My latest play date was yesterday. What made it great was that one of my guests was an 8 year old (or there abouts). I have two friends that come to the studio weekly. My friend Debbie C comes every Wednesday and this week she brought her grandson. It is wonderful watching kids create. They come up with some interesting ideas (and I steal them). Here are Patrick’s creations for the day and one that we collaborated on. I kept the collaboration for later collage purposes. We started with paper making and then I taught Patrick the “shaving cream” methods for making collage papers. (You spread shaving cream on a plate, flatten it, put small drops of different colors on it, then take a stick and swirl through the drops to create a marbled effect). Then we did some found object printing.

Debbie and I also created some papers. This is one of my favorite things to do, though I have yet to use my home made papers for much. That will be a goal for next year. The first two are Debbie’s planet and map. The next oval and circle are actually the same piece. The oval was coming apart, so I repaired it by making it into a circle. You can see how much lighter the paper dries, because the oval was right out of the water. The circle was a day later. You can still see some of the orange oval in there. (Funny: I’m not sure why there was a “Q” on my table but the circle with the feather made two “Qs”.)