Krack’d Monkey © Myk Edrich, 2010

It was so simple to create, too.

First she cut out letters from a magazine. Then she wrote down a few words on a scrap piece of paper, and cut them out individually.

Next she asked me to pull up a photo I took of a monkey at the zoo and print it out for her. She then traced the monkey and colored it in with black ink. Next she cut it out, leaving just a little bit of white around the edges.

Then she found a kid on a skateboard, traced the image, colored it in, and cut it out.

Next she glued everything to a blank piece of paper and colored around the images and text with different colored markers. She purposely left some of the area rugged as she was going for a graffiti look.

When it was done, we scanned it and added a concrete texture and a black border in Paint Shop Pro.

What she’ll do with it is anybody’s guess.

As a mom, it was just fun watching her play with art.

Keep Creating

When I asked her why she did that she said, “My friends were writing on the tops of their shoes and I wanted to do it too, but I knew dad would get mad so I wrote on the bottom of my shoes instead.”

“Smart cookie,” I thought to myself.

Fast forward a few years and my daughter is once again drawing on her shoes.

Walking Art © MK Edrich, 2010

Aren’t they cute?!

She took a $10 pair of white canvas sneakers from Wal-mart, a few waterproof permanent markers, and an $8 can of Kiwi Select All Protector Spray.

The spray repels water and stains so her artwork should be safe for quite some time. (You can buy the same can for $7 on Amazon.)

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Personally, I love getting photographs of the family each year—they add character and warmth to our family scrapbooks. My in-laws, however, hate getting annual photographs. It’s not that they don’t enjoy seeing how their grandchildren’s children have grown, or even their own grandchildren, for that matter. It’s that they never know what to do with the photographs once they are done looking at them. “We only have so much room in this tiny apartment,” they’d say.

Which got me to thinking about how much fun my children and I had coming up with creative ways to show off their school work and school photos—to distant relatives. We’d make ornaments, refrigerator magnets, wall calendars, and even video recordings. Now that they’re older, of course, those days are long gone. But it doesn’t stop me from reminiscing about times gone by.

In honor of those memories, I put together a fun, quick, tutorial on how to jazz up your children’s school photos.

Abstract Art © Alyice Edrich, 2009

Supplies:

• Wallet-sized school photo
• Strathmore Paper for Acrylics or Watercolor
• Frame with a 4” x 6″ opening
• Colored pencils
• Yellow watercolor paint
• Copper, black, and Titanium Buff acrylic paints
• Thin paintbrushes
• Patterned stamp with four large squares
• Rinse water
• Scissors
• Embossing heat tool or hair dryer

Instructions:

1. Use one of the colored pencils to doodle several circles on top of one another. (You can also get creative by incorporating other shapes.)
2. Use up to five colored pencils to lightly color each shape a different color.
3. Dab stamp with Titanium Buff acrylic paint and gently stamp a few squares over the image.
4. Use heat tool to dry acrylic paint, or let dry naturally.
5. Use yellow watercolor paint to add a thin “wash” over the entire painting.
6. Let dry naturally as the heat tool can curl the paper.
7. While the painting is drying, take the scissors and cut around the child’s portrait until you get a silhouette.
8. Go back to the painting and outline all the lines in copper.
9. Once dry, go back over each line, slightly off to the side, in black.
10. Let dry.
11. Turn the painting over. Use the glass, from the frame, as a template and trace an outline onto the backside of the painting.
12. Cut out the shape.
13. Have your child sign and date his painting on the backside.
14. Lift the back of the frame and place the picture on the screen, then place the painting on top of the picture. Close frame and stand upright.

Congratulations! You’ve just created an original piece of abstract art—in less than 30 minutes!

Note: You can use double-sided tape to adhere the picture to the artwork; however, I like the idea of not taping the two together so that the recipients can change out the picture, annually, if they’d like.

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