Party Time. Excellent.

I've been documenting my preparations for Mr. Baby's birthday! My mom used to (and actually still does!) DIY our birthdays and so I've continued the tradition with these hand drawn and painted storybook characters.

With shopping bag standards shifting in my area, I have a wealth of paper shopping bags that I've been hoarding. Promising my husband that I had a plan(I did not), we continued to keep most bags to use them for my grand plan...though I know he tossed some while I wasn't looking. As I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I settled on using them as a canvas for Mr. Baby's birthday.

This has been a super fun exercise in perusing our library of children's books and finding the images that would be fun to blow up onto the opened up shopping bags. ​

I usually lay down a white background to ensure the color's feel more saturated and less muted from the brown-ness of the bag. I've also been using the bags to create oversized pennants (not pictured) and those have been a fun usage of leftover paints and creating fun patterns and color relationships. ​

In my early postpartum phase I wondered often what my studio practice might look like now that I've filled my time with parenting a newborn baby and could no longer spend hours in my studio. I slowly converted my dining room into a third space: hybrid open closet, library, sewing space, and anything else we needed. The transformation has allowed me to actually create more spontaneously than I had when we tried to keep it a dining room and I'm so glad! Making looks different now: quick doodles between nursing and diaper changes, sewing a line or two while walking between rooms. While the breezy, long stretches of time are gone for now, something about these short bursts feels good, more productive actually. 

I'm excited to continue making these pieces for Mr. Baby and maybe even incorporate these recycled paper bag surfaces in my practice too! 

This weeks funspiration station goes to:
-Caspar Babypants song "Noodles and Butter"
-Grumpy Monkey
-Patchwork practice
-Lancaster County Coffee Roasters Whoopie Pie Coffee