Easy Peasy Weavy Paper

It's fair to say that Boo's enthusiasm for my art projects is not always erm, well, overwhelming - usually she's deep in her imaginative play and doesn't want to stop when this happens.  Actually I'm taking her slightly less clinging demeanour of late as a good sign that we are perhaps moving through the 'difficult' post-baby-birth period and I'm hoping it means she feels more secure in her attachment to me.  Anyhow, she said no to this activity, so I just went ahead and started it myself.  Sometimes I wonder if I devise these things for myself anyway.. (actually I know I do, at least in part!). 

I had been thinking about activities using scissors as Boo struggles with them and I'd like to encourage her to get comfortable using them.  I know she can manage to cut a straight line if I put her fingers in the scissors in the right way, so I thought we could do a bit of paper weaving, the first stage of which would be cutting out the strips of paper.

So, the strips of paper turned out rather neater than those I was expecting to be produced at the hands of my preschooler!  I simply used a ruler to mark out widths and cut equal strips from different brightly coloured paper (IKEA).  Then, to make it a bit more interesting, I used Boo's Stockmar block crayons to create some colour/texture variation on the surface. 

Then the weaving began, and who should I find taking an interest.. Boo of course.  Create, and they will come.  In the end it was the weaving aspect that hooked in the little artist, and she sat on my knee and helped me weave the paper under and over, under and over.

 
 
Looking forward to some more weavy activities with the small one, building up to a small weaving loom at some point.

Clothkits n Cut Outs

It's been a while.  I've had a lovely little Clothkits parcel stashed away for a while now. First the season was wrong, then my belly swelled.  Finally it's time had come, and the scrunchy tissue was removed, the sewing machine unhusked and zim zum, voila, a skirt.  I was especially looking forward to this one as the design is by the tremendous Rob Ryan, whose quirky and poetic paper cuts are just what you would wish for on a skirt.   It wasn't yet open when I was living in East London, but when I finally get to go back (can't face it with a babe and preschooler in tow right now!) I'll definitely be making a visit to his shop Ryantown in Spitalfields.

Enough preamble, here's the item in question...

 
With Dadda Boo in the UK on a business trip, it was a one-woman (at least for now...) photo shoot in the mirror.  Hmmm, see the issue there?  The text.  Yes, the text... ho hum. The cut out lettering on the bell says 'This bell will ring when you take me in your arms and hold me'.  What more can one ask for than a romantic skirt?!

 
Ah yes, as you can see, I wasn't alone for very long. 

 
On the back the text reads 'Every bird is my brother and sister'.  Boo loves this.

And soon I was relegated to the background.

 
I have great respect for someone who can wield a scalpel with such impressive results, precision never having been my forte. 

Staying with cut-outs, today we picked up this book from the library:

 
Nicky McClure is a self taught cut-out artist who uses black paper to create images, usually with a family/home life theme. Her book Mama, is it summer yet? was just right for us today, when we are hanging on for the pacific northwest summer to finally emerge.  The young boy asks if it is summer way too early and his mother plants seeds with him and draws his attention to things changing in the natural world around them, until the strawberries are in fruit and summer is finally here.

 
 
 
Finally, if paper cutting rings your bell, you must check out the work of Peter Callesen, who can do things with a scalpel and a piece of A4 white paper than I can only marvel at.

Now where did I put those cack-handed scissors?

Scratch it out with Sgraffito

Sgraffito is the 'oh so arty Italian' terminology for a fun and simple technique with wax crayons which you probably enjoyed when you were young, I know I did.  I've been meaning to try it out with the Boo for a while, though I did choose to prepare the panels for scratching in advance myself as I thought she would tire of the laborious process of applying the thick layers.

I can strongly recommend Stockmar beeswax crayons for this techique, they really are superior to any other crayons I have used.

First you lay down an underlayer of luminous colour:

 
Then apply a thick layer of black crayon over the top:

 
I wasn't entirely sure what tool to use to scratch out the image.

First we tried bamboo skewers; too soft.

 
Then we tried an etching needle; too scratchy (and Boo pricked herself).

Finally, it dawned on me I had a scraperboard tool - I found it pretty easy to use this, and you can get different marks by using either the point or the side.  However, Boo found it a bit hard to handle and cut through the paper a number of times.  She managed to make some marks but only with my hand guiding her.

 
 
Here's mine:

 

 
 
After we had done these little panels, I was having a look around the web to see what tools other people used for sgraffito, and found some lovely dinky little images on the blog Made by Joel.  I read that he also used Stockmar crayons, and that the crayon set included a tool for creating sgraffito.  The lightbulb went on!  Ah, that's what those little plastic doo-dahs were in the two tins of Stockmar crayons we have (I bought one, one was a gift).... now where on earth have I put them?! 

Will report on their efficacy when I track them down...