June Creation

Oops! I forgot to mention this even though I really did do it last month. :)

Michael's mom sent me a link to see a cute little "mobile" thing...oh, it's called a garland. Of course.

Ender got really excited about it, so I figured I'd do it! 

Our version is quite cute, I think. 

Guess what's dumb though? I always forget to use our really nice camera. So, tada, phone pic! 

And...well, why not post some pics of how I did it! Because I did not do it the same way as the original.

I know there are lots of ways to do homemade stamps. Cut into apples, potatoes, super thick foam, carved blocks, soap, whatever. But that wasn't so much a problem for me as ink. I used to have this rather impressive stamp collection-- hundreds of high quality stamps in all sorts of styles. But guess what? I'm just not a stamping person. I tried to be...maybe it's too much like scrapbooking for me. So I gave all my stamps to my nieces, including the inkpads and ink bottles and stuff. Oops, maybe? I don't really miss any of it. 

So my creative solution was to just use foam and a marker. I'd recommend thicker foam if you have it, but I didn't, and we survived. The foam won't absorb the marker very well, so it is pretty easy to then rub the image onto paper, sometimes even repeatedly before you have to re-marker. 

It's messy though. I even tried with gloves on (because I'm just a little snobby about getting my hands dirty with art projects), but that was stupid.

Aren't those prints so cute? I really love how the swipe of the marker shows up in the transfer on paper. Oh yeah, and isn't Ender cute? I'm glad he stayed excited about this project because it had to be extended over two or three days. I didn't realize how much work it would be...I probably should have gotten all fancy and mathed out just how many rockets I needed. But it's okay. And besides, you need two cut-outs for each finished shape. (Cut up halfway in one and down halfway in another and slide together in the slots).

Oh! And I "cheated." Once I had my two main sheets of images, I photocopied them. There was a slight color difference; the marker prints are a bluey black, and the copied prints are definitely black. But in the end, nobody cares! It's not noticeable!

Cutting...that took a long time even skirting around all the details. 

And then stringing them...that wasn't so bad, but make sure your knot is bigger than the hole, or you're asking for extra work. And some minor frustration. 

Um. Depending on your level of patience, heh...

We all really like Ender's space garland! I think he mostly enjoyed seeing how it was made, because once it was all hung up, he went to go play LEGOs. Figures, right? 

Scarlett likes it, too, though. And this month I'm making a little mobile for her (not a garland).

It will be beautiful. :) 

In other news: Scarlett is walking. Yes. She is.