A number of people had suggested I come up with a line of designs that could used as name plaques to hang on doors – or wherever!  I completed this set of personalized prints awhile ago, but was waiting to see how popular they might be before adding them to the Bealoo Kids website.  They have done enormously well on my etsy site, so I have finally added them to the Bealoo store  under the category “Personalized Prints and Word Art.”

I’m still wild over Gelli Plate printing!  Last week I posted a set that I completed of birds.  This week I’ve moved onto dresses on a clothes line, which I was inspired to do for the simple reason that a dress seemed really easy to cut out.  For these prints I cut out a basic shape of a dress and then painted them black with the white dots and highlights.  I then added paint and texture to my gelli plate, put the dress on top of the plate facing up, so that the paint would imprint on my printing paper along with whatever was on my gelli plate.  You can see more of my dress prints on the Bealoo Kids facebook page

The great thing about using a gelli plate is that it can provide countless ways to incorporate more texture on the surface of  paper. The gel plate is a soft and  silicon like texture.  In order to create a gelli  print you roll paint onto your plate and either imprint designs onto your plate, or leave patterns on your plate to create negative space when you pull the paint off onto your paper.  You can imprint things like, bubble wrap and stencils easily onto it without using much pressure.  And most of my prints are comprised of two or more layers of paint and designs.  Each time you roll paint onto your plate you can create one print and one ghost print, which is taken by removing the patterns you have left on your plate.    Sound complicated?  It can be!  For the background of these prints I mainly used corrugated cardboard.  If you are interested in finding out more about how to use these printing plates visit a demo here.

I think my daughter has the dancing gene.  How else can I explain this obsession with her second hand ballet shoes and dress up tutus after growing up with a couple of brothers?  I do, in fact, sometimes feel bad that she doesn’t have many “girl” things.  I am hoping to skip over most of the unnecessary dolls and knick knacks for the more useful and already abundant chattels in our house, such as Lego.  Nevertheless, I am daily reminded that she is waiting to start dance lessons, and she is constantly showing me how she can do a plie and a twirl, while wearing her usual costume of some sort of fairy wings, and a tutu.  Thus, I have been inspired by my beautiful daughter to paint the latest series of Bealoo Kids prints titled “Love to Dance“.

Well, we finally have a “pin it” button on the Bealoo Store, although it is a little hard to find!  With the introduction of Pinterest Business Accounts, we have finally been able to attach a button to our shopping cart.  Look at the image above to see where it is located under each item in the store.  If you click on the “share” button under the detailed listing for each product you can like, tweet or pin it!

Learning the alphabet is a part of the initiation of growing up.   Besides laying the foundation for phonics skills, it’s a fun way to spend time with your child.  In our house we always sang the alphabet while we brushed our kids’ teeth.  Displaying alphabet art is a great way to help with letter recognition and making a connection that each letter represents different sounds. I was inspired to create this Eco Alphabet  from images that are already part of the Bealoo collection, or that I had archived away a number of years ago, so although there is very little new art in this piece I think it has come together to be a bold and colorful piece of art that will look great in any child’s space.  I chose the nature theme to make this piece gender neutral and to inspire kids by bringing our environment into the playroom!

Here is part two of my woodland animals collection.    There is something very calming and reflective about painting.  With three kids and a busy schedule it is often the only time that I really have to sit and contemplate things.  Perhaps, because of the Bear,  painting these made me think about Winnie the Pooh, which was one of my best loved books as a child.  I always remember this quote, which is one of my favorites from A.A. Milne.

” If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together.. there is something you must always remember. you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. but the most important thing is, even if we’re apart… I’ll always be with you.”

You can find these prints in the Bealoo Kids store.

When I was a kid enjoyed reading the book “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” by Roald Dahl multiple times; it was one of my favourites!  And I recently saw the movie of the same name by Wes Anderson for the second time; it is also one of my favourites.   Foxes are cool and sleek and to me an animal that can express such a lot of personality, so I was inspired by the fox to create this most recent set of paintings of woodland creatures.  You can find them for sale in a variety of finishes in the Bealoo Kids store

I love bubble wrap!   Every piece of art I’ve been creating lately has involved bubble wrap.  I find it really interesting to incorporate industrial materials into my art and the bubble wrap method is one of the simplest  to achieve. It consists of taking a piece of bubble wrap, applying paint to it,  and then using it like a stamp on your surface. The size of the bubble wrap is up to you, as is the size of the bubbles. It creates symmetrical circles for a unique look.

This technique can be applied to the whole surface as a background or to parts of the piece for an accent effect. You can paint your bubble wrap in different colors to get a multi-color effect. Any way you choose, the bubble wrap method adds an original touch to any piece of art.  Just make sure your paint is dry for each layer of color you apply. Failure to do so can result in a muddled mixture of paint colors that can come out looking brown. Unless that’s the look you’re going for, be sure to let the paint dry.

Creating a piece of art from inexpensive items lying around the house can be very satisfying.  Check out my latest piece below!

My Latest Prints

I’m going to tell you a little story about this new heart art of mine.   My  7 year old son, Adam, came home after school today with a friend and spent the afternoon coloring, which is a rarity.  Usually the after school activity is  something a little more wild like, chasing each other around the house, or sliding down the stairs, or chucking things down the stairs.  The calm atmosphere was a shock, and I took the opportunity to pull out my gelli plate and do some printing.   I have a full basement set up where I can be artistic, but it’s cold and dark at this time of the year, so I usually haul all my supplies upstairs and shake out a double thick plastic table cloth onto the dining room table, which happened to be where the kids were.  Here I witnessed an interesting conversation.    I love that you can look at kids and see the gears turning and then suddenly something  totally random will with pop out.

Bianca:  You know Adam, there’s only one guy who has changed the world.

Adam:  Who is it?

Bianca:  I can’t remember his name.

Just as a side note, these two are NOT coloring anything progressive.  They are coloring pictures of Hello Kitty, so this topic of conversation, I’m pretty sure, didn’t come from contemplation about their coloring pages.  In my head, I think -they couldn’t mean Jesus could they?  I mean,  if you asked that question to a lot of people that would probably be a common answer.  These kids don’t  go to church, but on such a spur of the moment I couldn’t think of who they would be talking about but Jesus, so I said, “Jesus?”

Bianca:  No, it’s not Jesus.

Adam:  Is it that guy who goes around the world?

And then silly me said, “Do you mean Santa Claus?”

Bianca:  NOOOOO!  He talked to a lot of people, but I can’t remember his name?  He changed the way people think!!

And then, I thought, she can’t possibly mean Martin Luther King?  After all these are a couple of Canadian kids.  We don’t even learn about this guy in school, so in an off handed way I blurted out, “Martin Luther King?”

Bianca:  YES!! He was a great man…

So there you have it.  If I didn’t work on this art, I would have missed one of these precious and incredible moments.  And so, these prints represent why I am sitting here with my kids after school,  being an artist instead of working hard at what some would call a “real” job.  And what a coincidence that I was making hearts, when it’s these occasions that are the most dear to my own.