Dr. Seuss Lorax Tree Art

This week we had Monday and Tuesday off from school.
Monday for a snow day and Tuesday for election day here in Ohio.
My nieces and I spent Monday evening working on some art work that I was inspired by pinterest to try. 
We also paintined Dr. Seuss Lorax trees because the girls recently watched the movie, and who doesn't love Dr. Seuss inspired crazy trees :)


We used paper grocery sacks from Kroger, a mountain dew bottle, paint, and an old pickle jar lid to put the paint in.


Use the bottom of the pop bottle as a stamp




the lid works as a stamp too!




winter, spring, and summer







Once we filled all the paper bags we held an art auction in the kitchen and sold the paintings to my parents (their grandparents) for .25-1.00.  My nieces' idea... they are little entrepreneurs!  

Saturday Afternoon Picnik #7 - Pop Art

I have been picniking all the new pictures Lee and I have from our photoshoot... and I discovered a new really cool feature - totally unrelated to our photoshoot that I want to share!

How to make what I like to call pop art out of your pictures!
This technique uses another premium picnik feature called Dots and Dots.For this project you need to start with a head-shot, a closeup image of a face.  To decide on a picture I went to my Facebook and looked at past profile images and found one I knew would be perfect for pop art!

my beginning image

go to Effects and find Dot and Dots in the left side toolbar

Click on Dots and Dots and then chose Color Spots from the drop down menu

I wanted a more abstract look to my image so I made the dots larger, 
but you you can decide according to your preference.

then to kinda gloss over the image I chose the Add setting in the advanced mode.
I liked how it took out the in-between dots and kept only the bold colors.

I saved the image after this step and went back and played around some more and I also liked  the way this one turned out using the News Print style.

I also had the idea that this would be an awesome paint project!  Enlarge an image of someone's face, use the Dots and Dots effect and then reference it for an amazing custom piece of art work!  It would be so simple!
I did a project similar to this in college, only it was a painstakingly horrid process.  We had to print out an image, cover it with a clear grid overlay and paint each square on the canvas according to what was in the corresponding square on the grid. And it wasn't even in color.
I vote for this technique instead!

I dare you to step back from your computer & be amazed at how cool this is from a distance!

Are you up to any awesome picnik projects? please share!

home is where the heart is

I have these super awkward glass cupboards that divide my kitchen and living room. I am always trying to cover them because I have no choice but to actually use the cupboards so they can't just be filled with decorative goodness :/
As per usual my options are limited mostly to hanging paper... and while I don't love the way this looks as a room divider, I am really happy with the way my little spur of the moment art work turned out!

I originally planned to cover it with maps.  I printed out a bunch of random maps, but it just wasn't meshing well. (I can't find a big world map here to buy)
I decided to paint something and ended up with this! and I love it!
Its just water colors and honestly took about 30 minutes total. my fastest... anything yet.

then added a little banner in the spirit of the upcoming Independence Day celebrations. 
It is a cut up cereal box, painted, and drawn on with chalk.






Ontario - Leo's Home


Ohio - my home & an extra heart over Mount Vernon, where Lee and I met at college 


Grenada - our temporary home :) & that symbol is supposed to be a nutmeg. haha!