How and Why

Emma and I started building a barbie house the other day out of awesome boxes that Da brought home from school a while back. 

We worked on it for a while as Baby B (one of the little boys we babysit) was sleeping. After Baby B woke up Emma and I had our hands full and so the barbie house sat for a day or two. The the meantime, we talked about what we planned to do next time we worked on it. 

Emma wanted to work on the barbie house, but we have friends coming over later this week so I had hoped to do a bit (or a ton) of cleaning today. The following is what happened instead (what usually happens instead of cleaning) which is why our house is never clean.

"I have an idea for your barbie house..." and away Da went working on his idea.

One of the ideas Emma and I had talked about for the barbie house was to create art for the walls. Emma decided she wanted to work on this. 

Ideas taking shape.

Fixing leggings. 

"I think I want pictures of outer space, with planets!"

And this is how we learn. 

"Is there a red planet?" Yes, there is. Out comes the 1989 children's encyclopedia and the much more recent Scholastic encyclopedia. 

Da showing her which planet is which. 

And then Da was absorbed in the reading while Emma was working on her barbie art. 

Barbie waiting patiently for her house to be finished, Emma's art work drying. 

Her first space painting of the sun and the red planet. 

And this, folks, is how we learn and why our house is always a mess. 

ArtVend - Bringing Art to the Public

Our community has a pretty active group of artists, Ames c.art, The goal of the organization is to make art accessible to the public. Last year they painted a mural on one of the buildings in Campus Town (near the ISU campus).

This year, they would like to purchase a vending machine and retro fit it so that it will vend small pieces of art created by local artists. The prices for the art will range from $1-$20. If I understand correctly, the location of the vending machine will rotate through out Ames giving access to more people.

In order to make this a reality, they need help with the funding. If interested in learning more, you can go here for more info.

Thanks for checking it out!

Writers Block

I am sitting here, staring off into space, trying to think of something witty or intelligent to say when all I really want to do is show you some pictures of Emma's latest master pieces

I guess instead, I will just tell you about her art.

The other night when I was needle felting Emma's newest hat, Emma asked if she could needle felt also. She was in the process of getting ready for bed, so I told her that she could needle felt in the morning.

And she did. I set her loose with some bigger scrap pieces of a black wool sweater that I had felted. I also gave her the roving I had used on her hat, some commercial roving (it is more processed then the stuff on her hat), some wool yarn, and a bag full of bits and pieces of felted wool sweaters.

When she was done, we had a bunch of odd shaped pieces of needle felted art work. When I asked Emma what she wanted to do with them ( because I really had no idea what to do with them), she informed me she wanted to put them in picture frames and sell them.

It just so happens that we have a ton of picture frames around. And it just so happens Emma's art looks AWESOME in them!

This one is my favorite. 

As soon as we got the first one in the frame, I wanted to run to the store to create another picture wall like the one we had in our home in Tucson.

If you look past the cute kid hamming it up for the camera, you can see one of the shelves we had on our picture wall. Made changing pictures out easy (with no holes).

Now I have to decide if I could actually part with them...