shiso mama

Here’s a shisomama first: a collaborative project between F and me! A little while back, F had this brilliant idea to create a fishing game for Otis. The kid adores sticks and always picks them up on our walks (he even has a bucket outside the door for them), and he often tells us he’s “fishing” with them. So hey, why not make him a game that enables him to wave long sticks around the breakable things INSIDE our house? It was fun working on a creative project together. Here’s what we did (Sorry for the poor quality of many of the pictures - it was relentlessly rainy while we were working this past weekend. Though I guess you could say it’s the perfect rainy day project.):

F bought two 3/8″ dowels (so that Otis could play his game with a friend) and used a hand saw and cut them down to about 28″ inches. Then he used his drill to make a small hole at one end.

On the other end, he used blue duct tape to create a “handle.” (You can also use bicycle handlebar tape, which comes in a variety of colors.) To make it look nice, he cut a circle out of duct tape and then notched it so that it would look streamlined when it was smoothed over the sides.

Then he cut a long strip of duct tape and wrapped the “handle” in one long piece.

To make the “fishing line” he ran a piece of embroidery floss through the hole that he drilled and tied a couple of knots to keep it in place.

At the end of the embroidery floss, he attached a small stack of 1/2″ magnets to create the “bait hook.” He covered them with duct tape as well, using the same notching method as the handle. On the top of the magnets, he slit the duct tape to the middle, to allow for a tidy look where he ran the embroidery floss. After taping the top and bottom, he trimmed a piece of duct tape to wrap around the sides as well.

For the fish, I drew a very basic fish pattern and cut it out in several different fabrics. I stitched them together, leaving a 1/8″ seam allowance and turned them inside out, with the tails open. In each fish, I inserted a 1/8″ x 1″ zinc washer (I chose the ones with the smallest holes to allow for more surface area for the magnets to adhere to).

I tacked the washers in place by stitching a french knot on both sides of the fish, where the eyes would be. (Here’s a great tutorial; I wrapped my floss around the needle 3 times rather than 2 to create a bigger “eye.)

I stuffed the fish and then stitched a decorative tail to close up the fish. You can be as plain or as fancy as you want, though I left them quite simple.

I decided to make a “fish pond” by cutting out a large circle out of my trusty Marimekko fabric (it’s about 21″ in diameter) and zigzagging it onto some nice, thick canvas. And here it is, finished!

We’ve been testing it out, and even with the stuffing, the fish can be caught quite easily by the magnet “hook.” It’s a challenging game that’ll take him a while to get the hang of, and we hope we enjoys it. We’ll be giving this to him as a birthday present, and it may sound like we’re super organized since his birthday is not until late March, but that’s only because we couldn’t get it together to give to him as a present from Santa Claus.

Hey, it just occurred to me that we’re totally this generation’s version of the granola parent - you know the parent who makes their own granola and sprouts when all the kids really want to eat is Twinkies. We’re forcing Otis to play our handmade game when probably all he wants is a Tickle Me Elmo. And unfortunately for him, I make my own granola as well.

Here’s a video of F and me, playing the game. I’m not making excuses here, but let me just remind you that I was holding the camera here:

With the purchase of our latest Craigslist find and the reorganization of my studio, Otis suddenly found himself without a place to draw. He still had his little chalkboard table, but because it was round with a hole in the center, it was not a good space for drawing with pen and paper. So we came up with our own little Ikea hack: a multi-purpose art table. For some reason, I prefer tables to easels for drawing, probably because easels make me think of paint and paint makes me think of Oh My Lord, There’s No Way Kids And Paint Mix In This House!

Here’s the list of supplies we used. Most of it was purchased at either Ikea or at the hardware store.

index curtain rod
index wall hardware
vika olegby table legs
vika persbo table top
magnetic bar (ours was black and named something different, which I can’t find on their website)

paint
unsanded grout
chalk
craft magnets
glue (I used a hot glue gun)
markers
roll of paper (we used Ikea’s Mala)

We used the Vika Persbo table top, but only because we already had it. I was using it as an ironing board, but since it didn’t fit into my new studio, I was looking for a new use for it. It’s quite large, which is good for us because kids can eat at the table when we have friends over rather than worrying about our new table. Any of the Vika table tops that are paintable can be used, and they’re pretty inexpensive. Of course you can also do this to any finished table as well.

Prime, paint and finish the table top according to these directions from Martha and crew. I gave my tabletop two good coats of paint, and chose a dark grey to go with our cabinets.

Turn the table over and install the index wall hardware, centered, along one short edge of the table, making sure that there is enough room between the hardware for your roll of paper. For our particular setup, we also had to make sure that the wall hardware didn’t get in the way of the table leg hardware. Thus I attached the wall hardware after the leg hardware, but before the leg itself. It might make more sense if you look closely at the following pictures.

Hang your roll of paper on the curtain rod and install in the hardware.

Turn the table over and install the magnetic bar, centering it on the table. Make sure it is tight enough to hold your paper down and to use as a tearing edge, but not too tight so that you can’t slide your paper through easily.

Glue craft magnets onto the caps of markers (I used a hot glue gun) so that the markers are attached to the magnetic bar, ready to be used.

Here you can see Otis using his new table (looking like he draws a lot more than he really does). He also occasionally attacks it with chalk:

Pretty simple. The most time-consuming part of the whole project was waiting for the paint to dry. Then you can hang your kids’ finished artwork up on your homasote bulletin board!

My friends, the lovely folks at Apartment Therapy Nursery did a story on Otis’s play areas, which you can check out if you’re interested in looking at pictures of our house when it’s clean (ha!) and there’s no toddler around to marr the immaculate placement of props (double ha!). And below is a tutorial on the bulletin board we made to display Otis’s artwork.

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Ever since I saw a story in an old Martha Stewart magazine, I’ve been wanting to make myself a homasote bulletin board. For those of you who don’t know about homasote, it’s a type of building material made of recycled paper. It can be used as soundproofing, and makes for fantastic bulletin boards, either plain, painted, or covered. Our architect told us that they used to it construct inexpensive room dividers in their studios in school.

Since then, I’ve seen lots of beautiful bulletin boards, like here. But me, I wanted to cover entire walls with the stuff. And maybe I’m a simpleton, but I couldn’t quite figure out the logistics of how to do it - most information I found was a little evasive about how to actually mount them to the wall. And when I finally dug out the actual issue of Martha Stewart (yes, we have a basement full of them!) that had the how-to, I saw that they used wood trim to help hold up their homasote, which wouldn’t have worked in our space. So here’s what we did instead.

Everything I’ve read online tells you to have the lumber yard cut the homasote for you, and it’s really good advice. We had to borrow a circular saw from our neighbor to cut ours down to the proper size (and I waited for F to come home so someone could drive me to the emergency room in case I cut something off and couldn’t drive myself), and even though we did it outside, we were sneezing paper bits for the next week.

I wanted to cover our bulletin board with this beautiful Etsuko Furuya fabric, but thought that a big wall of it would be overwhelming (and more expensive) so I sewed a strip of it between two pieces of regular canvas, making sure to line up my pattern so it was straight (oh how I love those ladybugs). After we finished, I wished that I had centered all the ladybugs, but oh well, c’est la vie.

Using a staple gun, staple down the center of one side, then the opposite side, making sure the fabric is nice and taut. Work your way from the center out towards the corners. Since our fabric had a pattern, I tried to line up the edge of my dots with the edge of my homasote so that it would look straight.

I folded the fabric on the corner this way (which I picked up from book making), since it created less bulk with our thick fabric. I pulled the point of the fabric down over the corner of the homasote, creating a 45 degree angle. Then I folded down the two sides of fabric, tucking the excess in along the sides. Try to make it as streamlined as possible so that there’s not too much fabric between the bulletin board and the wall.

We used our stud finder to locate studs behind our drywall and marked them with painter’s tape (you can see the blue tape below). This is pretty important since the bulletin board is so large and heavy (ours was 3′ x 7′). I suppose you could also use anchors with your screws, but that still makes me a little nervous. Studs are better. We ended up attaching our board into four studs and two anchors (they’re not evenly spaced because we wanted to catch studs and have screws at all four corners).

We used a stack of books to help us hold up the bulletin board so we could step back and look at it. We double checked with a level and then predrilled holes, both in the wall and in the bulletin board. Start out slowly when you drill through the bulletin board because it will catch and torque the fabric (and don’t forget to protect your floor!).

We used nice long wood screws and finishing washers, both to protect the fabric and to give it a more finished look.

Sit back and enjoy your handiwork. Now go force your child to be creative so you have something to hang up.

Click here to view collage #162.

Hope you are enjoying the (holiday) weekend.  Here’s our little (Easter) ham this Fashion Show Sunday:

Still love our little elf hat:

We went to a Easter Egg Hunt/Brunch today, and as I scanned the crowd of kids wearing their Easter finery or just their everyday casual play clothes, I felt a momentary pang of guilt dressing Otis up as I do. Then I saw one of my favorite kids in the neighborhood and felt better although yes, it’s true, she does dress herself:

(leotard, shirt, thigh high pink socks, pink rainboots)

Which leads me to our latest recycled sweater tutorial. This one took a few more brain waves than the last project, but I’m pretty pleased with the results. I had this sweater, and while I loved the colors and the stripes, the turtleneck made me feel like I was choking every time I put it on:

First I washed and dried it. Then I cut off the turtleneck (using my handy rotary cutter) and turned over the edge and stitched it. Here’s the inside view:

The ribbed hem cinched in a little and I didn’t want it any tighter, so I cut off the hem before taking in the sides of the sweater. Then I trimmed off the excess and reattached the hem, topstitching afterwards. Another inside view:

I cut off the cap sleeves because they didn’t lay in the right place on a toddler, and turned over a hem and stitched. The sleeveline stretched a little (and I think I need to take the sleeve in a little more), but a little steaming helped.

It seemed plain so I played around with some of the extra pieces. I decided a Peter Pan-ish collar was too girly, even for me.

I ended up with a contrasting stripe down the middle (using some of the excess from the sides) and then F and I decided to make it into a “tie” using the tip of one of the cap sleeves because we thought it was funny. ho ho. It even has a little bit of stuffing in it to make the knot a little puffy. It’s all zigzag stitched on.

Anyone going to try?

I realized this morning, as I stared mournfully into Otis’s drawers, that there’s no way we could ever top last week’s outfit. There’s no point in even trying; it would just be a sad half-hearted imitation. The kid’s peaked, and he’s not yet two. From now on, we’ll just have to focus on developing his street-smarts and his sense of humor to get him through life.

Sigh:

I’ve been sewing this week and thinking about our upcoming trip to Taiwan. Where it is hot and sticky, a.k.a. totally and completely miserable. Even though I generally dislike shorts, I decided to sew Otis a pair or two. Today’s denim shorts were my first pair:

I started out with the shorts that were part of the pajamas for Simplicity #8493. But they were so plain that I decided to add some patch pockets. Here is the pocket pattern I drafted, laid atop the Simplicity one. I cut two, laying the side edge of the pattern on the fold of the fabric so that it is doubled. (Make sense? Sorry, my editor went to get his hair cut.) It may be hard to tell from the pictures, but you are essentially sewing one big pocket on each side of the shorts, meaning that the front and back look identical.

Then I sewed bias to the top of the pocket, and turned over 1/4″ on the bottom. (I know it’s a pain to make the bias, but I think you get a much nicer edge because it’s hard to turn and clip the inside curve. To make it easier, you could also just buy bias and use it for both sides.) I sewed the pockets on first, then sewed the rest of the pieces together. The top of the pocket ends up being turned in with the elastic casing, which adds bulk, but the denim I used was thin, so I don’t think it matters too much.

I like the idea of using a plain pattern and adding little details to make it more interesting. There aren’t a whole lot of patterns for little boys. You’ll probably see more of these soon. Also, later this week, I’ll be posting a couple other recycled sweater projects.

I finished the baby leg warmers this past week too. Thank goodness for DVDs - I knitted while I watched Chicken Run (which I loved!). I didn’t use a pattern, but it’s a pretty straightforward tube, and here’s an idea of what I did, for those of you interested. I used 4 double pointed needles, size 5 for the ribbing and size 6 for the rest. I used a wool yarn, pretty close in size to the Filatura Di Crosa Zara line.

Cast on 40 stitches on the size 5 needles and distribute among 3 needles in even numbers (I did 14, 14, 12). Knit a 2-knit, 2-purl rib and close the tube, making sure not to twist the yarn.

Knit 12 rows of ribbing.

Change to size 6 needles and knit the rest of your tube. I used a couple of different handy techniques for the stripes - jogless stripes and knitting in the ends (you can click on the links for how to’s).

When you’re ready for the bottom ribbing, change to the size 5 needles again and knit 12 rows of ribbing. Cast off. I sort of screwed up my stripe counting and ended up with 81 rows of knitting, which gave me leggings that were about 10″ long. Right now they end up a little above his knees. The main body of the leggings are approximately 4″ wide and end up sort of slouchy.

Otis will wear the leg warmers over pants or leggings, so it’s not such a big issue for us, but I can imagine that the ribbing will become a little stretchy and not want to stay up. I wonder if some elastic would help that or maybe a tighter knit of ribbing.

Make sense? OK. Email me if you have any questions, but chances are good that I’ll have no idea what the answer is. Now I need a new knitting project - I just rented the first Prime Suspect (love Helen Mirren), plus we’re waiting in line at yet another warehouse sale tomorrow!

Here’s a new project that I just started working on:

I really enjoyed making the silhouette portrait of our family for F, and I’ve been meaning to make something to hang up in Otis’s room, so I’m thinking about doing a silhouette collage for his room. Here’s the beginnings - many different tracings of Otis’s profile. I looked through the volumes of digital photos of him since he was born, looking for good images for the project. I can’t believe how tiny and red and squishy he was, and I still mourn the loss of that natural mohawk that he was born with.

In honor of the 100th of my collage series, I’ve decided to write a little bit about the process and the materials. Sorry it took me so long to get to it, Mary P.

Unless you’ve been around for a while (unfortunately, many more than 100 days), you may not know the thinking behind this collage a day project. This was meant to be an easy, stress-free way to get into the practice of making art every day, without laboring over one important and significant Work of Art. It doesn’t have to take long, it doesn’t have to be perfect, and I don’t even have to like the finished product as long as I keep working at it. And I’ve accomplished my goals for the most part. Unfortunately, I haven’t managed to make one every day, allowing myself to take breaks here and there, but it does feel like part of my normal routine now. There are successful ones, and not-as-successful ones, but I don’t beat myself up over the lack of perfection, and I generally feel like my process and my work has improved. It’s been interesting when people do tell about their favorite collages, and it’s one that I consider to be less successful. It’s a pleasant surprise, but I like that different people see different things in what I’m doing.

The Materials

The collages are small, about 4.5″x 6″, and are made on bristol paper. I cut a huge stack of them at the beginning of the project, and have been slowly working my way through them.

For the colored bits, I only use origami paper. I’ve tried using other papers, but keep coming back. I like the thinness and variety of color I can get in origami paper. I’ve never tested whether the paper fades or not, but so far, no collage recipients from times past have reported fading. I really doubt that the paper’s acid-free, though, so I don’t think these will survive in the Shiso Mama Memorial Library and Archives.

Glue - In the very beginning, I used a watered down bookbinder’s glue, which was a high-quality, archival version of Elmer’s, but I didn’t like working with the consistency. I switched to glue sticks for a while, but found that the collages fell apart quite easily. Now, I use this stuff called Yes! Paste:

It’s acid-free. I found it at my local art store, and is a thick, gelatinous paste, and goes on quite easily with a small, flat paintbrush. And Yes! I like it quite a bit.

The Process

The collages have been a sort of visual diary of my life. Often the subject of the collage is something that caught my eye during an outing or walk with Otis. Sometimes, I’ll see something that reminds me of something else, and I’ll let my mind wander and free associate. If I feel totally uninspired, I’ll often give myself time to look through random magazines until a single idea or image catches my attention. Other times, I’ll start with one idea, and it will morph into a totally different image.

I cut everything free hand. I don’t sketch beforehand or measure, and I don’t particularly like straight lines or precision. I basically let the collage take shape as the papers are cut. I usually compose as I cut, moving pieces around to find the most pleasing arrangement.

Sometimes, if there are so many pieces as to make it unwieldy, I’ll start glueing base pieces down before finishing up the composition.

Here it is finished (collage #89):

And then it goes into the sterile, archival storage solution I’ve cleverly devised:

It’s all a very free process from start to finish. Many times the finished product will look very little like what I imagined at the start. But the cutting is so imprecise and variable, and even if you find just the perfect arrangement, it still might change as you glue because you can’t remember the exact placement and angle of every single small piece. And even after everything is all said and done, the scanning process makes them look different as well. Most of the times I think they don’t even look like collages anymore. I love how the whole thing can sort of take on a life of its own.

If you’re interested in seeing the whole set of collage a day collages together, click here.

If you’d like to see some of my other collages, click here.

Feel free to tell me which ones are your favorites.

F’s birthday was rather uneventful, as birthdays seem to be for us nowadays. Besides a trip to Otis’s pediatrician and a platter of cookies at work for everyone whose birthday fell in September, the highlight of the day was his dinner. He got to choose, like he did when he was growing up, and he got his favorite: BLTs with thick cut bacon, juicy tomatoes, and a rustic baguette from our local bakery. And I baked him a supply of brownies to keep in the freezer, which he taps into late at night while he’s working. I fixed ice cream sundaes with brownies, vanilla and mocha java ice creams, almonds, and this fantastically decadent Mexican chocolate sauce that our friend Lynna brought over for us. I literally felt sick after 2 bites and could not eat anymore. But F obligingly gobbled the rest of it up.

With the sleep issues, I haven’t had the time to dream up wonderfully clever and inventive presents for F. He’s received yet another shiso mama version of the “coupon” present (you know, like you give to your mom on Mother’s Day to promise “one breakfast in bed” or “one foot massage” ) - a homemade present. I made him a silhouette cut-out family portrait. I’m pretty pleased with the results, and it was easy, so here’s a tutorial in case you want to try one.

Take pictures of the subject(s) in profile and print it out in the desired size of the finished product.

(Babies may need to be enticed to sit still by repeated viewings of ambulances on YouTube.)

Using tracing paper, trace the outline of the silhouette, catching some of the small details if desired (like stray hairs). Just trace up to a certain point on the neck.

Place the tracing paper on the back of the colored paper. The direction your portrait is facing is the direction of your finished silhouette so if you want it to face the other direction, trace the back first and place THAT side on the back of your colored paper. Retrace the silhouette, so that the pencil lead is transferred to the back of your colored paper.

Cut out your silhouette and glue. Here is F’s original photo, along with his finished silhouette.

And here is the finished product. We just need to find a suitable frame for it, and we’re done! It’s amazing how much it looks like us (and how much Otis looks like a baby even though his head is the same size as ours).