Tag Archives: art

Quiet Easel Time

by Adel Posted on May 7, 2013

It makes me immensely sad I’m updating my family blog so little these days. Not so much because I miss blogging all that much, but more because it means I don’t spend nearly enough time as I should just photographing the fleeting everyday moments of my children’s lives.
Easel-1I think about it often. But I find myself struggling a lot lately, to balance a suddenly flourishing photography business, documenting my quickly growing children’s lives and then all the motherly obligations that increase as they grow. Trying to fit in a creative outlet for my own personal photography growth (and sanity) seems like a luxury now…
Coll_Easel1I’ve been telling myself that life will slow down soon. That this craziness can’t possibly last for another week or so. Let me just get through this birthday, or 4-job weekend, or backlog of editing, I say to myself. But yeah, I’m not so sure anymore that life will ever slow down. If anything, it seems to accelerate!

I would like to pick up my camera more often to just document the simplest things. Like my daughter, her markers and an easel.
Easel-2And shoot for what makes me happy right then.

Light.

Love.

And my child and her art.
Coll_Easel2She turns 3 soon. It makes my heart clench thinking about it.

That quote about the days being long, but the years short? That’s my life right now.

I’m grateful I have reminders like these some days, to remind me to slow down.

Easel-3

Posted in Family, Photography | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Makeup Art

by Adel Posted on June 17, 2012
Pin It

Summers around here have become more challenging now that I have two. My oldest is getting increasingly harder to please when it comes to craft projects and activities.

Yesterday’s GAK was a success but it isn’t always that way. These days just pulling out plain old paint is “too boring” for my picky 6 year old.

Jack-Jack though is still easily entertained with almost everything I throw out there. Including some old makeup that I almost threw away when cleaning out my closet. Instead I had decided to save it for her to “play” with.

I should have led with the old makeup. Maybe then Rex would have stuck around. Instead since he had gotten tired of paints, he had moved on to his Legos and would not be enticed to return to play with makeup. Oh well. Jack-Jack of course LOVED it.

I’m still a little worried about the message I’m sending with all this makeup play. But she’s so happy messing around in it all I’ll take my chances.
By the way, I just love how she holds the lipstick like a crayon!

Posted in Crafts | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Thank You Note And A Breakfast Walk

by Adel Posted on October 6, 2011

Rex’s godmother was here recently and spent the night with us. (He adores her!) She brought him a great Star Wars calendar. Such a perfect gift for him. The woman knows her god-son. Or reads my blog. Either way, he loves it. He wanted to start using it right away unfortunately we have to wait another 3 months before we can start making notes and drawing pictures of important occasions on our new calendar.

He came home from school the day after she left and decided he wanted to write her a thank you card. And no I did not plant the idea in his head. He just decided he wanted to all on his own. So I let him select some tools to make his godmother a card.

Of course he wanted to use his Star Wars stamps along with his alphabet stamps and some markers

He told me what he wanted the card to say. I wrote it out for him on our craft paper lined table. And he copied it word for word all by himself onto the card. Then he started decorating with the stamps. I realized that this whole thank you card thing might have been an excuse to play with his star wars stamps but if it was, it was a good one.

I’ve also noticed he likes to decorate everything the same few ways – Hearts, flowers, stick men and crossing things out with a slash or an “X”. For the colors he either chooses pink. Or orange and black. (He has ALWAYS loved pink)

And of course Jack-Jack wanted to write her own thank you card too.

The child threw the biggest tantrum ever when at first I wouldn’t let her. So in the end to keep the peace and allow my son to make his card without her yanking at him every 2 seconds, I set her up with a couple of washable markers and some paper. That was all she needed and was completely happy with her little art-making-station. So Godma, if you’re reading this, the other paper in there with a whole bunch of *ahem* abstract art, well that’s from Jack-Jack just for you.

After  we were finally done with our card (the project took 2 days since my Rex wanted to take breaks and only wanted to work on it when his creativity sparked. Artists! *sigh*) we had to mail it. The closest mailbox in our neighborhood is in front of our favorite bakery. We bundled up and walked up the street for some coffee and breakfast…

…and to mail our card

And no I don’t know the whole look he was going for with his outfit that morning. I asked him about it casually and he mentioned something about being an FBI Police Officer. I didn’t dig any deeper. Hey, it looked like a legitimate FBI Police Officer to me

But then he wanted to switch it to a traffic cop look at one point I think… I don’t question too much anymore. I just enjoy the imagination and creativity his little 5yo mind comes up with whenever I can

We sit and enjoy the warm sun coming up with our apple juice…

…and iPhones

My little gadget-crazed family. I love them with all my heart.

Posted in Family | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

More Abstract Wall Art

by Adel Posted on October 4, 2011

Over the weekend we worked on our third installment of wall art for our stairwell. I’m deciding I love the plywood canvas we’ve been using for the base. I love the simple, natural textures of wood.

Well with this piece I decided to do something similar to the abstract painting we made Grizz for his birthday. We raided my craft stash for interesting shapes, stickers and tape we could stick on the wood for the design.

This time though I wanted to work on our art indoors since we were only using a small canvas. That meant only Rex got to work on it. (Jack-Jack was NOT HAPPY)

As usual he worked carefully and meticulously. I noticed he has gotten much better with using regular scissors too.

He chose his paints beforehand. I had him select 6 colors

After he was happy with the placement of all his stickers, tape and letters we used the first 3 colors – pink, yellow and red

Now came the fun part. I’d seen this post on pinterest and thought it would be a cool and fun way to  lay the paint on. So Rex squirted the paints randomly all over. Pretty!

Instead of using a paper towel tube I wrapped my wooden rolling pin with tin foil and then one paper towel. We used that to roll the paint!

Then we let it dry overnight

The next day we continued with the other 3 colors he chose – purple, green and blue

Here’s what I learned – Because the first set of colors were already dried these next set of colors pretty much covered the pretty reds and oranges. If you’re going to do this project definitely use all the colors at once.  Just don’t roll too much or else it will all mix up into one dark ugly color.

So I had him roll just twice for the green, blue and purple…

And I actually had him add more red and yellow paint and gave it another couple of rolls. It turned out much more colorful!

The next day we peeled all the stickers off. Some were harder to come off than others so I worked on most of the sticker removal

And now we have our 3rd masterpiece hanging in our once bare stairwell!

And I like I said earlier, I truly love that we used the plywood as our canvas! :)

Posted in Crafts | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Brian Wilson Street Art

by Adel Posted on September 27, 2011

Well it’s official. Our World Series Champions Giants are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. If only August hadn’t been the worse baseball month ever (for us Giants fans) we might have had shot at it right now. Unfortunately, we rolled the dice and stuck with our non-hitting, stellar pitching staff that got us the 2010 Championship and just fell short this year. Be that as it may, it was a great run (minus August) and we’ve enjoyed this crazy 2 season ride with our champs.

As a tribute to our team this post is for them. And for you fans of our Giants, Wilson, Street Art and just cute kids in general :)

I follow a blog called Bernalwood. I love all the little snippets of news, photos and just general information about our intimate little neighborhood they have. When these posts of Brian Wilson street art popped up in my feed I was naturally intrigued. I put it on my list of things to go look up if I ever found an extra few minutes driving home to or from school. And one day I did :)

About a week or so later another post with information about the spreading of this mural pops up in my Bernalwood feed. Well now not only did I want to go see them, I thought a few shots of my little Giant fans with the artwork was in store (I cannot believe the crumbs from the cookie I bribed her with would not brush off easily!)

Since the original Bernal Wilson art was in a spot I couldn’t get to easily without climbing a 6 foot concrete wall and trudging through tall weeds, I decided we’d check out the second.

Jack-Jack was wondering about the tall man on the fence and pointed curiously at him. But that lasted all of 5 seconds

At least she sat still for me to snap some quick shots

The pretty morning light was just coming up from behind the house so I managed to get some decent shots

Plus for whatever reason (umm cookie maybe?) she wasn’t running around much so I didn’t have to chase her around while trying to get my shot and exposure right. Thank you for small miracles

I wonder what she makes of all my picture taking in that little head of hers.

My baby Giant.  She’ll be naming players and positions next season

For the 3rd Wilson mural I decided to leave the babe at home and bring my older one with me. I thought he’d enjoy this one more since it was spray painted on a chalkboard garage door!

The owner of this home leaves a bucket of chalk out for the neighborhood kids (I think) to come get creative with their drawing skills. So cute!

My Rex was a little hesitant at first since he thought the owners might get upset if they caught him drawing on their garage door! But after a little coaxing, he quickly got into it

He decided what he wanted to write and had me help him spell it out as he wrote

I just adore this one of him next to the life-size Wilson art. I should have gotten him a can of spray paint! Pretty sure the we’d get yelled at by the owners then! ;)

After writing what he wanted he then decided he wanted to draw a picture of himself pitching.

Next to Wilson! *sigh* I love this child

He would stop to take a step back to make sure he liked the progress of the drawing.

He decided he needed bigger arms if he was going to be a pitcher so he fixed that problem

And of course just like most future Giant pitchers, he wanted to be just like Timmy!

Maybe one day when you’re older son, little boys will be wearing your number just like you wear number 55 now.

Thank you SF Giants for making our summers always full of excitement and joy for our young family. Yes we could live with a little less torture but hey we had a World Series Championship team and it was worth every bit of it.

Posted in Photography | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Water Bottle Cap Art

by Adel Posted on September 14, 2011

We drink LOTS of bottled water in our house. Up until recently, Costco sold the sport top water bottles, which is what we bought. I’m not sure why they stopped but we’ve had to buy the regular screw on capped bottles. I decided to collect the caps after I was done drinking each bottle, not sure what I’d do with them.

This past weekend I figured we could use them for some artwork to keep my older one busy. As you can see I had a ton of them. And this is not even all of it.

They were a little boring as is, so I told Rex to pick 5 colors from our paint stash. I’ve learned that giving him less color options is better for the overall result of any project

Then I had him split the caps up into 5 cups

We squeezed a bunch of paint in each cup
 Then we stirred them up to get the caps coated with the color

Little Jack-Jack was super unhappy with her spot out of reach from the colorful caps. Child, as soon as you learn to stop eating paint you can help your brother with his projects. I promise.

We added quite a bit of paint to make sure they were coated well

Then I fished them out and laid them to dry. We ended up letting them dry overnight and continuing the next day

Remember the piece of wood I used as my blank canvas for the melted crayons? Well I have FIVE more of those pieces. I painted all of them white and used one for this project

I told Rex that he could arrange the caps in whatever picture, shape or structure he wanted on the “canvas”. So he set out to put together a flower garden

As always, he’s very careful and meticulous

I think my favorite part about watching him work on these projects is how intensely he concentrates on the little details

He even wiped all the caps off the board because he was unhappy with the way he arranged them the first time

Finally though he came up with an arrangement he was pleased with and I set to work gluing it all to the board

Can you believe he now picks up the camera to take shots of me working on the project? Monkey see, monkey do! :) (Man I look old and tired! I have to remember to brush my hair more often!)

And here’s the finished masterpiece! In case you can’t tell, it’s a flower to the left with a pink watering can pouring water over it. There is a smaller watering can below the pink one watering a flower that has yet to bloom. Next to that bud is a bush and to the far right is an apple tree with pink flowers and roots growing out the bottom. I just love a 5 year old’s imagination don’t you? :)

It is now hanging on the wall in our stairway next to our melted crayon art. I have big plans for this wall that has been bare for FIVE years! Remember, I have 3 more pieces of painted white boards :)

Posted in Crafts | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Lego Artwork Gallery

by Adel Posted on August 17, 2011

As you know I’m super proud of my little boy’s creative mind. Especially when it comes to building with Lego. I love how he always has a story to tell and he has even started naming his ships and creations.

A friend posted on FB wall awhile back with a link to an idea of how to display these creations. I can’t for the life of me find that link again. Basically you just have to photograph your child’s creations and display those photos however you want.

I had Rex select some of his favorite pieces for me to photograph. He even helped me set up the shots in my home-made “studio”. Haha!

He had fun setting his pieces and ships up all the while explaining the detail and story behind each creation to me

I photographed about 10 or so of them, dumped them to my computer for editing and cropped them to a square 5×5 size. I then uploaded them to photoworkssf.com to order the prints.

They arrived a few days later. I LOVED them. The prints turned out looking really professional and similar to product shots you see for ads. I was very pleased :)

I was going for an art gallery type of look so I knew I wanted to display them on a canvas. I found these at Michaels for $13/10 canvases. They were 8×10 in size.

I wanted to be able to switch them out as I photographed and printed new pieces he made over time so I pasted the photos and descriptive titles (he sat down and gave me the official names of each of these creations) with sticky tack.

We chose and hung 7 of our favorite prints on the canvases

And in keeping with the Lego theme, we hung his Lego name sign we made awhile back over them. He is really proud of his display hanging in his room. I figured when he gets tired of having them on his wall I would hang them in our stairway or hallway for anyone who comes over to see :)

Posted in Crafts | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Wearable Art

by Adel Posted on July 18, 2011

I had bookmarked this site awhile ago. It has some great ideas on what to do with that overflowing box of my son’s art work I’m collecting. I finally had time to try one of them.

T-shirts! I can see always having his art displayed this way. We wear them everyday!

First we started of with the actual art. I set him up with markers and a pad of paper. No surprises that we get a droid clone battle. In a brutal storm.

 After he’s finished his masterpiece, I scan them and print a sample out in black and white to make sure I have the size right for my T-shirt. Yep I’m gonna wear my son’s art!

Once I have the size right, I print (mirror image so the words imprint correctly) on the Iron-On paper (purchased on Amazon). I let it dry for 30 minutes per the directions on the packaging then iron it on my T-shirt. After it cools completely, I peel it carefully to reveal his masterpiece!

When I showed him my shirt, he was so impressed, he made me make him one too!

Now we have matching T-shirts displaying my Rex’s original work. I’m really happy with how cute this little project turned out.

Of course I am expected to pose for the obligatory series of silly shots since I “made him” stop his episode of Backyardigan’s to take a picture of us in our new T-Shirts

I’ll be trying a few more ideas for displaying his artwork from that link soon.

Posted in Crafts | Tagged , | 2 Comments