Kids Art: Marbling with Shaving Cream

January 31, 2011 admins148

I would like to share some ideas of the arts with kids.

Today, I would like to show you one of my son’s favourite – Marbling with Shaving Cream. We have tried this when he was four.

It is very easy and effective. Kids can have lots of fun.

You can teach kids how to mix the colour to make other colour; yellow and blue turn to green, blue and red turn to purple, yellow and red turn to orange and if you mix many colours, everything turns to brown…

Materials: Baking tray, Foil, Shaving Cream, a Bamboo stick or fine thin stick, Food colouring (I use primary colours such as blue, yellow, red but any colour would be good), A4 paper

Step 1. I cover the area with a plastic table cloth which you can buy 2 dollars shop in Australia at $2.

Step2. Cover the baking tray with foil and place in the centre of the table cloth.

Step3. Ask kids to spray the shaving foam into the baking tray. (Kids love this) – You can do it if you think that the kid is too small.

Step4. Drop some food colouring into the tay. Pick up the bamboo stick and stir. Ask kid to change directions.

Step 5. When you and your kid satisfied with the marbling, take a sheet of A4 copy paper and place over the top of the marbling. Press the paper gently and take it off. You can see the marbling on the paper.

Step 6. Add another colour of food colouring and start mixing with the bamboo stick.

Step. 7 Fold A4 paper into half and place the paper on the top of marbling. Take the paper off from the tray and fold inside to have mirror image on the paper. You can draw butterfly after it dried.

You can let kids to use their hands. Kids love it doing with the hands too.

It will take a while for the papers to dry. After they dried, we use them for wrapping papers and greeting cards.

Enjoy

I keep some marbling images for texture.

This is what I created with one of the swirl images for a fairyland.

Read another popular kids activity -Making Japanese Paper Dolls

Graphic Design, Sumico Net Blog, Sumico Net News

Graphic Design with Photography and Typography

January 28, 2011 admins148

I played with the photography and typography.

This is called “Identity”. I created this one as a memory of my son’s 5-6 year old. What he likes and what he says often during this age. Click the image to see a larger image.

I cut off the image and changed to Grayscale. Then I typed the words around the image.

I merged the layer, and changed the image from greyscale to CMYK for printing purposes, then applied Gradient Overlay Layer style.

Web Design

Web Review: A4 Orikata

January 25, 2011 admins148

I was born and brought up in Japan. I left there 20 years ago, but still I have special place for my home country Japan and its culture. I like subtle but detailed things that Japanese culture offer.

Packaging, folding papers… Origami is one of the traditional culture in Japan.

A4 Orikata is the website which displays one of the beautiful Japanese culture. If you click the second button on the left, you can see thumbnail images, if you click one of them, you can download the papers and how to fold it.

We use these small envelopes to place the money to give, or use as a letters.

I like this web design because it is simple and minimal but you can see the details, and this website is showing the beauty of Japanese culture.

http://www.a4orikata.jp/

Dogs, Photography

Photography: Smiley Dog

January 23, 2011 admins148

This is my dog, called Beema.

Beema is 6 year old and he will turn to 7 in late April.

He is a Red Heeler with a stumpy tail. He has a very little tail. In Australia, some people used to cut working dogs tails for some reasons. It is not allowed now.

Beema’s tail was never cut and he was born with a very tiny tail.

We cannot see him wagging his tail, but he smiles.

He loves chasing balls and swimming than eating. He loves beach so whenever we go to the beach, we take him. On the Gold Coast, there are some dog beaches, so we take him there.

I think that he can swim at least 20 meters. Once we were on the boat, and he tried to follow us. He had to go back to the bank after 10 meters swimming.

I took this photo on the Gold Coast beach. He looks so happy and he makes me so happy I love him.

Books

Book Reviews: Flowers (Graphic Materials)

January 23, 2011 admins148

I went to Japan last October. One of the things that I miss in Japan is Book Stores.

There are some big book stores and thousand different kind of books you can find there. I wish I could spend more time and more money there, but I had only limited time and money.

I would like to share the books which are related to design.

One of the books that I found useful was the book called “Flowers” by Haut Dessins and published by Soft Bank Creative.

It is very handy to have images that you can use for the work at hand, because it takes some time when you do hand drawing. It comes with a DVD and images are eps, jpg or png, so you can use them for web and prints.

In Brisbane, there are very limited book stores available and I have not seen these kind of material books as yet.

You can purchase the book through amazon Japan, but it cost a bit for shipping.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4797358424

Web Design

Web Review : Manga News

January 22, 2011 admins148

In Japan, Manga, Comic books are very popular.

When you visit Japan, you would be surprised how many comic books are available at the bookshop and how many people are reading comic books in Japan.

Many publisher launched “How to” books with Manga, because those type of the books are using more friendly approach than normal text books. It appears to me those books with Manga can describe more details and help to understand the contents.

For some people like me, the news about Politics, or International affairs are little bit difficult to understand. Now an Internet News Manga Website was launched in Japan. I have read a couple of news and I was amazed how easy to understand than reading texts news. It may not be suitable for the news headlines, because it does not give you a strong impact that some photographic images do, however it is easy to grasp the contents.

The one that I have downloaded from the web site is a story about the Brisbane Flood. It is surely easy to understand and help the readers to remember what is going on visually, I think.

I realised that there are more Manga workshop are held in Brisbane where I live. One day, we may see the similar thing in Australia?

Have a look at the news here http://newsmanga.com