Little Old Lady Land

My mother (Mum) is a costume designer and seamstress. She freelances throughout the state designing and building costumes for plays and musicals. She's currently working on a production of the Mel Brook's musical, The Producers.

Mum was unbelieveably helpful and amazing helping me get the dance recital costumes all ready to go - so in return I'm helping her with a small piece of this really big show. There's a scene set in "Little Old Lady Land" where twenty two chorus members are dressed as identical old ladies!


Crazy, right? So while Mum set about making 22 identical dresses, I helped out with the headpieces. Hats and hat forms are expensive, so we had to create hats that weren't actually hats. Plus, Mum wanted something a little more whimsical and even sillier looking than the original production. I used dark blue tulle and some fake flowers... and here's what I came up with...




I built 22 of them last night and now I'm passing them on to Mum at the theatre, where they will be sewn onto the wigs.

You end up with some crazy projects when you're a costumer - or a costumer's daughter for that matter!

It's been waaaay too long!

I'm back! It's been far too long, I know. The good news is that I've wrapped up some big projects and time-consuming commitments and am ready to take some time for me - and some time for my poor neglected blog!

I look forward to getting you all up to speed on projects I've been working on, and projects that are coming up soon. I'm also going to be continuing to play around with the format of this blog. I'm much happier with a three column template - but as my mother noted (and mother's are *almost* always right - it feels a lot less intimate now... and I don't want that!)

So thank you for hanging in there with me while I've been gone, and for continuing to be patient as I play around with formatting. I appreciate all of your comments, e-mails, and visits so much!

I'm doing a lot of teaching this summer, and am very much looking forward to it. This afternoon I taught my first of a series of art projects based on picture books to a mixed age group of elementary students. Today's project was based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, and was based on a lesson from Art Projects for Kids.

Children drew eight lines of any length in the middle of their paper with a pencil, then joined the tops and bottoms of the lines to create a caterpillar body. They then added a head, tail and some feet.


Then they went over all of their pencil lines with a dark crayon...

Then they painted with watercolors, experimenting with using different amounts of water and paint to create lighter and dark shades. They were encouraged to leave no white space (some of them did this, some did not) and create a really colorful piece. We discussed the way that the crayon resisted the watercolor paints, and showed through even when painted over.




Here are some of the finished products...


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It's been awhile since I taught, so this was a bit of a brush up lesson for me. I wasn't thrilled with using palette watercolors - I much prefer liquid - but they are much more expensive. I would also prefer a heavier paper - so the next time we do watercolors I will splurge on some watercolor paper that can handle the moisture a little bit better.

Working in nonprofit you work with what you have - and this is what I had. I think the students did a nice job on this project, and I can't wait to work with them some more!

Dance Recital Update!

With just three days to go before the dance recital - we're in the home stretch! Last night I finished the rest of the flower headbands... (click HERE to go to the tutorial)


Lilacs


Cherry Blossoms


Daffodils


Bluebells


My Mum was here this weekend and brought out the roses and lilac tutus - they are so pretty! The daffodils and cherry blossoms are done too, just bluebells to go - and a few other non-tulle costumes!

Can't wait to share photos of the costumes in action after this weekend!

A Little Bitty Round Up

Some favorite recent projects from around the blogosphere... check them out! (click to enlarge)


1. Freezer paper stenciling by Roots & Wings Co.
2. Photo Wedding Guestbook by Chica & Jo
3. Keepsake pincushion box by Samster Mommy
4. Laptop Sleeve at Sew, Mama, Sew!
5. Cheesecake Pops by Bakerella
6. Patchwork Button Pouch by mairuru

Fourth of July Cupcakes: Prototypes

Heather and I got together for a little baking fun this weekend while the boys worked diligently on putting up a new fence in our backyard.

Inspired by some fancy patriotic sprinkles I had found last week, we decided to prototype some 4th of July cupcakes.

We used a Betty Crocker white cake recipe divided into a cupcake pan. It made for nice, dense, cupcakes - which complemented the sweet frosting (courtesy of Saucy's Sprinkles) really well.


Betty Crocker White Cake Recipe:

Ingredients

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup butter

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 cup milk

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease and flour a 9x9 inch pan or line a muffin pan with paper liners.

In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla.

Combine flour and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well.

Stir in the milk until batter is smooth.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until golden brown and toothpick comes out clean.

We used the same concept as Saucy's Sprinkles' Superkid Cupcakes which we made for Lily's Birthday Party to make red, white, and blue cupcakes!


Then I experimented with icing. Only problem was that the tips and coupler I bought didn't match - so I couldn't use them! I winged it and used the bag only... (can you tell I know NOTHING about this!)



Thank goodness for sprinkles - they totally cover up imperfections!



Looks like Heather and I need to get ourselves to a cake icing class to hone our skills. Not bad for a first effort though, and we still have a month until July 4th!