Tomato Dragons

Kate got another polymer clay commission--three little dragons for three girls who call themselves the Tomato Dragons. I love the blue one. They are made with Sculpey III and glazed.

Dragons at the Nativity

Kate made a nativity set to display at this year's Festival of the Nativity. It was definitely her own unique creation--Kate's set is made up of Sculpey dragons.  She worked on it for probably a couple of weeks, off and on.  Everything turned out so cute.



She's really been developing her Sculpey skills lately. She comes up with some great detail.



I love the eggshell pieces.



You can tell this is the angel because it has a halo, and is holding a star.



Kate's set was displayed in the whimsical section, which features nativity sets of teddy bears or rubber ducks or other things, and this year a couple of very cute Lego creations. They just happened to have the perfect spot for her dragons.



Displays from another section. (No dragons.)



We took Tavah along, and she and Kate had fun checking out all the exhibits. The backdrop that Anne Marie and I painted was the centerpiece on the stage. Once they got it up there I realized that we had missed the edges. Whoops! When we were putting on the blue base coast we discussed doing the edges, decided that they should be black, and then promptly forgot about it. Ah well. If anyone noticed, they didn't say anything to me!

Kate's shelves (and some art)

Kate's room is full of little things that she's made or collected--things like Shopkins and Littlest Pet Shop figures, and her various Sculpey creations, which are myriad and tiny.  Her bookcase headboard has gotten very full.  I've had the idea for a while to make some narrow shelves above her bed where she can display all these things more comfortably.   It took some time but we finally got it done.  We made a Saturday excursion to McLendon and picked out some wood and some brackets, and when we got home I started sanding and painting.  Kate was running in and out playing with her friend Tavah all afternoon, and every time she came in she would ask, "Are my shelves up yet?"  They took a little longer than that.

We discussed colors and thought these sounded good, and I was able to mix them up with my cheap craft paints.  I got a little roller which I think worked much better than brushing.  As I was working I realized they're the same colors that Lorne Elliot mentions in his song "The League of Lawn Art Lovers" (a favorite of ours since we were in Newfoundland).  Here's the relevant bit:

Thirty Javex bottle windmills, 
Colored some fluorescent hue.
And if they're not to your liking,
Maybe our house will look more striking
If we paint it in three colors,
Pink and green, and electric blue.

(Kate is a big fan of electric blue.)



Each shelf got two coats of paint and then a coat of polyurethane (which I ended up regretting--should have just left it off).  Mounting them on the wall was a bit of a pain, too. The whole process took a couple of days. 



They look good!  We should have realized, though, that any sort of storage solution we come up with for Kate does not get used for storage, it gets used for playing.  She immediately invented a complicated game with different biomes and levels, and started making more little Sculpey creations to enhance her game. 

(She says she wants more shelves.  I indicated that this was unlikely to happen very soon.)



Here's a recent Sculpey creation--Kate made this Marcel the Shell for me.  He sits on my plant shelf over the kitchen sink.  Isn't he cute?



Kate wanted to share this drawing, too. She calls it "Fox of the Forest."She's really been developing her drawing skills lately.

Eraser Dragons

Kate's been making these out of kneaded eraser.

Dragon Cartoons (by Kate!)

Just about every night, before bed, Kate draws while listening to an audiobook.  She's got a great confident line.  (I've never been very good at cartooning so this is fascinating to me.  She gets it from her dad!) She fills up pages and pages--too much to keep up with--but I picked out just a few to share here.  I love their expressiveness.  She does great things with eyes and mouths. 

Kate's Dragons (2013 edition)

Kate wanted to do more dragon pictures like the ones she made a couple of years ago, so we went out after church and got some photos, and then she went to work in Photoshop.



This little guy wants a bite of Kate's marshmallow.



The bright sunshine drove us into the shade by the rock wall, where I discovered that we were getting some great reflected light off the parked cars. (That's Santa Pillbug crawling up the wall in the background.)



Dragon in a tree.



This one's hatching out of an egg.



(I helped with the arm overlapping on this one--she had it down but I just smoothed out the lines a bit.)



So cute!

Kate's Owl

Kate made this cute little paper owl. She said she got the idea from Ramona the Brave. (I think she copied the design off the owls on her pajamas.) Fun!

amphibian dragon facts

Kate modifies her homework.

"Mairy Crimis"

Kate made this card for her teacher. I love her spelling.

She did the whole thing in ten minutes before bed.  She says this is Santa, and he's smelling a chocolate-and-strawberry-scented bow on a present.  (No beard--beards are hard.)

gobble gobble

Kate's hand print turkey from school. She said they all painted their fingers in stripes, but then she moved hers back and forth on the paper to smear the paint. Like making a snow angel!



She also brought home this turkey hat. Cute!

We had Thanksgiving with Doug's sister Erika in Everett. (Grandma Mary was visiting, too.) We had a bit of traffic and heavy rain on the way up, and the kids were tired of being in the car, but we had a nice time. Kate and Doug both had Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off. Hooray for five-day weekends!

This Thanksgiving I was particularly thankful for a washer and dryer, and hot water, and electricity. Andy threw up twice on the bed Tuesday night, and again the next morning (got the carpet that time). We're pretty sure it was from a hot dog he ate. Apparently some kinds are okay and some kinds reduce him to a Miserable Vomitous Mass. Poor kid.

Dragons, Monsters, and a Cookie Spider

Kate brought this home from school. She named it Licorice, and then ate it for her after-homework snack. (I was relieved that she did decide to eat it, rather than keeping it as a friend.  I could see her wanting to do that.)



We were over at the Tracys' recently to practice a song for a special musical number at church. Kate treats the Tracys' house as something like a toy library. This time she borrowed a little Fisher Price dragon that she calls Golden. When we got home, she told me she wanted to write some things about Golden (like she did with her starfish.) She had me draw a picture of Golden which she colored in, and then she wrote this:

by Kate and Mom
note (my mom that is)

We discovered that Golden eats presls [that's pretzels] and cheddar cheese cheese cheese.
Golden is a treasure finder.

(She did ask me how to spell a few words.)



And here's a little "Things I Like" book that Kate made at school.

Written and Illustrated by: Kate AKA Randall (that's Randall from Monsters Inc.)



I like dragins
I like bugs



I like my cornr (this is something about a spot in her classroom. Kate tells me that the bit above that says "Note, how long is this book")
I like giyint squids (I love her spelling. The squid is cute too.)



I like Spore (computer game)
I like zoos



I like me to

I love seeing what she comes up with.

In which we consider taking up letterboxing, and make a stamp

I've had the thought that perhaps we should try geocaching.  We went with some friends once, when Kate was really little.  It seems like it would be a good way to get out and explore new places.  Doug and I are perfectly happy to just explore for the sake of exploring, but I thought Kate might get more into it if there was some sort of goal and payoff.  But we don't have a GPS, so that does present a bit of a problem.

We had a ward activity not long ago which included a brief presentation on fun (and cheap) summer activities, and one friend mentioned that her family has been enjoying letterboxing.  "Oh yeah, " I thought, "We could do that!"  Letterboxing is like geocaching before geocaching was invented.  (Sort of... the two exist concurrently now.)

The two things you need for letterboxing are some kind of little notebook and a stamp.  The book was easy--I have several little books from my bookbinding class at BYU that I've never done anything with.  I thought it would be fun to have Kate draw a dragon and then turn that into a stamp.





We decided to use the one in the middle (that's Toothless!)



I got a block of this rubber stuff called "Moo Carve" at Artco, and did a graphite transfer to trace the dragon onto it.



Carving!  Doug and I had the idea we were going to do some linoleum block carving, several years ago, and got a set of tools.  They've only been used on potatoes and they're rather rusty.



All done!  I need to get some kind of wood to mount on the back, but it works fine for now.



Kate added a scene to this one.

After this she wanted to make more stamps!  I suppose we'll have to do that.

Kate's Dragons

I had this idea a while ago. We gave it a try yesterday, and it worked out really well!

Kate and I went outside and took some pictures, and then we uploaded them onto the computer and Kate added dragons (and other things) in Photoshop.




I love the teeth and tongue on this one.



I showed her how to paint on a new layer and how to undo.  She's going to be proficient in Photoshop before she hits middle school. She used my graphics tablet and pen part of the time, and just drew with the mouse for the other part. She's pretty good with both!







Kate really had a blast doing this. We've already taken more pictures that she's going to work on.