Kissing the Dragon
They’re called “terrible twos” for a reason.
When Myla was two and her daddy was deployed, we used his R&R from Afghanistan to take a trip to Hawaii, where we were first married. We decided to island-hop, since we knew the islands fairly well…but Hawaii with a toddler was much more difficult than we had anticipated. We did our best to enjoy the islands while escorting (and attempting to entertain) a ferocious little toddler-dragon, ready to explode at any moment with the touch of a hand or a step up a stair. She had been by my side constantly while he was gone, but for most of the trip she clung to Daddy, and suddenly wouldn’t come near me at ALL….until one very special moment that my husband magically caught on camera. She finally let me pick her up and hold her, and I kissed her on her little dragon-nose as she put her arms around my neck.
…And then afterward, she promptly pushed me away. As toddlers do.
Still, it remains one of our favorite photos…a sign of hard-earned affection and unconditional love.
So when CanvasOnTheCheap asked if I’d be interested in trying out one of their canvases, I finally decided on the magical photo of the special time when I dared to kiss a baby dragon on the nose.
I get offers of things from time to time, and I often refuse them, but I was interested in giving this one a try–I had seen versions of these before, but when this one arrived (and it arrived VERY quickly after I ordered it), it was quite lovely.
I chose the simplest options, and yet it came with a wall mount bracket, supported by an internal frame to keep its shape.
I debated on leaving it plain, as it was so lovely on its own, but leaving things plain just isn’t my style. So after a little thought, I decided this one needed an Imaginary Friend.
I started by using a snarling fox reference, and freehanded a little furry girl behind us. I was going for a “luck-dragon” sort of vibe, but with just a hint of the toddler-terror bubbling just below the surface. I wanted her to be cranky, but not feral.
I used acrylic paints, and just brushed the basic shape down with some rough shading after I got a bit of detail in the face… I went with plain greys and whites so as not to compete too much with the color of the canvas.
Painting wispy hairs is one of my favorite things to paint, and the more I added, the more personality and tension it seemed to give her.
And there it is! My lovely printed canvas from CanvasOnTheCheap, mixed in with an imaginary dragon. And it makes me smile.
The great thing, is that they gave me a canvas offer to give away for FREE! So–if it’s your thing–head over to my Instagram page, where I have instructions for how to enter the giveaway of a CanvasOnTheCheap photo of your choice on the post of this photo. We’ll choose the winner from that post, so if you’d like to enter, be sure to enter there! I may let Myla pick the winner by random…because she WAS the baby dragon, after all…. 🙂
On a side note: it’s been a while since I’ve posted! We’ve had some big life changes–my day job as a distance graphic artist has advanced into an in-office Marketing / Graphics position, and we moved up to Missouri to be there for it. I’ll still post here, but only when I can, when it doesn’t feel too stressful. It’s a big change for sure, but it feels like a good thing. Maybe not a “finally kissing a baby dragon on the nose” good, but very good nonetheless. 🙂
Easy Dolls
I’ve had my daughter come up with doll ideas in the past that have been fairly complicated, and required a great deal of my attention. But a few days ago, in an attempt to keep her occupied in something creative (rather than vegging out on her Ipad), I suggested she DRAW her own simple pillow-dolls.
“I can DO that?!?” She questioned. Of course! And the best part is, it takes minimal mom-effort. 🙂
I started with a bolt of inexpensive off-white muslin fabric I had. I have no recollection of how I obtained this fabric (I think my mom once sent it to me), but it’s been around a long, long, time, and I use it for EVERYTHING.
I grabbed our bag of permanent markers, and told her she could draw away, keeping in mind that it had to have a seam around it, preferably simpler than the drawing, to make sewing easier and more sturdy.
Once she did that, I took her to the sewing machine, where I had her help guide the fabric (she’s still learning to use it herself), and with the fabric doubled over, we just stitched all around the outline, leaving a gap on the leg to stuff it.
I figured this would be much easier than dealing with flipping a doll inside out, as you do with more detailed works, and this was VERY exciting to her. We cut out the doll around the stitching (see the gap in her leg? That’s where we stuff), stuffed her, and then completed the stitching with the machine.
She was SO excited! You’d think we’d never made dolls before. “Why didn’t you ever TELL me we could do this??” she asked excitedly. I reminded her that I had tried to get her to do this MANY TIMES over the years, but she always had WAY more complicated things in mind. Anyway, apparently times had changed, and she was enthralled, immediately sitting down to draw more.
And they were lovely! She said she wanted to call them “SweetKitties,” and asked if she could put them up for sale in my Etsy shop for $5 each. I had intended to offer them here, but surprisingly, they sold out within an hour of posting them!
I am so grateful to have so many sweet and generous people that read our blog pages and social media supporting our art, and I’m grateful for each and every one of you reading these words right now. Her excitement that someone actually bought her SweetKitty dolls was thrilling. She helped me package them up, even making little “adoption cards” for each of them (like I do with my Dream Creepers).
Someone suggested she should put catnip in them so their cats could carry them around, but she worried that a cat would tear them up. She says she’ll make more (because people so kindly asked if she would), but as kids don’t always have the attention span for dedicated business, we’ll see how it goes!
In any case, it was heartwarming to see so many people be so encouraging and supportive towards and 8-year old kid. I had initially made this post to share the simplicity of making fun & easy dolls with kids, but it really truly was endearing.
In any case, if you don’t sew, you could always do what our stuffed animal-loving kid did before this most recent project: make the front and backs out of regular ol’ paper, stuff them with wadded up scrap paper (or toilet paper) and tape all around the edges. BOOM–instant doll!
So make something fun, and easy, and get those kids CREATING!
Plastic Pumpkins
A million years ago, when Myla was four years old, we bought a plastic pumpkin (because the husband was deployed, and I didn’t have the energy to scoop the guts out of a real one). I got out the permanent markers like a good mom (ahem), and let my daughter go to town on it.
I drew a face on it to get her started, thinking she could add things to it. Instead of adding features to the face itself, she drew characters (mostly Batman–her favorite at the time). Which was still pretty cool.
This year (because I just don’t like the mess of a real pumpkin), we were looking at Halloween decorations, and instead of buying a new one, I went back to this old pumpkin, made sure I had a bunch of photos of it, and then painted right over it with acrylic paint.
And once again, we sat down outside with our markers in the warm autumn…sunshine (this is Texas, y’all), and filled it with all sorts of Halloween goodness. I thought this time, we’d draw characters that I could paint with more detail later (which Myla thinks is sort of like magic).
Once it was done, I used my acrylic paints to give it some quick paint detail. It’s a pumpkin, so I didn’t go TOO crazy with detail, but I had fun making the little doodles we drew come to life. (MWHAHAHAH! IT’S ALIIIIVE!!!)
It occurred to me that there was a pretty empty area to fill, and instead of drawing something new, I filled it with a quick lighting bolt, which is SUPER easy, and I’ll tell you how to do it, “step to step” (as Myla used to say).
Step 1: Draw a big ol’ wiggly line that takes up the area you want to fill. Step 2: Add another big ol’ wiggly line if the area is a wonky shape. (It doesn’t matter too much what it looks like–it’ll look fine when it’s done.)
Step 3: Draw wiggly lines coming OFF of your wiggly lines in random places, to fill out the wonky space. End the line in a sort of “branch” Y or V shape (depending on how you see it). Step 4: Keep adding little wiggly lines off of your wiggly lines. It doesn’t look great close up, but from a distance, people will get the idea. and BOOM! You’ve got lightning!
And it filled out the blank spaces in our pumpkin pretty well. Other space-fillers included spirals, rays coming off of the character, and spiderwebs….
(Myla later asked me why her skeleton was on a target…I was actually going for a sort of Twilight Zone-ish sort of spiral, but I guess a target is sort of spooky too, right? RIGHT?)
And there it is! You’ll notice my drawings are pretty indistinguishable from my 8-year old’s, despite my being a grownup, not to mention a fairly experienced illustrator. This is because Myla draws fast, and I have to draw fast to keep up with her. Which is why my “zombie” looks sort of like a green potato waving hello. That’s how I roll sometimes.
But the important thing is, we made a memory! We spent time doing something fun together without some grandiose end plan. Sure, we didn’t get pumpkin goo all over our hands, and we didn’t have to watch it decompose and liquify into slime this whole upcoming month, but we had fun drawing on our plastic pumpkin together, and we have a pretty cool keepsake for awhile now. And that’s totally okay, too.
By the way, if you’re into it, the kid and I will be participating in our own version of Inktober: drawing a spooky thing every day for the whole month of October. You can join us, and post your own thing on your own pages, too. No one wins any awards or anything, it’s just for fun to see if we can do it. We tried last year as well, but failed. We only really succeeded a couple years back–and you can see all our 2015 Inktober drawings HERE.
But this year, we’re READY! We can DO it! We’re probably going to do some other activities as well, because we love Halloween. So keep an eye out for our projects on Facebook and Instagram!
Happy upcoming October, everyone!
All The Small Things
Last week, I posted about my new tiny obsessions–how they started out as simple fun and have evolved into a frantic therapy of sorts…a calming way to deal with the chaos around me.
And they’ve been extremely therapeutic. I may not be able to control what’s going on, but I can do my best to control this tiny space…
(I’ve been protecting myself from custom orders–I’m just enjoying doing whatever suits my fancy, and it feels good. But as it’s the process more than the end result, I thought I’d gather whatever I have available and release them in a shop drop on April 2nd. So keep an eye out in my Etsy shop for that!)
As I’ve had a wicked case o’ the ‘broideries lately, it’d be fairly unusual for the kid not to have noticed. So she asked me the other day, “hey mom, can I try?”
I had tried to teach her basic hand sewing before, but it didn’t hold her interest. And yet now, she was asking to join in on her own, because of my interest.
I started by letting her sketch something small with pens (a tiny drawing of Finn and Jake and Fiona and Cake from Adventure Time), and then she added some stitching to embellish it.
It held her attention…and it ended up lovely! Sure, she made a few mistakes. Sure, I had to stop and help her a lot, despite being mentally tangled in my own work. And sure, she sometimes stitched over instead of under, meaning I had to completely undo and rethread her needle. But the look of pride when she’d finished? So worth it.
She started a second piece, of Fern and Finn from Adventure Time…
I didn’t give her a plastic kid’s safety needle, she’s learning on the real one. She’s using the same fabric I’d use, and the same hoops.
Although I didn’t have very many of the nice tiny hoops to frame them in (as they were ordered from Dandelyne online), and although I hoard them greedily for myself, I went ahead and sacrificed a couple for her to use.
Most often, I have to be the “authority figure.” I’m MOM. I have distractions, I have things to do, worries to worry. In short, I’m busy. The time I take to craft and make art is like fuel to me–I have to fill it up to be able to do the day to day things I need to do. And a little crafting goes a long way.
But giving her the respect I’d give any other artist is fundamental. Taking a few moments to really share with her the things I love to do makes her feel important. It makes her feel included.
And it makes her proud.
A few days later, she made me a special mockingbird with my name on it. She was focused and careful and took her time. 
Maybe it’s not something she’d take further, but I think the fact that I didn’t just dismiss her helps build her confidence, and let’s her know she’s capable of doing a great many things.
I remember being a kid, interested in something a grownup was doing, and being sort of dismissed and told to go play. I remember getting the feeling that, “well that must be something I’m not capable of doing, I guess,” and even in adulthood I’d hesitate to try. But I’d like Myla to be able to try things and decide that for herself. 
A few days later, her Papa–while busy with his own projects–gave her some scraps of wood and a real hammer and nails, a little bit of instruction, and let her create. That’s all it takes!
She ended the day happily singing me a little song: ” I, I, I love that you love to do the things I love to doooo…”
So give them the good supplies! Let them try the real things! Show them how, and see where they take it. It only takes a little time and attention…
Sometimes I need a reminder myself: Its the small things that mean a lot. ❤❤❤
Taking Time for a Doodle
Sometimes I just have to stop whatever I’m working on and doodle with the kid. It doesn’t matter WHAT I doodle, she’ll turn it into something fun. In this case, I started with a simple little head with a helmet–I wanted her to decided: is it underwater or in outer space? Of course, I always have a few preconceived ideas floating around in my head, but I gently wave those away–because I want to see where she takes it.
She very rarely stops to think too deeply about it. She picks up a pen and starts drawing, like she already knows what she’s going to do.
She decides quite confidently that it’s in outer space, and she starts telling a story as she draws (which I’ll tell to you at the end)…
I like to listen and watch her as she tells these stories, because if I don’t pay attention, I’ll completely miss the magic of them, and looking back at it, it won’t make any sense at all. So I listen. I ask questions, and watch the story unfold.
She wanted things painted certain colors, so I got out the watercolors. Not the kid ones, the nice ones, so I can teach her how to use them the right way. She wants it to look “old fashioned,” with only a few colors.
She wants me to finish it by adding more details later, and color the rest “like it’s from a long time ago.”
And this is how it looks so far…
And here is the story that belongs to it: These dragons are blowing a protective force field around the robot woman. They each have special powers. They are a team of good guys, and there are bad guys outside the bubble, but they can’t get in…and if they try, the powerful one that looks like a bird will vaporize it immediately. There are some at the bottom, who have been attacked with arrows. It would usually be sad, except that they are evil, so you are supposed to be glad, only because it means you are safe. Each of the good dragons has a weakness, but it’s protected. The robot woman herself is protecting a litter of alien cats in her chestplate, and it has feeding tubes to feed them. The “boss cat” is a good guy, and has a powerful foot to attack bad guys, and he has joined in the fight. It looks like they’re going to win the battle.
I still have to do my part, which sort of ties it all together. But I’m always happy with it at this stage, just because I could never in my entire imagination come up with a story like that. It’s amazing what you learn when you really listen to a kid unleash her imagination…
So I’ll keep you posted on it!
I Hate Chalk. Chalk Is Fun.
I hate chalk. It’s a texture thing. It’s the same reason I dislike graphite pencils–it’s like dry hands on rough paper, and fingernails on…well…a chalkboard. I’ve seen people do AMAZING things with chalk, and I’m always super impressed. But it’s just not my medium.
Myla loves to chalk! She makes it fun. Once, when I had a terrible headcold (much like the one I am currently trying to evict), we went outside to chalk. Trying not to seem like a total weirdo, I put on a garden glove and chalked. “Can you turn me into a monster?” She asked. She lay down in our driveway, and I drew a shape all around her. It was a fun way to pass the time with very little energy output on my part (because: headcold).
We made monsters and mermaids…
And when it was my turn? Ahhhh, sweet relief for a sick mama–I lay down and closed my eyes to the sun and relaxed while she happily chalked all around me.
So that’s become our thing, and sometimes when the mood strikes, we pick up the giant container full of chalk we keep in a planter by the front door bench, and chalk chalk chalk, turning ourselves into all sorts of little beasties.
It came in handy when my husband was deployed, and we’d send him pictures. We made a soldier…
(I’m pretty sure that’s the same face I made when I was enlisted…)
We made helicopter pilots…
And since he couldn’t be there for father’s day last year, we chalked a great big “daddy.”
We’ve been chalking “daddy”‘s for a couple of years…
And it comes in handy as a nice “hello” when he came home from deployment…
So yeah. I hate chalk. I hate the way it feels.
But it’s fun, and it sure does come in handy for the memory-making, and that’s definitely worth a little discomfort! And that’s why I love it.
(….But yeah…I still sort of hate it, too. Hahah!)
We Made A Backpack
Last year, at the end of first grade, Myla told me “I have an idea for a backpack.” She drew out a doodle that sort of looked like Yoda hanging on Luke’s back, but with her own little character she created: an arctic fox in an orange sweater.
(I drew it on a napkin in her lunch once:)
Since I have no magic skills in patternmaking on my own, I found a beautiful little backpack pattern from a website called Birch that was functional, not too complicated, and adaptable to the idea Myla had. (The free tutorial I used & altered a bit is HERE.)
Then I gathered supplies at the craft store. The idea of a WHITE backpack–especially for a kid–is daunting, but thankfully Myla gave me some artistic leeway by at least letting me choose fabric with pattern–a thicker canvas with stripes, and another with zigzags. I had some orange fabric in my own stash, and purchased everything else I needed on the pattern’s supply list. I bought extra, because I decided to add a little extra to the measurements to make it larger all over (it’s perfect for a smaller kid, but I needed to really make sure I could fit her school folder and her lunchbox in there).
The cool thing about this pattern was that it closes & opens with velcro with an elastic bunched opening under the flap–no crazy buckles or zippers to deal with, and even an intermediate amateur like myself was able to figure out the elastic situation pretty easily.
The tutorial itself was very easy to follow (like I said, I’m no pro) and I made little tweaks as we went along. She chose the inside liner herself, which was a brown pine cone pattern…
And BOOM here it is! She wanted to be sure there was a little white fur tail at the bottom (which lines right up with her pants, making it look like SHE has a tail, which is fun). I added a face & ears to the flap (she initially wanted the flap to be the face but cut to a point like an animal nose, but we met halfway, so it could be functional). Admittedly, I got a little confused with the strap situation, but it’s probably because I was trying to alter the straps a bit to make part of them look like paws, lying over her shoulders.
She drew the little body on the back in pen, and I painted it with acrylic paints. One reader thankfully suggested sealing it in Scotchgard, which was a VERY good idea, so it’ll hopefully protect it a bit from dirt and stains for as long as possible.
Sometimes people think working together is some sort of ethereal, magical situation, but it does take some patience that I don’t always possess. I got pretty crabby near the end of this one, because she was trying to explain the arm situation and I wasn’t understanding what she was wanting, but we finally worked it out, and overall it turned out to be another good collaboration!
I may not always be rosy and cheery working through some ideas, but I always consider it a fun challenge when she has an idea she wants to make. I’m working on teaching her a little bit of sewing here and there so that one day she might make things herself, but at this age, she doesn’t always have the attention span for it, and I don’t always have the patience. So we start of sharing for a bit, then she runs off and does projects nearby, while I work at my art desk. But at least she can say she was part of building it!
So, yeah. BOOM. We made a backpack. Yay!
Being Grownup
I’m a Grownup. I have a job. I’m a mom. I’m all responsible and stuff.
So why do I keep buying toys?? Because I’ve been repainting them. And that automatically turns it into an “art project,” right?? Some people even make these repaints into a business. I’m not really good enough to be in that league, though–I just do it for myself, for fun.
I’m not going to play with these dolls (which the 7-year old doesn’t quite understand). I just like looking at them. I stick them on a shelf when I’m done, and they make me smile. It’s similar to the little twinge of heartbreak I feel when I happily build a lego kit and it gets destroyed once the kid starts playing. I have to fight the urge to Kragle lego kits with superglue because I realize I am secretly neurotic.
So here’s one of my “grownup” art projects: repainting a Monster High doll!
Ages ago, when I played roller derby, these little roller derby Monster High dolls came out, and they were SO cool. But I talked myself out of them, because I was a Grownup. I have trouble justifying buying things for myself that don’t serve a purpose. I admire when people can collect things just for the fun of it, but I seem to have trouble with it sometimes….
So when I was telling my daughter about them, she asked to see photos. I showed her my favorite: Lagoona Blue, who came with finned roller skates and a helmet with an awesome fin on it.
I told her how I had always wanted one, and she said, “you should just go ahead and get one, mom. If it makes you happy, you should just DO it!” …which is easy for a kid to say, but since this is pretty much the same advice my husband gives me, I decided that after 6 years or so, I was just going to go ahead and get her.
And since I’m a grownup, I justified to myself that if I repainted her, she’d at least have a purpose: she’d be an Art Project. (Don’t ask me why I always feel the need to justify these things to myself.)
When she arrived, I wiped her face off with acetone (nail polish remover), and started painting her in acrylics.
Once the paint is dried, I sprayed her with Testors spray, and gloss varnished her eyes and lips to add some shine.
And here she is. And she may not be such a big deal, and she may not bring about world peace, and she may serve no other purpose than to sit on a shelf with my other dolls and look cool, but she makes me smile. And I guess that’s okay.
At age 42, I’m trying to get used to the idea that there’s validity in things not having a major purpose–other than just simple enjoyment. It’s a “stop and smell the roses” sort of thing. It’s an “enjoy the little things” kind of thing. And with all the things in the world, why not have a bit of that–ESPECIALLY as a Grownup?
So enjoy the little things today, grownup or not! Look around for the simple things that just make you smile, and enjoy them, just because you can…
Designing Dolls
The other day, I was in a crafty mood, and felt like doing a project with Myla. I pushed all my “to do” things and other commitments I’ve been putting off, and asked her if she wanted to make a doll.
She ALWAYS wants to make a doll. “There’s a creature I’ve been thinking about,” she said excitedly. “I think it would make a great doll!” She grabbed her markers and started drawing it out.
When I do projects like this, I like to let her feel like she’s a big part of making it. We went to the craft room, and picked out some fabric from my stash. Apparently, this creature is a sort of cat-like mossy dragon, so we found some mossy-looking fabric that fit perfectly. I let her decide what fabric would work best. She gave me details on how it should look–long tail, webbed feet, spiky hair…
I sat her on my lap and had her help a little with the beginning. She’s still a little needle-shy, but I showed her how to guide the fabric without pushing it. After awhile, it’s easier to finish it up myself, so she bounced off to another paper project while I finished up the sewing.
Later, when the body was done, I asked her to draw the eyes on with a pen the way she wanted, so I could paint them.
And finally, the little mossy cat-dragon was done! I’m no master sewer by any means, and my dolls are ALWAYS quite wonky, but the best part is that she doesn’t care, because we made it together and she designed it herself.
I always ask her what she thinks when it’s done, and she always says she loves them so much. Once, she said “when we make dolls, it doesn’t always turn out exactly like I thought in my drawing….but it always turns out so much BETTER.”
I noticed she uses dolls as an icebreaker with other kids at the child care room at the gym, and sort of walks up to kids and just starts playing dolls with them. Sure, they ask what the heck it is, but when she tells them, I think they sort of dig it. I brought it to visit her at school lunch the other day, and made it move around like a puppet and play, and had the kids (who had at first looked at me like I was odd…which I am, btw) cracking up and laughing at the silly antics of her little mossy doll.
So wonky or not, it took me about an hour and a half to make something that she could make connections with. In just a short amount of time, we made something she could proudly tell people she designed…and that little feeling of pride glows on her face when she talks to other kids. Which makes ME smile. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?
Interview with a 7-Year Old Artist
Awhile back, a reader suggested that it might be fun to let other readers ask us questions, and have Myla answer them. Why haven’t I ever thought of that? So although you may have been quite familiar with our collaborations, please allow me to introduce you to the most awesomest 7-year old I’ve ever known: Myla.
Myla not only draws, but is creative in SO many other ways. She sculpts things for hours with construction paper, tape, and scissors. She frantically makes the things in her head out of hot glue and broken electronics.
As an only child, she’s got a burning desire to be around other people and make them smile. She’s never shy. She’ll do practically anything for a laugh. She loves insects of all kinds (as apparent in her fierce desire to obtain a hercules beetle grub–how can I make this happen, universe???), and all sorts of animals.
She didn’t ever seem interested in art until she turned three years old, and suddenly that’s ALL she did. We lived in Alaska at the time, my husband deployed for a year, and we were quite isolated indoors, with winter being 8 cold, dark months of the year. I tried to do projects with her as a toddler, mostly resulting in absolute messes, which was okay, too.
And then at age three, the art bug hit her, and she’d bury her face in her sketchbook, drawing, drawing, drawing. I saw so much of myself in her desire to create things. I understood that urge to get an idea out, no matter the time or place. When she was age four, I shared the story of how we began drawing together, and we’ve filled our world with doodles and art ever since.
She can turn anything into an art project…from making cookies, to cleaning up.
She loves to talk and never stops asking questions, and I never tire of trying to explain things to her…some questions she asks are so complex, I’m surprised at her ability to understand such deep concepts. We have pretty cool conversations.
So she jumped at the idea to answer questions from people on the page. So now I’ll share with you the questions people asked online, and the answers she gave to them….
Myla, do you ever dream the same thing more than once? (Lori) Just one. A nightmare that is so gross I don’t want to tell you. I had it two times. The Dream Creepers must’ve let it through on accident.
How do you wish school was different if you were in charge? (Sylvia) Ice cream sundaes on Fridays! Also, we would do art projects all day, every day–whatever we choose, with no instructions.
Who is your favorite book character and why? (Lauren) The scarecrow from the audiobook from the Wizard of Oz (read by Anne Hathaway) because he was funny, and the voice she did for him made me laugh. My favorite character from a kid movie is Zork from Giant King…because he’s weird–he’s a battlebot who wants to be a kindergarten teacher! And he has a funny voice.
What would you like to be when you grow up? (Lauren) A zoologist and an animator! I want to have a petting zoo and a house with all kinds of different animals like bats, sloths, hedgehogs, parrots, and foxes and everything. And I will live right next to my mom and dad so we can always see each other.
Coffee, Tea, or Juice? Do you like to drink it while you work, or as a reward? (Ashley)
Actually, I love to drink pink milk (strawberry milk) while I’m working on projects. (Side note from Mom: when she was a toddler, her favorite drink was raw carrot juice. She demanded it above all others. She drank so much carrot juice, she was practically orange!)
What has been your favorite project to date? (Ashley) Right now, my favorite paper project is an alien goat I made out of paper.
What is your favorite color, and why? (Ashley) Lately, my favorite color is white. It’s the color of the arctic fox character I created!
My son loves to pretend he is a Royal Rainbow Crystal Protector dragon who takes care of all the other dragons. What is your favorite kind of dragon? (Christina) My favorite dragon is one I made up called a sheep dragon. It looks like a black dragon but with soft sheep fur. Also, a rain dragon, which flies in the clouds and rains on everyone. If it’s a cloudy day, there’s probably a rain dragon nearby. (Myla and her sheep dragon from Budsies pictured below…)
What is the best and worst thing about working with mum? What advice would you give to other kids considering a family-based business? (Joanne) I LOVE to draw with mom, because in the end it always turns out beautiful. There’s nothing I’d pick as the worst thing! We mix our ideas pretty well. I would say to people that want to draw together to do what you love to do. Try as best as you can, and never give up.
What would you say to people who love to draw but feel like they’re not good enough? Also, what toppings do you like on your pizza? (Amanda) I would tell them to be calm and do what fits you. Trust yourself. Keep trying and trying and you will get better and better. And for pizza, I don’t like ANY toppings, not even a lot of cheese–I just love the pizza bread!
If you had to make as many people laugh and be as happy as possible for an entire day, would you rather do so by being a half bear/octopus, or a half parrot/giraffe? And how would you accomplish your goal? (Alisha) Oh that would be so fun! I would choose to be half arctic fox and half squirrel. I would lick them to make them laugh, and make fart sounds and goofy sounds.
If you owned a magical unicorn that granted you three wishes, what would you wish for? (Alisha) My first wish would be that the unicorn could come back and see me every day. My second wish would be that my mom and other family could be as happy as they can be. My third wish would be for my friend Patrick to be able to be in the same class as me in second grade. Also, I’ll give everyone a pet puppy.
What is your favorite medium to create with? What is your most favorite piece of art your mom and you have created and why? (Kelly) My favorite thing to work with of all time is paper! I love to make projects with paper, tape and scissors. My favorite thing I created with my mom? There’s too many to choose! My favorite, I think? …is the fox lady that we turned into patches…
In closing, I asked Myla if she had any words to share that might inspire any other artists out there. She thought about it a minute, chose her words carefully, and said this:
“If you want to be an artist, listen to me: practice, practice, and practice. And practice. And if you want to, you can even do it a better way by doing it with someone else.”
Thank you so much!
busy mockingbird 