stampin'

We decided to do a last minute, hour before dinner time, totally messy Christmas craft as a family today. It had all the makings a disater (it was 5:00 when we started. I had no dinner plans. It involved paint. The baby was kind of fussy) but we just dove in anyways. Sometimes you've just got to seize the moment, you know what I mean. And I wanted to wrap some presents tonight, and I wanted to make home made wrapping paper with the Little Dude and Hubs happened to be around, so we just carpe-d the diem and hit it.  Hubs assembled materials while I rustled up paint shirts and paints. (My husband is so crazy visual, that he can make a pile of raw potatoes and cutting tools look like a magazine spread)

Then he got right down to carving stamps while I looked for paper and stuff.

It turned out we had everything we needed on hand (that's what happens when you are art supply pack rats), including long rolls of brown paper. It was quite funny though, the Little Dude loves to stamp usually, but today, all he wanted to do was paint with a paint brush. I think it was because his regular stamp collection consists of mainly cars, trucks and tractors. But Hubs was carving out stars and holly and snow flakes - not a tractor in sight. So L.D. was all like, "meh, I think I'll paint some diggers."

We decided to show the way, and after he saw me do a little stamping, he decided he'd try it out.

Inking up...

...and stamping down. Boom, boom, he did it twice and that was it, and he went back to painting. Like I said, no tractors.

The slightly cranky baby meanwhile, transformed into a cheerfully burbling baby as soon as he was freed from the captivity of his play pen and allowed to roam around free-range. He's a full fledged up on his knees crawler nowadays. 

But I must say, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the stamping. 

Also, it helped that Hubs carved me such a nice stamp. He tried out a couple of other things before he got to this snowflake (holly, star, snowman) but this one was for sure the most successful.  Its such a simple idea: Cut up a potato, make a stamp, put some paint on a yoghurt tub lid, get a big roll o' paper and boom, boom, boom. So satisfying to see a nice pattern take shape. 

What was also really nice was the parallel crafting that the Little Dude and I and Hubs had going on. Often when one crafts with kids the temptation is to hover and direct, but I'm told that its a much happier experience for them in the long run if you just let them do their own thing. And of course, the best way to encourage any behavior is to model it. Him seeing his parents enjoying being creative together is better than us trying to get him to go along with any project. And he had plenty of fun with unfettered access to the big scissors, and all that paper and paint. (though I did have to cut him off after 10 paintbrushes. That kid loves a fresh paint brush, and requests one every time he gets a new colour of paint, or even just more of a colour he's already got going. He'd use every brush in the house at every sitting if he had his way)

One of the things I really like about hand printing is the mistakes and variability of it. I love how the density of the paint changes from stamp to stamp, and the rhythm of the motifs when you don't lay it out too perfectly. The splotches and blotches give it character. 

I also love watching Hubs and Kees 'co-paint' as The Little Dude splotches and swooshes with his brush, and Hubs goes along adding wheels to things, and arms and legs to others, and turning it all into a story about a Christmas parade as he goes. L.D. just ate it all up!

And when it was all over, we'd had an hour of messy fun, had two strips of wrapping paper and two beautiful Little Dude murals to show for it, and we ate freezer pizza and raw veggies and dip for dinner. Totally worth it. 

Also, can you believe how high that baby can reach!

Comments

[Marcia Van Drunen]

awesome. way to grab the moment!