Willa-Eve Photography

I am delighted to have been offered the chance for Willa-Eve Photography to take pictures of a few of my products. She did a fantastic job- much better than I have done to date. (Felt food is wily! HOLD STILL, Carrot!) Here' s her blog- click here

Here are a few of my favorite shots. You'll find her work all over my Etsy site now http://www.kennasfeltforest.etsy.com/, and I have plans to mail her more items to photograph (Because of course all her great photos are making my lousy ones look even worse!)

quiet book page, picking flowers

Quiet Book page- Matching Shapes

Yummy Felt Sandwich Set

Fresh Garden Veggies Set

I'm trying to find a link to WillaEve- as soon as I do, I'll edit this post! :) She's awesome to work with and will make your products look great!

toddler Christmas- First Painting

Kenna and I have done lots and lots of painting. We've used water colors many times, and we've painted with just water more times than I can count. (She's not even two yet, and she loves dipping, and definately hasn't missed the "paint" part of painting!)

Shamefully, I have been too neurotic to allow actual paint in the house. now, it's too cold to take it outside, but I figured my Month of Christmas Crafts would be incomplete without some sort of real painting, sooo... I took a deep breath and brought out. . . the paint.

It went a LOT better than I expected. she's almost two and understood my two main directions:

1. we only paint on paper

2. we don't eat paint

I pulled out one of my old shirts for her official paint smock, got some chunky brushes and limited her paint selection to green and red (ho ho ho). I provided one brush for each color, and my neatnick child switched brushes each time without ever mixing them up.

I decided that for our first painting experience, I would just let her do her thing on blank paper, no parameters.

She tried lots of different techniques, including long strokes and stippling. I was very impressed. She kept oohing and ahhing at her work, and muttering things like,"No eat", and "So pretty." It was hilarious. She lost focus a few times and almost swiped me with the brush, but I came away unscathed, and cautiously feel like more painting could be in our future.

On my desk lies a recipe for homemade fingerpaint. Do I dare?

Toddler Christmas- stringing beads

I scored some shiny green and red pipe cleaners on clearance last week, and bought some red and irridescent white pony beads to go with it. If you've ever tried to string a bead on a piece of string, you'll know that it is hard becuase string is floppy and doesn't hold it's shape. Pipe cleaners are PERFECT because they stand up and you need less fine motor control to maneuver a bead onto them.
My thought was to make candycanes to hang on the Christmas tree. Kenna (22 mos) took one look at the pipe cleaner and declared it a bracelet. Ah, well.

It took kenna very little time to figure out how to get the beads on, and then to slide them down the pipe cleaner. She was very intent on her work, and chose each bead very carefully. At first, a color pattern was developing (w,r,r,r w,r,r,r) and I was kind of freaking out, but in hindsight, it was just a fluke. :)

She spent about twenty minutes working on this project and got 12 beads onto the pipe cleaner all by herself. I put it away to avoid boredom or frustration, but after nap, she wanted to do more! I am in awe of her determination- it was really hard to get those chubby fingers to pick up a bead, turn the hole towards the pipecleaner and then slide it on.

As any good Mommy would, I did my own "bracelet" and kept pace, bead for bead with her. She loved I had my own to work on and she had hers.

Anyone else had success with stringing beads? Has anyone tried bigger beads, like those wooden ones?

Toddler Christmas- tearing paper

So, I have a 22 month old who wants to cut with scissors and use a hot glue gun. Of course, she can't actually do those things (scissors in particular frustrate her to no end) which means I have had to be very creative in thinking up Christmas crafts that she can actually do and enjoy. My goal was to do one craft a day each day of December, but let's be real... I'll be happy to do one craft a week!

Today's craft started with the fine art of tearing paper- something that my 1.5 year old thrives on! I gave her a sheet of green construction paper and told her to go at it. That lasted about five minutes (a lifetime in toddlerland) and then she was ready for step two.


Step two was to dip each piece in some glue and cover a tree quickly drawn onto a piece of paper. Unfortunately, dipping flat scraps of paper was way too hard, so I changed gears and smeared glue all over the tree. Ahh- as easy as playing with stickers! She happily poked pieces of paper all over the tree, andI was amazed that she didn't place any outside the tree outline. My little OCD baby...

For the last step I whipped out some little red and yellow pom poms. "HOORAY!" she shouted, (pompoms are very exciting around here) and she lovingly stuck each little ball onto her tree as "christmas lights". Be aware, pom poms won't actually stick to paper with a light coating of glue, so while she napped, I securely glued each pom pom down with a big dollop of glue.

Not too shabby for the first toddler art project of the month! Next time, I'd let her color the white outline of the tree green first, or possibly paint it (silly me, I thought we'd cover the whole drawing with green paper! ha!) . I also forgot to let her decorate the star before we started- I'm thinking glitter!