Spoonful of Imagination

Add it to a Family for Something Beautiful

DIY Painted Journals

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Do you ever find yourself needing just a safe, inexpensive way to play?

With everything going on in the world right now, it can be hard to go places. We can create fun at home by creating in our home.

This past week, I found myself analyzing the fall, plans, what to do, how to move forward and it was all real heavy when you mix in COVID-19. I bought some notebooks and just started painting for no reason other than I needed too. It was a safe place for me to play, experiment and enjoy the creative process.

“The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.” -Neil Gaiman

With back to school shopping happening, composition notebooks are only about $0.50 each right now. What a cheap canvas! I bought eight notebooks, gave them a quick spray paint to have a blank canvas and got started just brushing them with big bold strokes of  acrylic paint.

I played with colors mixing, making subtle blends, and big bold blends. It was so fun and satisfying to squirt paint directly onto the notebook and to just start brushing and watching that paint move. I played with directions, pressure of the brush, and the amount of paint. It was therapeutic to play with colors I love and stretch myself with new colors.

I loved having eight notebooks to do at once. It allowed me to keep going and not having to wait long periods for a base coat to dry before I painted more. Once all eight of my first coats on the journals dried, I came back and added some more concrete brush strokes on top of my abstract blends.

I loved picking contrasting colors and create movement that went against the other brush strokes. The final step was stamping some circles and squirting some runny paint on top. The mix of all these colors, layers, and different techniques blended together to create some fun abstract notebook covers.

What do you think? Will you pick up some composition notebooks next time you are at the store? I had so much fun creating these covers that now I am continuing on in them! I love art journaling and after leading some art journaling workshops at the beginning of quarantine, I realized one of my favorite parts of journaling is creating base coats like these.

Doodles, words, collages, poems, paintings, and special notes look amazing on top, but they are also pretty fun just like this!

Have you art journaled? If you haven’t, you may just love it. It is one of my favorite ways to rest and process the world around me!

Do you have a student a little nervous to walk back into a new school year? Maybe painting their notebooks for school might help in the excitement and also open up an opportunity for you to talk and process it all together.

I hope you can find sometime for YOU to create, breath and rest, as you also process the world around you! We are in this together! If you try these paint techniques on some inexpensive notebooks, I would love to see them! Please find me on social media!

Instagram: @ericadeuel

Facebook: @spoonfulofimagination

#spoonfulofimagination

Create your own inexpensive foliage!

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Are you ready for spring?

I don’t mind the winter, as long as there is snow and it’s pretty! Sometimes the pretty is just the trees’ silhouette outline on a colorful sky, since we haven’t had as much snow this winter. There have been a lot of gray, wet days. It has me itching to bring back color, so the other day, I took down all the winter decorations at our art studio and started creating some spring ones. Let me show you how I came up with my foliage!

As the founder of a non profit art studio, we get a good amount of local craft donations from other artists or businesses in town. Recently, we got some fabric samples from a home designer and it got me thinking if I could turn those into some inexpensive green, spring foliage.

I loved how there were different patterns, texture of fabrics and shades of colors. I started by cutting about 3″ long leaves. I didn’t measure or worry about the exact width or shape. This is a great activity to do during a movie or couch lounging one night.

Once I had a huge stack of leaves, I simply started hot gluing and folding them around some wire stems.

You can use whatever wire you have or you can pick some up in the craft floral section at your local craft store like I did. I added a dab of hot glue on the wire and kind of folded one end of the leaf around it. I don’t have any pictures of this step, but if you look closely you can see what I am saying.

I worked in about 3′ long pieces of wire and made a stack of this foliage as I went. I made 8 separate pieces, but you could make as many as you wanted. I intended for my foliage to hang like a garland, but you could create yours on dowel rods for a sturdy base to stick in a vase as well. There are lots of possibilities!

I love how the fabric creates a soft leaf and foliage look. It really makes it more believable by how it moves and does not have a harsh fold. I took my foliage to the studio and hung it down in our faux fireplace.

I love the natural, yet creative pop of inspiration it gives in the space.

It was a perfect way to add some spring decorations in an inexpensive way to our space. What do you think?

So, are you ready for spring? Or, do you want to will it into existence by creating spring looks too?

Creating doesn’t have to be expensive. Use what you have. If you have some old green Christmas decorations, you can cut that up for some leaves. Do you have some green shirts with a stain? You can use that too! On those little leaves, you can’t tell where they came from or what they use to be. When they are all strung up together though, they create a beautiful look!

Have fun and imagine the possibilities! If you create some inexpensive foliage, tag us on Instagram or Facebook so we can see!

Marbled Soup Can Canister Tutorial

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Do you love recycling trash into treasures as much as we do!?

Art doesn’t have to be expensive. Using things you might normally throw away as art supplies is one way to create in an inexpensive way! Soup cans are one of our favorite recycling materials to repurpose into a fun craft. It is sturdy and strong and be a great base for something else.

Today, we are excited to show you how you can turn those cans into marbleized storage canisters.

The first step is to collect your soup cans. We have gotten in the habit of just saving all our soup cans, so when a project idea arises, we are ready with cans on hand. I take the paper wrapper off our soup cans and run them through the dishwasher with our dishes to get clean. Once you have your dry cans, you are ready to create! We spray painted our cans white to have a nice matte base coat for this project. While the tin cans were drying, we collected our spray paint cans and filled a bucket with water. For each can, we choose two different spray paint colors. We added one color at a time.

All you have to do is spray the water with your spray paint color. The spray paint sits on top of the water. You then lay the can on top of the water and the paint will adhere to the can like a sticker might grab onto your hand. After one color was added, we simply looked at the can, maybe rotated it a little to figure out what side needed some more color, and did this step again with the second color of paint.

The can comes out of the water looked marbleized and super fun! After you get the hang of it, you can play with how much spray paint you spray on top of the water to create a more thick or less thick look on your can. We had so much fun doing all four of our cans that we prepped!

After the cans were dry, we used ours to hold art supplies. You could do the same or turn it into something else! A wind chime, flower pot, vase, or candle holder are fun ways to use your new canister too. You can personalize this craft using colors that fit your taste or the size can that fits your need best.

Sometimes it is easier to understand the steps to a project to see it actually happen. To see this craft in video form, you can watch the process on our YouTube channel here.

We love how quick, colorful, process art base, and inexpensive this paint technique can be! We had so much fun doing it to the tin cans that we bought some inexpensive raw wood candle sicks to paint this way too!

How fun are those!? We think they look like they belong on shelves in World Market or Anthropologie. We found some white candle sticks that make the colors pop even more, and we are going to use them as Christmas presents for family this year!

What do you think!? Will you try this paint technique? Do you like making Christmas gifts too!? We’d love to hear from you! Find us on social media by tagging us with your pictures #spoonfulofimagination

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Collaborative Scrap Wood Project

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How often do you feel tired in a project or group?

Without even trying, we all get tired or settled in routines and find a comfortable role in a group setting. We often need something to booster us out and awaken us to the creative ideas and excitement around us once again.

I have found that small, hands on, creative warm ups can do just that. A creative prompt can be just what is needed to switch the brain from autopilot and release the ability to play. As John Cleese says, “the most creative people have this childlike facility to play.”

Here’s a quick activity where you can encourage play before your next team meeting or group setting. While it is a pretty non-intimidating activity, it also reinforces we all have a different perspective-and that is what makes a beautiful, well-balanced team!

The first step is to glue a bottle cap to another solid surface. We used scrap wood, but you could use paper, cardboard, or a number of other surfaces.

Next, we asked our group to see what that circle could be. I didn’t want to give too many examples, because I really wanted to get their perspective on how they saw that circle. My example was to use the bottle cap as an “o” in the word “pop”.

It was so fun to encourage the artists to just start drawing. This wood slice creation did not have to live in their homes as long as they do. We used paint markers, but you could use pens, sharpies, crayola markers or a number of other writing utensils as well!

Every artist saw something different in that bottle cap. Even those that saw it as an “o” as well, saw it in a different word. Those that saw it as part of a flower, saw a different type or color of flower.

We all have different experiences and outlooks on the world. This quick little activity demonstrated that belief. We then attached all the individual projects together on one big piece of wood. I love how it shows us all coming together to make something beautiful. The collaborative piece can then hang somewhere for everyone to see and be reminded that we have something to offer as individuals that is vital to the bigger picture.

If you want to see this idea in a video form, please check out our video on our YouTube channel, Spoonful of imagination.

Give this project a try and let us know how it goes! Share on social media with #spoonfulofimagination.