Framed - kind of a tutorial.

Last night we only had one young lady for youth and so we gathered at Jess's house and chilled out on the floor in front of Aladdin (which I still know off by heart...) and decided to get crafty.

It's not something new to me, but sometimes it just strikes me just how effective a frame can be in 'legitimising' an arty creation. We illustrated this last night with what is probably one of the simplest and easiest art projects EVER. 

First - get some paper. A variety of scrap booking paper, or just one pattern, or you could use coloured paper or just whatever.
Second - Cut it into circles of varying imperfection.
Third - Glue the circles down on another piece of paper in a pattern (however you like) 
Fourth - Draw on a trunk and branches with any kind of pen you like. I used a regular old ball point.
Fifth - Now this is important. Put it in a frame.

You can do lots of things with it.

Add little drawings of things or do whatever you want. I put smaller circles on top of some of the trees for variety and no one is surprised that I chose a red riding hood theme... Trees and Red Riding Hood... Predictable much?

Our lovely ballerina with her creation. She used one pattern of paper and kept it simple and it looks AWESOME.

Jess did one with the trees in a row and some of them overlapped so she got to use the always epic foam tape. I didn't get a photo, but it had a very cute little stick figure couple in it which totally WON. I didn't get a photo of Charlotte's one either - but I will update you with more alternatives on this mega easy and therefore awesome art project.

UPDATE: Jess has posted some awesome pictures of her work on her blog, so go check it out... along with the most babe-a-licious photo of me evar... ahem.

Wall Space

Renting kind of sucks.

This is especially true when you want to hang things on the walls. Thanks to 3M and their patented (and awesome) Command strips, I now have some things on the walls. Nothing really matches anything else, but I like it just the same.

Given that I create a lot, putting things on the walls kind of keeps them from messing up the ground... If you have seen my house you know that I probably need to put more on the walls... but it's a start.

I do have small pegs somewhere...just not sure where. Those big ones look a tad ridiculous.

Geek out. Wood elf spell caster and Valkia consort of Khorne. 

Old Chinese frame mum dug up Time Team style, Gabriel's hand prints, landscape by Joyce Chitty (Kyle's artist Gran) Gabriel asleep in the lagoon and the 'i love you' canvas. Told you I would do it. 

Sorry about the blurry photos...

I have always had heaps of pictures/posters/photos up in my room. I remember spending hours sticking up pictures from magazines when I was a teenager. Now everything is in frames and my fondness for buying lots of magazines has been curbed by financial priorities, but I still like the idea of making a space more interesting by putting cool things all over it.

What do you have up in your house?



ps. Thanks Jess for the magazine, I put it to good use as you can see (or at least use). In the end I even had too many letters... definitely would look better on a bigger canvas I think, but I like how it turned out. I posted about this canvas project here