focus on life–week 17–Colour!

Spring is starting to come around slowly here.  I know the trees will burst soon and I’ll look and think, “hey when did that happen?” It seems very appropriate at this most colour starved state, that Sally Russick of the Studio Sublime would bring us to focus on COLOUR!  The title pretty much says it all.

I’ve been working on and off on a very colourful project for my daughter.  You see I have friends with older girls and various boxes of hand-me-downs that we have been working our way through (and passing on of course).  Looking towards getting out of winter boots I found these.



I’ve got nothing against dump trucks per se, and despite the dirt from a good time in the sand, they are in good shape structurally.  So I tried cleaning them up and they didn’t get any whiter.  Now, some kids may not care one little bit what their shoes look like, as long as they can run fast. That is the goal really.  But here’s the thing.  If she likes it she looks forward to wearing it so she will put them on instead of singing and twirling around while I ask for the 47th time if she could please put on her stuff so we can go.  So what follows is mostly about saving my sanity not so much a quick and easy DIY for kids.

Here’s what her shoes look like now!



I busted out all manner of Shiva oil sticks, copic/prismacolour/assorted brand markers, pencil crayons, suede, glitter fabric paint and shrink plastic to create the ocean floor setting of the Octonauts.  I was working from supplies on hand (said she slightly shamefully) and because of drying times just kept them handy for working on between other projects.  Averleigh and I are fans of the television program Octonauts based on the books by Meomi.  So all copyrights belong to their rightful owners this is fan art to delight an (eek) almost 3 year old.  She hasn’t seen them yet, I think I will coat them with a sealer but I’m hesitating since at the moment they are totally flexible since the are mostly coloured by the Shiva paint which is so marvellous, love using it.



Top side we have, clockwise, Shellington sea otter, Kwazii kitten, Peso penguin and Captain Barnacles bear. This idea all cam about innocently when I had printed out this page of all the character profiles to share with the grandparents two explain the ongoing joke Averleigh makes about there being “two bears in the octopod” knowing full well that Shellington is a sea otter she likes to argue that he is a brown bear.  Anywho, this printout was hanging around on my worktable and next thing you know I put down some shrink plastic and got to colouring. I was so excited with how they turned out and the detail they retained.  They are all stuck down with E6000.



I had a little trouble getting the right colours for Tweak bunny and Dashi dog so they found a home around the back, which is fitting since they generally stay close to the Octopod, which you see on the left.  It lost some detail since I scratched it a bit with the metal glue tip and I had to zap it a bit with a heat gun to try and bend it to the right shape to make sure it would stick nicely.  Rigid shrick plastic in these spots is ok since they don’t need to bend, but how to cover those dump trucks?


T
he dump trucks got covered in a shark and fish cut out of a teal scrap of suede.  A little fussing with various irridescent and glitter fabric paint and while they are not the prettiest part I’m satisfied that they will flex when jumping, running and generally getting these re-broke in. 



You can’t quite see the golden glow coming from the coral gardens featured on the inside but they do shimmer.  I’m starting to feel a bit silly telling you all about the Octonauts and giving all these views of one pair of sneakers bound for destruction.  It was an excellent little diversion though full of just fun playing with something I’ve never done before – full of colour!

The best picture will be her reaction.  I hope I will capture her excitement upon seeing these and discovering all her favourites.  She gets to live in them, rest assured, I will not be upset when they get covered in sand and whatnot.

Off to see all the colour in everyone else’s world on Sally’s post here.