Sunday, August 30, 2015

Seals

Posted on 8/30/2015by with 2 comments
On our summer vacation sailing trip to Norway we saw quite a few seals in the water; more than all the other years taken together...

 One evening, when we were mored on the rocks of the beautiful skerry Lindholmen/Norway, I just came on deck to take a last bit of the beautiful evening nature in, when I saw some unusual patterns of water movement. For a very short moment a seal was showing it's head, then dived again. Fish were jumping out of the water and from the pattern of the water movement we concluded that the seal hunted the fish by swimming in circles. It was a very exciting observation which lasted only a few minutes.

 Anyway it is rather tricky to take pictures of these sweeties, since they are gone almost every time, I had the camera ready....therefore only a few snapshots were taken, these rest we have to keep in our memories ;-)

Danemark-Ulön/Sweden - 08/03/2015

Posted on 8/30/2015by with No comments
On the second day of our summer vacation we already experienced the full beauty of the skerry landscape.

We had a very nice sailing trip passing the City of Lysekil and traveling through the Sotten-Chanel.
Up there in the North it was already off-season and we were quite happy that everything was less crowded and calmer.

Again we were very impressed and touched by the rock formations. Behind Lysekil the stones changed their color to relish and became very smooth and rounded.
Hugo insisted to stand at the bow the whole day, although the sun was burning down on him....At one point I a wet scarf around his head to cool his little brain a bit and he seemed to like that :-)

Early evening we anchored at a bay at the nature reserve Dannemark-Ulön and simply enjoyed being in nature for the rest of the day.


Stocken/Sweden - 08/02/2015

Posted on 8/30/2015by with No comments
At the beginning of August we finally started for our summer vacation.
A few weeks earlier Wolfgang and his cousin took care of bringing Madita to North Denmark to give us a chance to reach Norway and go back unhurriedly during the 3 and a half weeks time we are going to have....
We started from Frederikshavn/Denmark going North first. Our plan was to peek around the corner at Skagen to figure out how bad the Skagerrak with all it's waves would be....well the wind is coming from the west with 4-5 Beaufort.....when reaching the Skagerrak we spontaneously decided that the West Skerries of Sweden are perfect for the beginning, changed our course and ran for Stocken/Sweden. It was a good decision, as on every first longer trip everybody felt slightly seasick with no sealers to speak of yet. On open sea it was still pretty shaking, but once we reached the skerries all the sudden the waves calmed down and the last stretch towards Stocken was very pleasant :-)
We have been to Stocken twice before, a very calm little harbor with an excellent seafood shop ;-)


Thursday, July 30, 2015

Children's Crafts: And another T-shirt design...

Posted on 7/30/2015by with No comments
Once we are on vacation we will definitely need a lot of T-shirts for they get wet, ice cream stained or muddy so easily....

 Here comes another design we tried the other day with wax batik.

 The first exciting step was, that the children, under my supervision, were allowed to light a match stick and a candle.
They used the burning candle to make wax spot on a white T-shirt. The wax cooled and dried reasonably fast, so that they can turn over the T-shirt and do the back side. In between we put lots of kitchen roll, so the wax can not bleed through.

 Once the waxing was done we dyed the shirts with azure blue batik color following the instructions on the package.
Since the paint bath was hot, some wax melted but that didn't seem to be a problem.
After 30 minutes the shirts were taken out of the bath and rinsed thoroughly under running tape water.
We let the shirts dry and I ironed them with blotting paper to remove the wax from the fabric.

 We are content with the result, although we then realized that the kids could have used even more wax to spot the T-shirt. And a darker batik color might have given a even better result.
We are going to try that the next time ;-)


Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Children's Art: Painting like Georgia O'Keefe

Posted on 7/29/2015by with No comments
We read the book "My name is Georgia" together a few days ago...

 When Friedrich was on a playdate yesterday, Magdalena and I decided to try out some of Georgia's way of painting.
We collected some blossoms from the garden. For the painting we took mini canvases of 10x10cm and acrylic paint.
At first Magdalena had some doubts, but soon she relaxed and enjoyed the process of giving the painted petals structure by blending the colors a lot :-)


Children's Art: Print Workshop Day 7

Posted on 7/29/2015by with No comments
This was the last day of our printing workshop...

 This day's technique was embossing to make stamps out of styrofoam blocks.

 I heated styrofoam blocks with a hot air gun (which we normally need to work on Madita during winters, but there are special embossing air gun available...).
After 30 seconds something we pressed the blocks face down on different materials we laid out flat on a heat resistent surface.
after 20 seconds we had wonderful stamps. So far we did only a few prints with them, after coloring the blocks with ink pads, but I am pretty sure, that this technique will be great to create our own gift wraps.


Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Children's Crafts: T-Shirt design

Posted on 7/28/2015by with No comments
Yesterday we prepared some T-shirts for our vacation :-)

 We put a grid on them using masking tape. The children colored each square with textile paint.
We did something similar before, with gold and silver paint on dark blue shirts.

Monday, July 27, 2015

Children's Art: Print Workshop Day 6

Posted on 7/27/2015by with No comments
Today is day 6 of our printing workshop at home.

 This time the children drew with ball pen on styrofoam plates, leaving impressions everywhere a line was made.
The prints were made after they applied linol paint with a brayer.

 The results are similar to the linol prints, but what I liked about it, that the children can do it all by themselves, since no ultra sharp instruments are necessary ;-)


Sunday, July 26, 2015

Children's Art: Print Workshop Day 5

Posted on 7/26/2015by with No comments
On Day 5 of our little printing workshop we tried stenciling.
The children drew the pattern on construction card board  and I did the cutting with this really very sharp stencil knife....
Well, the prints using these stencils worked in principle. But the card board turned out to be not the best material for this purpose, because first the edges wrinkled so that some paint run under it and second the cardboard dissipated after a few prints....
Anyway the principle became clear to the kids and we definitely will use this technique again, may be with freezer paper on textile?

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Children's Art: Print Workshop Day 4

Posted on 7/25/2015by with No comments
Yesterday we did something really experimental on our Day 4 of the printing workshop: We printed with thread....

 A piece of thread was dipped into acrylic paint and then laid and/or pulled over a piece of white paper.
Rather quickly the children figured out, that the piece of paper can be folded in the middle while the paint stained thread is on the paper and the thread can then be pulled out of it, leaving an interesting "butterfly" pattern.
Here are some pictures:

Friday, July 24, 2015

Children's Art: Print Workshop Day 3

Posted on 7/24/2015by with No comments
At day 3 of our printing workshop we made different kinds of stamps ourselves.

 It was a big fun for the children to mount different materials with double sticking tape of wood blocks or rolling pins. We used toe-seperator, papilot, felt decorative pieces like the little birds and butterflies, buttons, rubber bands, hair bands and many more...
Some stamps worked better than others, but all the textures will give excellent backgrounds for future projects.


Thursday, July 23, 2015

Children's Art: Print Workshop Day 2

Posted on 7/23/2015by with No comments
On Day 2 of our printing workshop we tried monotypes.

 We spread water-soluble printing color on a acrylic glass board using a brayer.
By using the eraser of a pencil we drew our pattern in the fresh paint.
For the print we simply had to lay a piece of paper onto the surface without much pressure. 
After one print you have to spread the paint again and draw something new, that is why it is called monotype ;-)
The children got some experience how thick the paint should be for good results and how detailed a picture can be.
I assume we might come back to this technique when it comes to making christmas cards ;-)

Children's Art: Print Workshop Day 1

Posted on 7/23/2015by with 2 comments
Now that we are finally free for the summer, we started to do a little printing workshop at home.
Actually we already did some printing before, since we couldn't wait for it (see here)...
Anyway on Day  1 four workshop we started with a classics doing linol prints. 
The children drew their motifs on soft cut boards and I did the cutting since the linol cutting knifes are really sharp and sometimes the material just gives way....
But the printing was all theirs :-)
We used different devices for pressing, since I am lucky to own a printing press. But doing it manually worked equally fine so the children stick to that way.


Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Skagen Area/Denmark - 07/18/2015

Posted on 7/22/2015by with No comments
We were early that day, before we had to go back to Hamburg, and drove up to the very North of Denmark, to have at least one good look at the Skagerrak, we plan to cross to reach Norway on our summer vacation.
This walk at the beach was just beautiful and recreative, with the wind and the salty air and the sound of the waves :-)

Saeby/Jytland Denmark 17/07/2015

Posted on 7/22/2015by with No comments
After leaving Laesø and being kind of shaken by the sea, we reached Saeby.
Although it started to rain, we had a very good walk at the beach where the children collected what felt like at least 1 ton of seashells :-)
On our way back we enjoyed the typical yellow colored houses of the old cloister and visiting the beautiful and rather big church of Saeby.


Laesø/Denmark - 07/16/2015

Posted on 7/22/2015by with No comments
At the beginning of the summer school break we were lucky to be a few days off before our real vacation is going to be a up in a few....
Since Madita is in Northern Denmark now waiting to hopefully jump over the Sakgerrak, we went to the island Laeso at the first day, enjoying the atmosphere of a busy summer holiday area and being in nature after a long school year...
The weather was great and we had good winds, but quite some waves from transversely behind, which gave me a good reminder of my old friend the sea sickness. Nevertheless, once being at land everything felt perfectly ;-)


Sunday, July 12, 2015

Saturday, July 11, 2015

Children's Art: Prints and Stamps

Posted on 7/11/2015by with No comments
For a longer time I planed to look into the business of printing with the kids.
Actually I planed to do this during that time of summer break we stay at home....but then I received this very decent book by Traci Bunkers and we had to start right away :-)

 Here comes our first round of printing: We used lids and corks and Friedrich was always eager to try one wood mold I have for years (and can not recall where it comes from).....
For color we used acrylic paint, although I guess in the future we might repeat with ink pads as well :-)


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