Going around in circles

Happy New Year! I hope the new year finds everyone happy and healthy. I’ve been recovering from a cold that has kicked my butt, but other than that all is well.

I’ve made a goal list for this year of things I want to do. But first, as I promised, a little more about Evie’s toddler Spirograph© or Spin n’ Spiral Doodler as Fisher Price calls it.

This is the box as I saw it at my local Target for $19.99.

If you use it as it is set up this is the type or art it makes. The youngster can just watch it create while fun music plays.

But, my Evie wanted a more hands-on experience. So, she lets it spin with or without markers in the holder and draws on the paper. I resisted this at first, but soon realized that she was being creative. So, I helped on some of the pieces.

It comes with a template so you can cut more paper, which is a good thing because we quickly blew through all the paper that came with it in a couple days.

I used my circle cutter to cut out more paper, then used scissors to cut the two notches that hold the paper on the spinner. The old drawing paper was a better quality paper than what came with the toy. The markers tended to bleed on the original paper. Unfortunately, the markers are now just about done, and I found some other markers to use that I had in the studio, but soon found they were not as washable as the originals.

This reminded me....A few years ago I got a spiral ruler from Paper and Ink Arts and I had a blast creating calligraphy in circles. This is a piece I created. Three sets of lowercase alphabets and combines Italic in a circle, folded ruling pen inside the circle and script lettering going across and through the circle. All done on a piece of Twinrocker Handmade paper and is framed in a shadowbox type of frame.

Our guild will be bringing Jane Farr, a calligrapher from Indianapolis, to one of our upcoming meetings and I look forward to working on more circles or Mandala's with her.

Until next time.

Jen