Growing Versions

This beautiful feather (and holder) was made for me as an early Christmas present. According to the designer, it is for trapping cats and getting them to do what you want them to do. It is for fanning yourself. And it is for wiping away tears.

When my daughter draws up her weekend "lesson plan" for playing school, she always includes an art class. Lately, her self assigned projects have taken a new turn.  She no longer uses crayons, markers and paints to create art projects. She is more into doing things with objects. Last weekend, she created a "place where teenagers had a party".  She filled a play tent full of empty food containers and cds and discarded hoodies  (because these teenagers are from the 1990s).  "It is really messy in there because teenagers are very messy when they have a party," she explained simply. The other day, I asked her to create art from something in the room.  I told her she could be use garbage or anything she could find and make it into something creative. She chose a log of wood. She made an ipod/iphone carrier. It is not that portable, but I really like its look.  I think the coolest feature of this design is the pencil holder (at the top). It is a blend...

"Nature is commonplace.  Imitation is more interesting. Gertrude Stein." This is my kid's version of a laptop.  I am really loving the unorthodox key board. Recently, I came across another ingenious version of a kid made laptop made by a child of  Artbarblog.com  who, out of desperation, no access to an ipad on a sick day, came up with another version. Photo: Barbara at Artbarblog.com

It started out as a dog eating everything. Then there were several hours stewing and doing nothing and watching too much t.v. There was a mom resistant to all the ideas that were proposed much to her shame.  But then, like a strike of lightening splitting the sky, a vision about how a nut might be conveyed by a swirly slide came charging out and changed everything. The dog became a tunnel through which an attached and more than a little broken toy turned into a new toy.  More boxes and more milk cartons were added and angles were experimented with .  The mom started to loosen up a little and was in charge of cutting and duct taping.  The kids kept bringing more things out of the recycling bag.  More possibilities were discovered and more vehicles, beyond the nut, were tried.  The milk carton became a channel through which a bouncy ball could pop out of.  Soon enough, the dry version was outmoded by the water slide version.  Inste...

My son got a hold of a little teeny flashlight several months back.  It has a tiny elastic attached to it that allows you to put it on your finger.  He immediately named it a pogon (po-gone).  From then on, he keeps tabs on the pogon.  He finds it and plays with it non-stop for a few days and then it goes missing again and then it is re-discovered.  When he re-finds it or sees another version of it somewhere, he knowingly identifies it.  He earnestly states, "ah, there's the/a pogon". I like knowing what a pogon is. What words have been invented by you or your kids?

Really, what could be better? Are those socks not passing the sniff test?  Fret no more, just slap on some scratch and sniff stickers and transform those boring old, stinky socks into something you can scratch and sniff with pleasure.  Feel free to adorn those socks further to up the "oh wow" factor. These socks were a cinch to make.  Simply cut the bottoms off of an old pair of tights and then decorate to your taste.  You may choose to add additional scratch and sniff stickers as required.