons in our homeschool, some more reading about Tibet, some more reminiscing about the snow lion, and some happy sewing for me while Matt had the girls out watching football on TV somewhere in the city (one of the nice things about not having TV channels is that must-see football games equal alone time for the Momma).

You can do this project a couple of different ways, either by freehand painting or by freezer paper stenciling--I did the same project both ways, because that's how I roll, so I'm happy to show you both options. The colorway is meant to invoke the color order of the Tibetan prayer flag: blue, white, red, green, yellow. It's your flag, though, so do what you like.

To paint the flags, iron flat some nice, plain, white fabric--

 --and cut it into identical rectangles. Ours are approximately 8"x10".

To stabilize the flags for painting, iron them onto freezer paper. Then, with your favorite fabric markers or paints, go to town!

For this particular project, the girls and I spent some more time talking about peace, what it means to be a peaceful person, and how to keep peace in our hearts and our words and our deeds (my, I'd like them to embrace that one!). Then I asked them to each draw a picture of something that reminded them to be peaceful or that represented peace to them. Willow drew a scene of the Peace Pole outside her former Montessori school--she has many happy memories of the children's peace ceremonies there.

Sydney drew a picture of a beautiful bunch of flowers growing in the dirt. She says that looking at pretty things makes her feel peaceful:

We used Tee Juice markers that I bought in a limited color palette at 70% off on a Joann's Black Friday sale, just to try out. We liked them so much that I bought some more colors and widths last weekend. I think we'll get a lot of use out of them.

The girls wanted to use the remaining fabric that we'd cut out to draw pictures of dinosaurs, and unicorns battling other unicorns, so I made do with the three rectangles that we had painted, and so here's where you get to learn about freezer paper stenciling peace flags, too!

I knew that I wanted the Tibetan prayer flag color order of blue, white, red, green, and yellow, so I pulled printed cottons in those colors from my fabric stash and layed them out to see how I liked the look of them:

Pretty well indeed, I say! Three of the flags have a peace painting on one side and a printed cotton on the other side, and two of the flags are made from printed cotton alone.

To cut out a printed cotton peace flag, cut your fabric at your desired width + two seam allowances and twice your desired length + one seam allowance. Fold it in half with right sides together, sew up the two sides--

--and turn, then fold and press the top edges inside and sew closed. You can insert a ribbon loop in the middle of this top seam, if you wish.

Your painted peace flags will be backed with printed cotton, and finished with a back-to-front mock binding. Pin the painted fabric to the printed cotton, wrong sides together, and cut the printed cotton a half-inch wider than the painted fabric on all sides:

Turn twice and edge stitch on all sides:

Add ribbon loops to the top edge, if you wish.

The printed cotton can easily be freezer paper stenciled even after you've sewn it. I know that you're worried that the paint will bleed through, but it won't. Simply iron your stencil cut from freezer paper to your fabric--

--and then paint!

My best advice for fabric painting is to use the best fabric paints that you can afford. When in doubt, I choose a limited palette of high-quality paint over a large assortment of the cheap stuff. The paint that I used above is Jacquard Lumiere in bronze--this is the current go-to color for pretty much all our projects these days, but one little bottle does last a looooong time.

Heat-set your fabric paint according to the manufacturer's instructions:

Then thread a nice, long piece of twine or ribbon through the hanging loops:

Our peace flags are double-sided. One side faces the front yard and the street, and on that side reads the message that our family would like say to the world at large, and what we would like to have said by others when thinking about our family:

The other side of the flag faces our house, and can best be seen from inside it:

This side is more personal, I think, to be seen just by us and the loved ones who visit us (and our mailman). Here are our personal visions of peace, and some gentle reminders to us to be peaceful as we leave our home and venture out on our daily business.

And if the girls can somehow internalize that peace means that you shouldn't just walk up and smack your sister and then run away, well...that would be so great.

Little Pumpkinbear Links

Do you see it up there? It's a new-ish addition to my linkbar, and I've finally finished futzing with it (for a while).

My girlies are NOT allowed to surf the internet yet, and they're not allowed to visit web sites that contain external advertising, and they're not allowed to browse youtube unsupervised, and they're not allowed to visit most web sites that promote toys and other mass-market consumer culture products.

There are, however, loads and loads of educational web sites that the girlies ARE allowed to access, of course, and Little Pumpkinbear Links is the place where I keep them. My blog is one of my home page tabs that pops up whenever a child opens our internet browser, and from there, the child is able to find her tab and then scroll through her links.

If you've got a little pumpkin or bear about the ages of mine, then you're absolutely welcome to check out our links, too. I'll warn you, though--they tend to be a bit dinosaur-heavy.

Last Day of the Year

Sewing

 

I really, really, REALLY want our homemade peace flags to be ready to hang tomorrow. Since I haven't stenciled them yet, however, and the paint takes 24 hours to cure before it can be heat-set...well, Sunday's a good enough New Year's Day in pretend time.

Painting Dinosaurs

These paintable dinos were a big old splurge for Santa stockings, but lordy, they're well worth it and I LOVE them! They're sturdy and creative and make for a toy that will be played with very often, I believe. 

Fixing the Dishwasher

See the duct tape, and the cat encyclopedia that the big kid read to me to keep me company in my labors?

Alas, it was to no avail, as the damn thing still leaks like a sieve. I'm guessing it's the water valve, which is way beyond my expertise, and I don't even need to tell you how much it sucks to have to make yet another huge, unexpected purchase (did I tell you that we blew out TWO tires on the van on the drive down to Arkansas?), especially one that we don't really "need," in its strictest sense, although I probably also don't even need to tell you how it feels to be so totally overwhelmed by just the day's regular housekeeping that it makes me feel just as sick in my stomach to not have a dishwasher as it does to shell out 600 bucks for a new one.

Fortunately, we still have

Kittens

to cheer me up, and a night full of board games, movies, pasta, and champagne/sparkling cider (for we're ALL going to stay up until midnight).

And then tomorrow, I get to get up late, drink a big cup of coffee, and go buy a bigger, brighter, brand-new dishwasher, in which I will happily wash dishes all day.

Yellow Snow Plus Blue Snow Equals Green Snow

Syd's been way into color mixing lately. She's gotten the secondary color combos down, and now enjoys mixing them up with paints on paper and colored water in clear jelly jars.

Her obvious next medium?

SNOW!!!

We're having an unseasonably warm patch just lately (hallelujah!), but due to our property's miserable lack of direct sunlight, we still have plenty of nice, thick, clean-ish white snow for painting on. I mixed up three bottles of snow paint for the girls in the primary colors (even yellow!), and sent them out to see what they could see.

Do the secondary color combos still work in the snow?

They do!

Cue much running around and mischief making and tagging snow-covered outcroppings:

 Animal tracks are fascinating when sprayed, because it brings out the definition and the depth:

By late this afternoon the temperature had climbed to a shocking 50 degrees, and there were few outcroppings of snow to paint (at least few nice, clean outcroppings--there are still lots of dirty, gross piles of plowed snow all around), but instead there were lots and lots of slush puddles to stomp in, and freezing little rivulets to follow, and bare dirt patches to hop between, and it turns out that that's pretty fun, too.

Lit up, Then under the Weather

Yep, nothing like a nasty case of gastroenteritis to finish up the Christmas holidays. Really draws a line under all those holiday indulgences, don't you think? Sure, there may be leftover peanut butter fudge and a half-bottle of red wine and the last of the devilled eggs in the refrigerator, but you're just hoping that you'll eventually be able to keep down some ice chips, and maybe a Saltine in a couple of hours if you're really feeling frisky.

Christmas night (one day before it all went to hell), Matt and I drove the girlies over to this house in Van Buren that really does the holidays up right. My Aunt Pam's directions to me consisted of, "Okay, you get to the intersection with the Walgreen's and you take a left. Pass the Dollar General, take a left at the three-way stop, and then, you can just follow the cars."

Have you ever been to a house so done up with Christmas lights that there's a line of cars waiting to drive past it every night? A house where they have their own radio broadcast frequency, so that you can listen to their own personal Christmas mix on your radio as you drive by? A house where all the lights are choreographed to dance along to that Christmas mix?

I hope you have, but if you haven't, then you can take a look-see at this one:

And sometimes? Sometimes! Sometimes, the owner of the house dresses up as Santa and stands out on the street and hands out candy canes.