Black-capped chickadee

More toilet paper tube art. This was after a day of wicked powder skiing and a huge homemade Italian dinner. Leif crashed pretty hard that evening!

Snowman

This was a crazy powder day up at Jay Peak. We got stuck in the driveway, flagged down a stranger to push, they got stuck too. Tow truck hauled both of us out, then we couldn't get up the 242 pass.

Waited in the Big Jay lot for a tow truck to pass and all the cars to come down that couldn't make it up, then we went for it again. No go. So we decided to make a snowman instead. And chocolate chip cookies too. The snowman has broccoli for eyes, carrot nose, twig mouth, and mardi gras beads of course.

Mardi Gras Mask

Mardi gras mask making at Jay Peak. Leif didn't want to do his face (I wouldn't either!) so we did his hand instead. Note the safari animals!

African Project

Leif wanted to do a project about Africa. This was a multi-day project as he finger and brush-painted the background, then we traced some animals out of two of his animal encyclopedias. Then we pained the tracing paper and glued them onto the background. I used a black sharpie to define edges. Lastly, Leif wanted tissue paper leaves and shrubs which we pasted onto the background. Up in the left corner are meerkats which get somewhat lost in the brown but are nonetheless cute!

Ostrich

Today we made an ostrich. He needed cotton ball wings since paper just wasn't going to cut it. Leif decided it was a girl ostrich, hence the eyelashes.

Pileated Woodpecker

So what art project shall we do today, Leif? Mom, I want to make a woodpecker. A Google image search brought up several interesting kinds, but the pileated woodpecker caught his attention. How much fun is this, to use a discarded toilet paper roll, and turn it into a replica of a living creature?

If I had to do it again, I'd leave a band of white before the black on the beak part, to contrast the head from the black body. I'm sure there will be plenty of practice, we've an ostrich, a chickadee, and a rooster on deck.

Dinosaur Mixed Media

This several-day project was loads of fun. We took dino patterns from our same library book (too bad its due soon!), broad-stroke crayoned the backgrounda, added a tissue-paper mudhole at Leif's request, then stuck 3-toned tissue-paper to our dinosaurs and pasted them on.

Leif wanted a troodon and several pterydactyls that were not in the book so we found them on google image search and created our own patterns. The trees were scrapbook paper pasted right on.

Vulture

This little beauty was Leif's request, he's all about African animals so the vulture is an inevitability as its a part of African life. We had no brown construction paper so this time the body is made out of tissue paper.

I am the Walrus

Our same January art book had an idea for a walrus mixed media creation. We watercolored the white background, pasted it onto a blue background, pasted cotton balls, then sponge painted the walrus. What animal is complete without its googly eyes though?