Belated Birthday II

Here are a few pics from SB's birthday party. With all the hullabaloo, I didn't think about taking pictures, so most of these have been borrowed from those who did. As big of a deal as I made of this whole thing, I did not make any effort to document the event. I guess you can't do it all.

This picture I did take at my house on her real birthday. She was really sick and needed some cheering up, so my mom brought over her birthday gift even though her party was cancelled. -It's a kitchen that talks to you. She still cooks for us everyday... (The food tastes a bit plastic.)


Her BirdDay cake - 5 layers of sagging fun. Lessons learned: 1. Round cakes make it harder to smooth fondant. 2. Fondant - only pleasing to the toddler palate. 3. When cakes look crowded it just might be that someone is trying to cover a mistake ... or lots of mistakes. 4. Chocolate icing is yummy! 5. I love to paint fondant - (Sadly, the only things I painted were the birds.) *Not too shabby for my third cake ever although I liked the second cake best so far.

SB in the inflatable jumper. I think she would have been happy in that thing all day long.

SB and her daddy who thinks she hung the moon.

The image above and the next two are the only evidences that there really was a party. No one seemed to take any pictures of anyone other than Sarah Beth. Family came in from out of town and I didn't get any pictures of them...bummer. I did manage to get a few chopped off heads.

These girls look pumped about watching her open presents! Observe the enthusiasm.

She uses the word duck frequently and quacks when necessary. Thanks for the duck, Mrs. Polly.

My photo. Yeah, it's mine. Sadly it's blurry and blown out. Still, I like it and I'm keepin it!

Belated Birthday

So it's been quite a while and I have more than enough to say, although I plan to keep this one short. My last post was April 6th. Sarah Beth's birthday was May 6th. We had her birthday party today. The photos in this post were taken a few days ago. Her birthday pics will be posted when I get enough energy to retrieve them from my camera.
What's that you say? Why a month and a half later? Oh...that's a story of its own. May 2nd was her original party date. Plans changed the day before the party. Lots to do with contagious viruses, vacations, rodeos, school, other birthday parties, text messages, the kitchen sink...
In the end things all worked out. We scaled down the party to include close friends of the family and family members. Even with the smaller crowd, it was very busy. She has been receiving presents now for over a month, because people felt bad about not giving her a present on her birthday. They've been trickling in here and there through mail or passing by. She's an old pro at unwrapping packages or removing tissue from bags. Todd says she'll think all birthdays last a month long. We'll have some 'splainin to do next year.
As a christian mother, it is my goal to teach her not to treasure trinkets. Don't get me wrong, I'm so thankful for all the gifts - these people are helping us provide for our girl. Those are clothes we don't have to buy. And those toys - how expensive are they! Yes! I am thankful for every last ribbon and battery. I just want her to know that they will not bring her lasting contentment. Eventually as we all do, she will outgrow the clothes and get bored with the toys. I pray that Todd and I will succeed in teaching her to love and cherish the imperishable treasure who "gives life and breath and all things to all." For anyone reading who doesn't know what I'm talking about - it's Jesus.

I love that smile and those sweet baby blue eyes.

Little bit of attitude coming through there...

Hoot

So I tried my hand at screen printing. I decided to go as simple as possible with the process. I used the drawing/ screen filler method. (Basically, I drew a picture, traced my drawing onto the screen, and filled all the negative space with screen filler. Screen filler clogs all the holes in the screen and prevents ink from seeping through. In the image below the screen filler is a brownish color. The owl is not painted at all.)

Lots of my students gave me some feedback as far as the design goes. I like the way the owl came out - not too girly. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I planned to make t-shirts for the boys at Sarah Beth's birthday party. It's also a good way to learn to use the screen print kit before my art students get a hold of it.

The instructions say to pre-wash the garment before screen printing, but I was ready with my supplies and didn't have a washer and dryer handy. I went ahead and printed one t-shirt with pretty good success. (See below.) I decided to go ahead and stop to pre-wash the rest of the t-shirts before printing the rest of them. When it was time to print again, things didn't turn out as nicely as they had the first go 'round. I didn't bother taking pictures of my 2 "disaster shirts". I ended up hand painting the bottom half of all the letters because they didn't print... on either shirt. I tried making more than one pass. That didn't work out so well either. There are some gray spots here and there from the ink sinking through the filler. I really haven't figured out what happened to the cut off letters.


Click here to see a tutorial that follows the same method, but with homemade materials. NOTE: Screen filler can be washed out and the screen can be reused. I'm not sure about Elmer's glue.

Birdies

Here they are...all 16 of them. Some of my students helped me make a few of them while they were waiting for some of their own things to dry. I love them all. My mom is going to make a tree so they'll have a home. When she gets that done, I'll post them again. Mom is pretty crafty herself, especially with floral arrangement type things.

I racked my brain about what to make for the boys who come to SB's birthday party and finally decided on something. I am going to screen print a t shirt for them. I just got the supplies to screen print and need to learn the process anyway.

I often consult with my students for good ideas because they genuinely have some...sometimes. One of my Freshman girls said that a good idea would be to put the iPod logo on a t shirt but add an extra "o" in it. That way it would say "iPood" which is humorous, but I'm not sure all the parents of these boys would find it as amusing as I did. One of my high school boys suggested I make a buzzard on a shirt because that still stuck with the bird theme, but was more masculine (...and grotesque.)

Since I'm trying to stick with the bird theme, I ended up with a pretty cute little owl with a caption under it that says, "I'm a hoot!" It's not too original, but why reinvent the wheel? I completely drew the owl on my own, with constant critiques from my students. They really do have good things to say, but they can be brutally honest too. In the end, I liked it and I plan to share the process in a later post for those who are completely new to screen printing.

Morning Hair

Unfortunately Sarah Beth takes after her mommy when it comes to morning hair. She's cute enough to photograph with crazy hair. I'm not gonna punish myself by posting a photo of my morning fro.

In the photos above she had been awake for about 5 minutes and it was about 6:30 in the morning. What a happy baby...and a happy daddy!

Great Party Favors

Ten Worst Party Favors:

1. Plastic frog with tab on butt that makes it jump.

2-10. Anything that makes noise or stains or is sticky.

I was trying to come up with party favors for SB's birthday that went along with the BIRDday theme, and I just thought I'd share my idea with you. The party favors will be part of my party decorations until they are taken home by the guests.

I'm a big fan of hair clips for my baby girl's hair, and I often get comments/compliments on the ones in Sarah Beth's hair. My bright idea - hair birdies for each of the girls coming to the party. They are much cuter than those birthday party dunce caps that used to be popular when I was a kid.

Something I say a lot is, "I could have made that for nothing!" after seeing something that would have been easy to do myself. Mind you, making 13 birdies is quite time consuming if you want them all to be unique. It's just plain fun and worth doing if you'd like to save a buck... or 50 bucks. Anyway, here's how I did it.

1. Get some Sculpey clay at your local craft store.

2. Roll into a ball and knead it into a slab the thickness of 10 playing cards. Hint: If you place 10 cards on the table under both ends of your rolling pin, you'll get exactly that thickness.

3. Cut out your shape. I like the tear drop shape for my little birdie and I made mine out of a piece of copper foil. If you don't have access to a stash of copper foil you could use an Xacto knife or pottery tool or a even cookie cutter.

4. Bake it in the oven according to the instructions on the pack of Sculpey. (I think it's about 15 minutes on 275 degrees.)

5. Find some stuff around the house and decorate to your heart's content!

6. Hot glue a clip to the back. You can get a pack of 100 from Sally's for about 5 bucks.

7. Take a picture to remember it.

When they're all complete, I will clip them onto a dead branch that I plan to spruce up and use as a tree. It may sound a little glum, so when I get that far I'll post a picture.

March of the Tools II

Here is another one of my favorite tools. The Wacom Bamboo pen tablet. I like to use it to draw in Photoshop but mostly to have my own handwriting on things. I also really enjoy the pressure sensitivity of the pen. I am by no means using this baby to it's fullest potential.

Drawing on paper with a pencil is much easier to control. Just think about when you sign your name on one of those electronic signature thingies at the grocery store. Your John Hancock looks more like Jackson Pollock tried to use an Etch-a-Sketch. Until you get used to the pen tablet, it's like your learning to write your name for the first time.

I keep my fingers on Ctrl/Alt/Z (undo) and press them almost instinctively even if the result is pleasing. That keeps the process organic. I expect that most of my strokes are going to be duds. When a good one comes along, I'm pleasantly surprised and head for the redo button. It's kind of like throwing spaghetti noodles on the wall and seeing which ones stick -which ones I want to stick.

Check out my birdie here. I plan on using something like this for SB's birthday invitation. It's simple and possibly could have been done with a regular mouse, but the pen was way more fun. I really like the position of Birdie's feet. She's saying something here, like... "Come to SB's BIRDday party. It's this way," or, "I'm tired of standing on this left leg of mine."