Sandras day.

 

It's pretty amazing what this organization does for the children.

I can't show you other than  small glimpses of what has been going on this year.
The evening started with official speaches and a representative from the county gave the organization a certain amount of money. The two speakers ( in Bunad) told us what the whole team had been doing and the children animated it by acting on the stage. Very fun to watch.

Below is the apprentices, Sandras group. They were singing amongst other things. Sandra in the center of my photo.

Here is Sandra's stand. You've seen most of it earlier. She had added some jewelry and a glass she had paint on. This stand was  made all by herself, no adults were allowed to help out decorating for her. We did talk about it, though, the last weekend she was here, and she discussed it further with her mum.

This is a stand made by another apprentice, her theme was horses as you see.

 Jewelry, flowers and lots of different themes. Everything nice displayed, and all of them had their own poster. Everything is organized by the children, even the board work are their responsebility. ( a few adults to keep a certain control and give some advice) Their experiences are of high value for the rest of their lifes. The main slogan is: Learning by doing.

 A proud girl posing in front of her stand. 

In a moment of silence Sandra told me that several adults, unknown to her, had been in contact with her to give their approval of her work. How very nice of them to do so, and how important for Sandra to hear strangers tell her that. Luckily she is good at recieving kind words.

 With MUM!

 Sandra and I, she's eating cake and I'm talking.

On her diploma she got very good remarks and all her work was highly approved. The leader of the apprentice group, Randi, came to me to tell me of her surprise when she saw Sandra's project book. What impressed her the most was that Sandra had made the book itself and that she describes every project so accurate. Randi had shown the book to several other leaders and none of them had seen anything like it before, for a 10 year old that is.
Well, Sandra and I agreed on doing it properly when we first started. And, how can children learn to be accurate if no one shows them how to? To write the process in her book was one of Sandra's favorite tasks. First she wrote on single sheets, just to try different sentenses or different ways of saying it, and then in her book. She loved that, and all the time she felt pride over her doings. That's the way it should be, isn't it?

Nice ta-dah moment this evening!

Another busy weekend.

 

Finally Sandra finished her project poster.

Sandra has been very busy finishing her poster this weekend. The exhibition will be on Octobre 17th and then it's over. I'm very impressed on how she worked all weekend, really she didn't want to but she had to and forced herself. When finished she was satisfied and sooooo happy. Her final result in the photo below.

And this is how she looked when finished.

We had alot of discussions during the process and I'm proud to say she did some good choises. What one can't see in my photo is the use of twinks. Sandra did some detailwork on the leaves not painted with shimmering colors. In the beginning she thought of using the monkey tail to grab some letters, but ended up letting it hold the tag saying: Form and Phantasy, nice project.

It has been fun to guide her through this project, and I'm proud of what she's done. I really hope that the leaders will see what an amount of time she has spent on this task. Most important of all is that she is proud of herself and what she has done.

A sweet and clever girl.

 

 We had much fun last weekend.

You know I bought some crayons for Sandra and last weekend I gave them to her as a present. I did wrap it in meters and meters of paper just to trick her a bit. The photos says it all.

Excitement

HEYYY...another one.

Lailaaaa.....

Ohhhhhhh..............

She loved having her own crayons and tested them rather quickly.
Below you see what Sandra painted in acrylics this weekend. We agreed on making her poster in August. As you see she was inspired by what I did but this is her own though.

She doesn't feel any kind of fear in front of her canvases. It's amazing to see how she just starts to paint. I really hope for her that this approach will last forever. Now that she has been allowed to use acrylics she feels that is the real thing. She loves it.

Thank you for for stopping by, tomorrow I'll show you some lovelies from my garden.
Untill then.

This weekend has been fun.

Sandra made her very first real painting on canvas. (pizzabox)

I'm really impressed by the way she approach whatever she is going to do. Not afraid to try anything, more like yes bring it on.
I showed her some paintings, talked about ways of doing it and she sat down planning her work. I did suggest to her that some simple shapes would probably be smart to start with. She drew some flowers and painted them herself.
Below you see her in action.

 I love the result and she was very proud too. Her mom liked it so much that she was looking for a space in their livingroom to hang it. Best of all is that it's ready to hang. We made the hanging wire before painting it.

Sandra want to do alot more of this and that was what I was counting on too.

I did finish another of my russian doll paintings. This one is a bit different but I like her and she is called : If I was a Viking..... I wasn't kind to her while drawing her feet, but I was trying to keep the shape of a russian doll. If you look closer, you'll see that the shape is still there.

As a Viking I would probably not wear red shoes but I would have loved to own a shield like this one. I don't know why she became a Viking to me, but she did. The background is missing here too, I find it difficult to choose something suitable. I'll have to wait with this one too.

My self portraits, I forgot last week but coming week I'll do another one.

We've had summer today and will have the next days too. I simply love it!
Enjoy your week!

Sandra's project this weekend.

This weekend has been a busy one.

Sandra started a new project, a project I think she enjoyed a lot. Decorating boxes of all kinds. I had these wooden heartshaped boxes and she was going to decorate one of them. We discussed a lot of possibilities and she landed on  drawing and painting. First she drew the heartshape from the box and then she made her design.

She chose the colours she love the most and started colouring before she used the brush and water. In the end on top of all we added a layer of laquer, to make it more sustainable

Phew, first box made, then just to start next one.

The next was an old box I had in my stash. Round and a ribbon fastened to it. Original the box was blue but after a short discussion Sandra decide to make it black and white. Mostly because of the ribbon and she had this lovely dotted paper  from a shoebox.
She used a layer of gesso to hide the blue colour and then we added matte medium and the paper.
She wanted this box to be special and I showed her my very old mother of pearls buttons. There's this lovely shine in them and she loved them too. Top of the lid were painted black and she glued the buttons on top.

We ended up using some larger buttons in the senter. I didn't have enough buttons to coover it all.

Below you see her two boxes. I think she did well even that she became unfocused from time to time. Her boxes are unique and will do well in her display, don't you think?

Last photo shows a tired and proud girl with her two boxes. Now the documentation remains. She'll do that tomorrow before she leaves.

I hope you've had an interesting weekend too.

Busy, busy, busy.

Easter, lots of painting, biking with my friend, a birthday to celebrate and Sandras project.

This has been kind of busy. I have been painting a lot lately and it seems I've started my own version of facebook. (painting faces) It's so much fun and I've seen some youtube films and tried some new things too.
The weather has been excellent lately, frost at nights and bright sunny days.

Sandras project this weekend has been to make her personal project book in which she will describe how she is doing all her different projects. I had to help her of course, but the writing and decorating she is doing herself.

 At the front cover she has added the logo of the organisation she is a member of and which this whole project is organiced within. When the book was done she was very proud and wanted to start writing in it at once. As you probably remember her first try was to make a friendship bracelet. That whole process is now well documented and today she will write about making her book.
I showed her a tecnique to use in her art journal and she loved it, so she has been journaling too.

My journal holds two new faces too. The first one I made I tried to make a face with my own twist and I like it. These downpointing eyes suited me well and the rest was not planned at all. The next became an odd person too but I like her too. The text made me laugh, I didn't plan it but these two seem to be quite opposite of each other. I'm not frightend of hights. I guess it was the high house that made me choose that word. I used acrylics and soluble crayons. The other one is made with crayons only. I was thinking of a thin layer (with lots of water) on top of her to make it look more like a bubble, but I'm afraid of smearing it into a mess. Perhaps I'll try to spray it on.

A birthday to celebrate.
My youngest brother turned 50 this week and we had to pay him a visit. My siblings and I bought him a present and in addition to that I had to make him a bird.
My brother is a dedicated musician and he plays a cornet. Every May 17. he marches in front of the parades playing his cornet,
The bird I made for him of course had to be a cornet tail.

 I suggested to him to use the bird as a mascot hanging on his cornet which created a huge laughter from some of his musician friends.

I hope you have a lovely time as well.

Weekend with Sandra.

Time to start Sandra's 4H projects.

This weekend we started working on Sandra's 4H projects. The first one she chose to work with was to tie a friendship bracelet. We picked her favourite colours, 5 strands of different colour. Then she started the job. It is very important how the knots are done, and that was the first thing she had to understand. She is a quick learner so it was easy showing her how to.
She is not as patient as I could whish and after a while she lost her consentration. Made some mistakes so we had to untie again. Her whole expression showed me that she didn't want to continue. I suggested a break, and she left the project at once.

 

After a while she continued and in fact she finished it that same day. You should have seen her, so proud of her self and the beautiful bracelet she had made. We made some plans for coming weekends and she prefers to work "hard" on Saturdays and have freetime Sundays. That's ok with me too. I think this whole thing is going to be very fun and that we both will learn new things.

 

A couple of hours before she should leave for home she started a new bracelet. That one is ment for her best friend. Before I knew she had made 2 inches. I didn't show her this time, so it became clear to me that she had taken the tecknique on board. Wow, I'm impressed.

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I'm still hooked, making patches and other things too. Last couple of days I've made a cushion and now I work on a blanket to use on top of a baby carriage. I was given all this yarn and now I feel like using some of it. I have promised my friend to participate on this years Christmas market, so it's good all things I can do. :-) The above photo shows the cushion, I'll probably remove the blue stitches and replace them with a chain row instead. I think it will look better with a more visible blue. Below is the blanket I'm working on at the moment. You see the width here and the lenght will have something between 10 and 12 squares. And then I'll add some kind of ending edge.

I hope you all have some creative days too.

A fun weekend.

What a fun weekend we had this time.
I knew Sandra would love the twinks, and she certainly did. She was allowed to use them in her journal and in some other paintings she did.

Now that she has turned 9 years old she has become a member in an organication called 4H. The 4 H's stands for: Head, Heart, Hands and Healt. There the children/youths learn a lot of different things. Sandra is conciderd a trainee this first year, and I have been asked to guide her in her tasks. She has chosen to work within an aera called Form and Imagination. This weekend we made some suggestiones to what things she want to make. She will bind some friendship bracelets, decorate a schrine, make her own workbook in which she will document the processes of all her making, make the paper to use in her workbook, make a multimedia painting. And in the end she'll have to plan and make a poster to hang over her exhibition in mid October. In addition we thought that recycling could be our main goal during all her making.
I think this will be a great year for Sandra and she will learn a whole lot of new things. She is looking forward to start all this and so am I. We've made an agreement that if we have to buy anything I'll pay the bill and in return she has to help out in the house doing specific tasks.

It was so fun to see her paint this weekend, so determined what to draw and paint. I actually think she has grown using her journal. Now she's much more secure in her choices and it seems she has taken onboard the fact that she is the one who is the creator. I'm really glad for this new security of hers.

 Abowe you can see her studying the result and wondering what to do next. And below a close up.

Her final result is another one of my favorites. Look at her lively expression, the colours used and the surroundings. She saw these figures on a candybag, very small ones, and decided to do them in her journal. I'm very impressed the way she transformed them to be her own creation.

I didn't paint much though, I've been busy knitting. I'm so happy to report that my February trade is ongoing right now. I'm knitting a shawl for my trading friend. My goodies will be a painting, can't wait to see it in person.

Take care everyone and stay creative!!

We had a good time.

This weekend Sandra and I was creative.

Sandra made some fabulous paintings this weekend, and I made something special too. In the end of 2011 I made a decision to either trade or buy artwork from my fellow bloggers. My intentions are to do this once a month in 2012. And I'm lucky to report that my very first trade is ongoing right now.

One of my fellow bloggers was interested in my potholders and we agreed on trading. So, this weekend I've been crocheting, painting and writing a tiny bit. My package are ready for shipping first thing in the morning, well first I have my very first training hour to do.

I'm sure you understand why I can't show any photos of my "doings". That would, of course, spoil all the fun for the person who is waiting for my package.
I'm so excited about this, she had some very likable drawings/paintings to trade and I just can't wait to see them in person. What exciting times!!

What I can show you is some of Sandras paintings.

I so much fell in love with these two. I should have taken some photos of them before she painted them, just to show you how fantastic they were. With paint some of the clarity disappears, but I still like them. You really should have seen them in person. And you should've seen Sandra too when she got this idea. She was so eager and didn't have any questiones on how to.
Lucky me to take part of all this.

The text top left says Boy and top right Girl and they are in love as I understood it.
She wasn't quite done when I took the photos. She did a bit more on the eyes and added some more color to the letters on top.
Here's a close up.

I hope you all had as much joy as me this weekend.

Funny faces.

We had a fun weekend.

This weekend handyman took Sandra to a local fair and when they returned she had this face. I had to laugh because I thaught she looked so funny. I'm not a tiger, I'm a cat she told me. This suited so well to my heading today. Funny faces.

We did some painting too this time and we settled for painting funny faces. Sunday was fathers day here so Sandra wanted to paint a piece to her moms boyfriend. She did hesitate a bit at the beginning because she couldn't draw a face, she told me. When I told her that I wanted to draw like her she was very surprised because "your drawings are much better than mine"

Perhaps one need to be a grown up to understand that. To let go of all the knowledge and just draw like a child. I'll have to practice that. I'm far too much locked up in expectations on how it really should look.

Below you see Sandras face, she has used my watersoluble crayons. She wrote the text before I noticed it, I would have suggested for her to write on a seperate sheat. With that said, I love her face. It's so free and creative. That's excactly how I want to do it.


My painting became too much "normal" drawing and too much funny painting. I'll practice!!

This is in fact my first face since the end of August, so it's still in my hand to draw a face. One of the faces I painted in August became a bit more like I'm thinking of. Back then I painted a face without any drawing at all, not easy but fun and I think it became quite expressive. Have a look here. It's the one without a headscarf I'm talking about. It's not a sweet and nice painting but the more I look at it the more I like it.

I was inspired by Janet to try this again, she always makes such beautiful faces. Have a dive into her blog and I promis you'll have some awsome moments.
I am going to make another funny face.


Have a wonderful new week and take good care!

Weekend with Sandra.

This weekend with Sandra was a lazy one.

Sandra was in no mood to do anything special so we relaxed and did a bit drawing. She wanted to learn how to make a mandala and I showed her.
She had forgotten her journal this time so we found her some drawingpaper to work on and I think she liked to do her own mandala.

I think she some times feel it's good just to relax and enjoy the stillness in our house, normally she has three siblings around her and it can be quite noisy from time to time. She hasn't felt quite well lately either. Some terrible headaches are disturbing her well beeing.

Below you can see her making the final touches to her very first mandala. It was early Sunday morning and she was enjoying the heat from the stove.


I had showed her how to draw the lotus design and I think she did it well to be her first time. She was so inspired by my bok with mandalas only, that she wrote Mandala book on her drawing.
I think her mandala came out well and she loved doing it. Perhaps she will draw some more at her own.

She likes very much to help my husband clean outside so they did a bit of that too. She earned some money and was happy.

That's all for now.
Have a nice day and take care.

Busy days.

Hello.
Anyone who remember my showerbuddy? Now it's done and in use. It's really nice to use it but so are the ones one can buy. I finally took the time to finish it, so that leaves me with one item less to think of.


I've had a busy weekend with Sandra. Saturday we went to an artshow together with a friend of mine and her kids. In fact it was Street Art painted inside an old building. Unfortunately my camera went flat so I was unable to photograph anything inside. But, I'm going back soon to do just that because I want to save the images and share them with you. I really liked what I saw and it was easy to compare them to artjournaling.
When this exhibition is over all of the art will be painted over and gone forever, that's why I want to photograph it. I was able to snap some photos outside though.


I was so amazed when I first saw this painted building, what a job to do that. It's so big so I wonder how the artists could keep focus and do it right.
There were a couple of artists out painting the walls this day too and they were kind enough to let our children take part for a while. The kids enjoyed it, and had a really good time. This little boy,Isak, below looked like he had been doing this all his life

Here are Malika and Sandra in action.

Here are Sandra and Isak.

On Sunday it was Sandras birthday (her 9th) so we had to bake some cake for her, and later on we payed another friend of mine a visit. She showed me some very nice dresses which had belonged to her mother. From the early sixties. Sandra got some presents too and was all smiles when I drove her back home in the afternoon. So in addition to that I've read some books.