Mrs Maker's Projects

Bob (6 years, 10 months) is a Minecraft enthusiast just like his one-year older brother. They often play Minecraft together, because ”it's fun and we have a family account”, confirmed Bob. Boys also play Minecraft with Lego and other plastic figurines, which they received as a birthday gifts from their classmates.  Today Bob decided to paint his favourite Minecraft game tool: the Diamond Pickaxe. He tested different techniques (brushing and rolling). He thought that coating the canvas with a roller was fast and fun, so it was a winning technique. Bob also tried Jackson Pollockian dripping paint with stick technique, but not the other revolutionary techniques (splatter and action technique), that Pollock invented. Bob has already tried the action technique (see my previous post on Bob's take on Mona Lisa), and the splatter technique is something you would not want your child to try out in your living room.  Then we moved from traditional art making to the use of software i...

On 6 August 2014, when my son Xan and I were fetching vegetables from Jiřího z Poděbrad Farmers’ Market (Prague 2), Xan asked if we could buy sunflowers, too. “My favourite flowers are sunflowers because they are yellow and beautiful. Sunflowers are tall as well”, said Xan. I think most people would agree with that.  Later that day we took photographs of the sunflowers from different angles, just in case Xan, or his little brother Bob, would like to draw them later. Previously, the brothers had drawn vegetables, that we had bought from the market, so I thought this time would be the same. Indeed, it was! On 9 August, Xan started his sunflower project, and by 28 September we had the painting framed and hung on the wall. (A photo of the framed painting and a video of the project can be found at the end of this blog post).  We printed the photographs we had taken earlier on, and Xan was also using a tablet as he could zoom in to see the details. On a stretched canvas, Xan starte...

”This is called a rocket on earth, but when it is in space it's called a space ship. The stars are silver coloured instead of gold or yellow. The moon is made out of rock and dust. There is an astronaut inside the rocket. There is fire coming out of the rocket, so the rocket zooms to space. There's no gravity in space, but on the moon there is a little bit of gravity.”

Happy Holidays! I forgot to mail Christmas cards this year, so here is one via email and/or social media to all our friends and family! Why waist your money on buying printed cards, when you can ask your children to draw a unique design! You can teach your children to use Gimp (or other graphical design programmes) to make the layout for the card, too. Very useful project. 

Tonight, my oldest (age 6,5 years) drew some Red-bellied piranhas. Here are his fresh comments:  ”Red-bellied piranhas have snapping mouth, because they like to eat all the time. They are too hungry, because they have small sharp teeth. It means that they are fishers who are dangerous to small fishes. This means they eat small fishes. So, when they are too hungry they need to find small fishes or sometimes they eat fish eggs. Noin ne tekee oikeasti . That is what they are doing really. Now you know about Piranhas, the fishers. In some countries, these people who live in rainforests, they use piranhas for scissors. That helps rainforest people to live.”

Boys made Bad Piggies contraption today out of an old wooden box and three broken Alvar Aalto stools... Notice also the small wheels attached to the wooden box. Notice the handbrakes on both sides of the device which, btw, travels on land quite fast!!! Priceless! Bad Piggies is popular puzzle video game developed by Rovio Entertainment.

In downtown Helsinki (Liisankatu 11 D 19) we had a masonry stove (in Finnish kakluuni ) in a building, which was constructed in 1906. In Finland, the masonry stove industry flourished at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. After the First World War, various new heating systems replaced stoves.  One day I decided to cast 3D impressions of some of the figures using mould making and casting materials I bought from a distributor of dental products. Sounds weird, but it was cheaper than getting the materials from an arts and crafts shop. The project was easy and fun.  I ended up making casts, that I used to decorate the surrounding of the ceiling lamp and the space above the windows in the living room.  Adding little paint, the figures looked like they belonged in the room there as they were repeating the figures of the stove.  Dragonflies around the ceiling lamp. The original colour of the stove was ivory, but someone had painted it with a silly brown paint. I ...