Some new aliens are in town for the holidays.  My kindergartners named them Slippers.  Sounds good to me.  In person they are really great because you can easily slip your finger on each one and move them around.  Hence the name.  Coming soon to my easy shop which is currently in the making.  yay.

I had some very sweet friends over today for a gnome day.  (age 8)  We made gnomes and mushrooms from sculpey and then created gardens for the them to live in.  Really fun project.  I got everything from Michael’s which is around the corner from my house.  Reason enough to never move.

Woo hoo.  All the kid’s chanukah gifts have left the building.  Last newsletter of 2011 is written and Gig just finished some delicious sweet potato.  All is right in the world.  Two weeks of vacation to work on Alien Army, latke eating, and hangin with the fam.  I love this time of year!

Every year we help the kids make a chanukah project for their families.  This year we found candles at the 99 cent store and will modgepodge them with tissue paper squares and dreidels.  This is the sample I made today.  It looks really pretty.  The only bummer was when someone pointed out the candles are actually religious memorial candles.  Oops.  Hope we don’t offend anyone.

Thanks for the ideas Deep Space Sparkle!

And this is why crowdspring rocks.  Thanks to Norbert Demeter for the amazing design.  Poster coming soon.

Alien Army is on a mission to create an ideal universe.  The troupes gathered last night to discuss their roles.  More news to come.

I am thinking for the next challenge it might be something more to the effect of “who wants to make something in exchange for alien army?!”  More like artist trading cards. We’ll see.  Regardless, I am honored that Mary, one of very favorite art bloggers  and her friend Tina joined the challenge.  And a BIG thank you to Ev, who always stands by me and is  open to new things.

Here are the projects!

1. By Tina Grey

Tina wrote the following about her piece:

My headline was from the November 16 edition of the New York Times online: “After Giving Up Job for Occupy Protest, Questions for Future”.  It was about a man named Tim Weldon, who holds a master’s degree, quitting his job helping people with disabilities find jobs to work on a think tank for the Occupy Wall Street protest full-time.  The article follows him on his last day of work where he is helping a man with Down’s Syndrome find work at a pizza place.  The man brings a CD of children singing patriotic songs to play in Tim’s car while they drive around town getting him ready for his first day of work.  Tim says he has never considered himself patriotic before but is moved to tears by the CD because, for him,  his involvement in the protest has taught him what patriotism is all about.

The article and video moved me to create this little piece.  I used newspaper, acrylics and ink.  The tents are, of course, removable.

2.  By Mary of MaryMaking.blogspot.com

Mary wrote:

I debated about what type of headline to focus my piece around: political satire, nature based,ect. Ultimately I decided to create a piece centered around our local paper, Sun’s headline, “Remembering the Victims and Their Lives.” Just to give you a background: On Wednesday October 12th, a man in a dispute with his ex-wife about the custody of their son,  walked into the hair salon where she worked and shot and killed her and 6 others (injuring another) and killed another man sitting in his car outside. Seal Beach has been described as “Mayberry By the Sea”. So as you can imagine, this tragedy has been devastating for this tight knit community.

My mixed media piece (watercolor, acrylic, chalk pastel and newspaper) is meant to honor the 8 lives lost as well as to remind us all to be kind to each other and to treasure the lives we have.

3. By Evan Cherry

Evan said:

“I saw this article in the paper about Occupy Wall Street and it inspired me to make this project.  I enjoyed making it.”

4.  By Meri Cherry

My headline was “When Did the Rules Change?” from an article in The New York Times Magazine.  It’s about the road to success and how it used to be that if you worked hard and followed the rules you were almost guaranteed a successful life.  Now, it is much more challenging to achieve success even if you have a college degree.  There are so many other factors; outsourcing to India and China, technology, etc.  Today, we need specific sought after skills and the ability to go with the ups and downs of life.  I recently had an experience with a graphic designer friend who criticized my decision to use CrowdSpring.com for a logo.  Crowdspring, which I HIGHLY recommend, is a place to post graphic design projects for a fee of your choice, and artists from all over the world submit proposals.  The winning designer receives the money.  Anyway, my friend felt really strongly that it wasn’t fair to the design industry to support this kind of ideology. I thought about it a lot.  When I saw this article I thought it was a good fit.  I would love to hear anyone’s thoughts on this.  I think it’s a fascinating conversation.  My project is meant to show the game of life and all the different ways people choose to travel the road to success.

Thanks again for everyone’s participation!  Great experience.