Tilly's Photography

Tilly recently turned 4 years old - and as one of her presents she got a little camera! (it was just $5 at Kmart - a great price to just try and see if she is interested in it). Tilly LOVES using it - and here are some of her first photographs...

 A self portrait!

 A picture of mummy holding Curtis.

 Tilly's dress-up shoes.

 A half eaten biscuit.

Some fluffy coat-hangers.

They are all a little blurry as Tilly hasn't quite got the hang of staying still when using the camera. And they are quite dark as there is no flash on the camera and she took many of them at night... Still, not a bad effort... I find it quite interesting to see what she chooses to photograph, and which photos she really likes seeing when they are downloaded... Out of her first lot the half-eaten biscuit is her favourite! We will share more photos here as Tilly's new interest develops.. and probably upgrade to a better camera for Christmas or next birthday!

I'm back!!!

Okay, I never actually went anywhere - but I have unfortunately not made any time to persist with this blog.. and I really do want to!!!!

My two young kids are SO awesome and me as their creative mummy wants to focus on their art and creativity so much - so I'm going to commit to updating this blog regularly with all the fun things that we do and learn and explore...I will start up again from now - but expect a few 'previous' pics and activities to come along as we have been doing LOTS over the past year that I haven't put in here :(

Right now my baby boy is 19 months old he loves getting into the art room and getting messy with a bit of paint. he is being very bold and likes to do fast sweeping movements with the paint - just havet to watch him as he will paint everywhere if given the chance. Apart from painting he loves playing with water - just pouring, tipping etc. He is enjoying play-dough, and a bit of drawing with pencils and textas - but usually before too long he decides that it is more fun to THROW all the pencils and textas as far as he can.. He's enjoying scrunching up his paper too!

 

Curtis and Tilly painting - please excuse the near-nudity - nothing is better and cleaner than just whipping off their 'nice' clothes on a warm day when they feel the need to paint!

Play-doh fun together - sticking lengths of spaghetti in makes it more sculptural!

My daughter Tilly is heading for age 4 now (omg!) - just a couple of months away! She LOVES her art - it's exciting to see her drawings and paintings now becoming much more representational. The one of a Nemo fish above really surprised me as I had given no advice or suggestions - I was busy tidying something up and was blown away when she said: "Look at my fish Mummy"

Tilly loves getting into the all the craft bits and pieces - more so when she just has free-range - but also can be quite happily engaged in an 'activity' that I come up with... Below is the BIRD she made recently in the Kindy Art class at A Little Creative. 

Tilly and her bird - she didn't want his to have legs, and she also gave her bird an extra eye on the top!

Curtis and Tilly 'underwater'.

Yay! Some creativity that little Curtis can be involved in!

I recently got sent an email featuring fabulous pics done by artist and mum Adele Enersen of her baby Mila. She create's a fantasy background scene around her little baby when she is sleeping and then photographs it. I loved the pics - so decided to do a background creation of my own...

It was so much fun! Will definately be doing more of these in the future.. Little Tilly can help with creating the scenes, though at this age she can be a bit frustrating by not following my directions properly to move in the right position for the photograph!

Fun in the kitchen!

Tilly LOVES spending time doing some cooking in the kitchen - obviously the main attraction is that she gets to eat some yummy stuff! Mainly we make cakes, cookies, etc. We have tried cooking many things with her - but at this age she loves to eat the ingredients straight away so working with raw meat etc. is a bit troublesome, and anything that takes too long can lead to some teary tantrums... so we tend to go for the 'quick-fix' fun to eat straight away stuff.

Cooking is always a big mess, plenty of spills and things going where they aren't meant to... but seeing her in her gorgeous cooking hat and apron makes it all worth it!

Here she was making chocolate cake with daddy!

Tearing paper and gluing

Lately Tilly enjoys trying to cut paper (her scissor skills are slowly developing!) and also tearing paper into strips. Really the cutting and tearing grabs her interest most - but I then encourage her to stick the pieces down to make a collage.

Above, the yellow strips are stuck onto a paper-plate to make a sun.

Below large colour pieces are stuck onto a paper background: abstract.

Tilly is using watered down PVA glue and a brush. She usually uses glue sticks, but I decided to try a different glue this day. Watery glue is messier... so as it was a hot day we decided to take her good clothes off!

Writing in outlines

Granny and Grandpa came up for a visit recently and as part of our preparations I decided to make a 'welcome' sign to place on their bed.

I wrote the word 'welcome' in black and then gave it to Tilly to 'decorate' with here coloured pens.

I was utterly amazed when she did this with the red pen:

I gave her no instructions, yet on her own she traced inside each of the letters!!!

I then took the red pen off her so that I could show others what she had done!

Here is the final result:

Playing with blocks

Blocks must be the most basic toys about... Tilly got her block set in a timber push-cart trolley for her 1st birthday. They are always around ready to be played with... usually the challenge is to simply stack them on top of each other and get them as high as possible, then enjoy knocking them over: CRASH!

Recently though, I looked at what Tilly was building and was impressed by the way she was matching her colours and making some quite architectural looking towers! - I think these structures would look quite at home in large scale in the city of Melbourne!


Here it looks like her Yellow building has a multicoloured shadow! Love it!