1. stop knocking yourself out 2. why not just start 3. just because you are good at being busy does not mean that being busy is good 4. the hard way is the easy way

Amazing submissions this month for the creativity club challenge: inspire yourself. I picked a few of my favorites, but I urge you to go see them all. They can be found under the hashtag  #thecreativityclub. If you’re not on instagram, you can see all the tagged photos on the elsie marley facebook page (in the instagram app on the right).  (more…)

Super simple and super fun project. Cut out a square of a picture from a magazine or newspaper. Next, glue it to a piece of paper. Then finish the drawing. See what strange and hilarious things come out of it! Title of my children’s works appear below the pictures. (please excuse the crummy phone photos.)

Alligator Loves His New Pants

Two people sitting on a couch with their heads on fire and Monster 

Pretty Darn Cute Cat

Two Donuts

Have you done any good projects lately?

Now that it’s officially summer, elsie marley is officially in summer mode. Like last year, I’m going to keep a simple summer journal. Post will be a bit shorter, a bit slap dash, just a peek into our summer days really.

If you like the idea of a simple, summertime blog I would love it if you played along! If you have a blog, use summer journal as your title. If you are more of an instgramer/twitterer/tumblrer type use the #summmerjournal hashtag. Leave a comment if you’d like to play along, so I can follow your summer journal!

The other afternoon, we played a game of Simon Says, Draw! Jean from the Artful Parent, posted about this game years ago and I’ve been meaning to try it ever since.  It’s just like the Simon Says game you played when you were little only with drawing instead. So Simon says things like:

• draw a dot
• use a blue crayon
• draw a squiggle
• pass your marker to the left
• draw three eyes
• draw seven legs
• color something purple
• color with two markers at the same time (this one was a bit hit)

You can say Simon says at the beginning of the sentence or not. That part of the game got lost and we just had fun telling each other what to draw. Everyone’s picture ends up completely different. And it’s a great game to wake up your creativity on a hot summer afternoon.

I’m with Rae (see previous post).  I too get a little crazy this time of year when I am cooped up inside for too many days with my kid.  When I find my son is doing dismounts from the back of the sofa, the living room looks like  the aftermath of small cyclone, and I am contemplating a glass of scotch even though it is barely noon, well, I know it is time to put on our boots and find some distraction outside the house.

This is where living in a city comes in handy .  Aside from the library, one of our favorite places to visit is the Minneapolis Institute of Art.  My boy has been really, really into drawing lately and has been interested in the work of other artists, so on our most recent visit we took along a sketch book and some colored pencils.  I told him that when he saw something he really liked, we could grab a seat and he could do some drawings of that piece of art.  Now, I admit, I thought he might balk at the notion of slowing our pace through the gallery (because when you are 6 and a boy, it is all about moving at roughly the speed of sound–and maybe throwing a couple of karate kicks in there), but he was actually really excited by this idea.  So off we went and you can see some of the resulting sketches.

Which brings us to this little tutorial I have for you–it is a scenic patchwork sketch book.  And what the heck is that, you ask?  Well, just a Moleskine cahier notebook (I used the x-large plain version–they come 3 to a pack)  customized with a nice little patchwork of fabrics that together form a scenic sort of design.  So the world is your oyster in terms of what you work out for your design here–you can see I did woodland and city themed notebooks below–but it could be anything from outer space to the circus to school…or whatever.

Oh, and I also thought I would share the photos of these sketchbooks I made last Christmas as gifts for a few of the kiddies in my life–just because having some options is always nice.  They use the same essential technique but are monogrammed with the first letter of the child’s name.  Simple.

Want to make some for yourself?  You can download the instructions for the scenic patchwork sketch books here:

DOWNLOAD SCENIC SKETCH BOOK INSTRUCTIONS

And just remember, if the sketchbook fails to provide enough distraction when you start to get cabin fever and your kids are bouncing off the furniture, there is always scotch (no further commentary necessary, Meg–or Rae).

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Outfitted with sketchy knowledge of toy design at best and a hand-me-down sewing machine, I began designing plushies back in 2005, naming my little company Beeper Bébé.  Today, I design all manner of toys and other things, usually incorporating recycled stuff, and love to share tutorials on my blog.  I live in Minneapolis.  Future goals of mine include moving to France with my family, becoming a cowgirl, finishing that novel I started writing 15 years ago, learning to quilt, redesigning Little People for Fisher Price so that can be as cool again as they once were, and drinking scotch on my back step—not necessarily in that order though. You can find more of me at: http://chezbeeperbebe.blogspot.com/ and buy the stuff I make at http://www.etsy.com/shop/beeperbebe.  Hope to see you around some time.

Towards the end of fall each year we close up the porch and try to fit all the play that happens out there inside.  Mostly it’s art. We have a big armoire filled with paints and markers and paper and glue and acorns and cottons balls and whatever else could be used to make pictures or sculptures or collages. It’s lovely to have a space where the two big kids can go whenever they have a need to make something, but where the crayon eating baby cannot.

Our house is about 900 square feet, so finding room for anything can be difficult, but art is very important to my kids (and me!) so we have to carve out space every last crayon. Last year I came up with the art box. It’s a wooden wine crate I trash picked filled with art supplies that I store in our closet/office and take down whenever the kids ask.  They can work on the dining room table (conveniently covered in chalkboard cloth) away from curious baby hands. Last year one box was enough, but over the summer it seems the materials we work with has grown.

After much rearranging, the art box has become the art shelf. Everything is organized into wooden boxes and labeled with chalk.  I can take out one thing or everything and the kids can put it all away before I put it back in the closet. I’m planning to swap out things as the year goes on. Do you have any suggestions? Is there any good or unusual art material your kids are into?

On the bottom of the box some awesome kid scrawled in big letters KISS! Alive! and it makes me happy everytime I see it as I take the art box down.  And makes me want to get out my old Kiss tapes.