Saturday Smoothies: Chocolate (non-diary) Cream
Ocean Mandalas Use Found Natural Materials
At our family reunion on Vancouver Island this past weekend, some of us made mandalas of shore materials we found in the forest and on the beach. Natural object mandalas are– by their very nature — ephemeral, and will be destroyed by the tides, wind, wildlife and time. Yet the making of these circular designs gives so much pleasure it doesn’t really matter that they won’t last long.
As the evening cooled, we walked around admiring the mandalas … then later watched as Tom and Kat’s mandala was washed away by the incoming tide. I love thinking of beach-walkers stumbling across our mandalas and wondering about the makers. I hope these photos inspire you to make your own mandalas, no matter where you are.
Saturday Smoothies: Mango Mamba
INGREDIENTS:
- 2 amalfo mangos, cut up *
- 1 cup fresh raspberries (or frozen if it’s not the season)**
- 1/2 frozen banana
- 2 or 3 cubes ice
- 1 cup (or more) coconut milk or almond milk
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 1/4 tsp almond extract
- 1/4 tsp raspberry extract (optional, and make sure it’s real, not artificial flavoring)
- 1/2 large lemon, sliced
- 1/3 cup raw cashews***
- 1 T. flax meal
- Toss all your ingredients in a blender, even the lemon slices with peel (yes, peel too)
- Zap on “pulse” until blended well. You might have to add more liquid (coconut milk or almond milk)
- Taste and adjust amounts (like, maybe more vanilla or more lemon)
A Few Notes and Links:
* Ataulfo mangos from Mexico, are small, oblong and non fibrous (most other mango varieties are quite fibrous.) Ataulfos are super sweet and creamy, and can be used until they feel really squishy. They also have a much smaller seed so you get more fruit and less waste. Love these!
** Substitute any kind of berry, but remember if you use blueberries or blackberries with the orange mangoes, you will get a grayish or brownish color. Not so appetizing, but it will still taste good. I’m really into the look of food along with the taste. If you were mixing paint colors, and wanted to get a nice gray or brown, you might mix one of these combinations of complementary colors (red/green; yellow/purple; blue/orange) … so unless you want a grayish or brownish smoothie, stick with red berries.
*** They must be raw cashews. Roasted cashews would overpower the other flavors.
How to Get Out of the Way of a Portrait
At first I thought about showing this shot (in-camera) to Ema and saying “try not to look so worried, Ema…” but I resisted and I am glad I did. Somehow, the way her brow is lifted, the way her eyes are focused on some thought far far away … the way her mouth is slightly turned down and so relaxed, the way her hair falls to half cover her face … that light, the soft animal body of Ema … somehow this is who she really is and I am glad I did not try to change her today.
My best portraits are the ones that have reached into a person’s soul and somehow let it shine out through the facial expression, eyes, body language. Not the ones where they were smiling at the camera, being their “perfect selves.” But the shots where there might be a sadness. A thoughtfulness, some discomfort — or deep comfort. The shots where they weren’t wearing makeup or the clothes they thought they should wear, or perfectly styled hair. Those best portraits are the ones where I captured a moment dis-armed. The space between two heartbeats. The true heart of a person. When I can do this, I feel deeply satisfied.
My Grandmother’s Oatmeal Cookies
Saturday Smoothies: Peach Lemon Lift
Paint Sample Art — Butterflies Celebrate Summer Solstice
One of the projects I did with the girls this week was to create this piece of wall art for their mom’s office wall. (Her office is so totally in need of bright beautiful art to cheer up the grayness. heh.)
We used the paint samples you can get at hardware stores. Home Depot was kind enough to let us have a big handful of samples for free. The girls picked out the colors, punched the shapes with paper punches and bent the wings to make the butterflies look three dimensional. We also used some leftover pieces of printed papers I had lying around, to add variety.
Next we worked together to come up with the swoosh shape and I glued them onto a large piece of foam core. I wanted to use a large stretched canvas, painted white, but my supply budget for the summer wouldn’t stretch quite that far and I didn’t feel like stretching my own canvas. You could also use a piece of nice 1/4 inch birch plywood with sanded edges … maybe leave the natural wood color, or paint with white acrylic or indoor wall paint.
We used Craft Glue to attach the butterflies to the foam core. I thought about using hot glue but decided it would be too messy and overkill, since the little butterflies are so lightweight.
We have a rainbow thing goin’ on in this butterfly swarm, but we could as easily have chosen to use a different color scheme. You could even do an “ombre” design — the great thing about paint samples — there are so many colors, and if you get the sample cards that have 4 or 5 shades of color on each, well that would be just easy!
Glue or stick some hangers on the back and voila! You have a colorful work of happy art. Total cost for this project: $3.00 (I already owned the paper punches. These are expensive, but maybe find someone who would lend you theirs … or plan to spend many evenings hand cutting hundreds of shapes.)
Supply List: craft glue, foam core (stretched canvas or 1/4 inch plywood panel may also be used), lots of paint sample chips, paper punches, one or two picture hangers for the back
Kid’s Art: DIY Painted Tiles, written by Ema and Adia
Ema and Adia are spending lots of time with me this summer, just chillin, havin fun, learnin some stuff and makin some art. So far, I think we are using this first week to get used to each other, test limits, and figure out what we want to do for the rest of the summer. It’s been interesting and … I am very tired each evening. I think they might be too. I think that is a good thing.
I promised the girls I would teach them how to make blog posts, so every once in awhile Ema and/or Adia will be a guest blogger here on Water::Earth::Wind::Fire. I hope you enjoy their posts. At first, I will take dictation, typing pretty much exactly what they tell me to type. At some point, I will let them do the entire post. So, here goes, with the girls’ first ever blog post….
Ema writes:
We wanted to make something nice for my mom’s office, so we made these tiles. We saw these on Pinterest, and we saved them to our summer fun Pinterest board and this is one of the projects my sister and I both wanted to do this summer. This was a creative and fun project. I would recommend this to children and their parents. To do one tile it takes about 5 minutes. Well, after you get everything set up, it goes really fast.
We made practice tiles first and my favorite one turned out to be my practice tile (that’s my practice tile, below.) It was my favorite because it had a lot of bright, different colors. I would describe the design as 3 different colored wax seals (like the ones on old envelopes) laying on top of each other. I really like that.
Here are the three tiles Ema made to go together as a triptych:
Editor’s note: Ema’s sister, Adia, made the list of supplies and wrote the instructions below:
How to Make Strawmania Painted Tiles
Supplies You Need:
- Rubbing alcohol
- Alcohol inks
- Ceramic tiles
- Paint brushes
- Bendy straws (or any kind of straw, but Adia says they should be bendy)
- Q-Tips (cotton swabs)
- Newspapers
- Modge Podge
- Felt circles
- Hanger thingamajigs
- Permanent glue
Instructions:
- Put down newspapers so you won’t get ink all over the place
Brush rubbing alcohol onto the tile. Use a lot. - Take your tile and paint rubbing alcohol all over it. Use alot because it dries up fast
Drip little drops on ink on the tile right into the rubbing alcohol - Drip ink on the tile in little drops
Blow the colors around with a straw or just let them do their thing - Use your straw and blow to make the dots expand.You can play around with the straw blowing to make really cool designs in the ink. (editor’s note: Adia and Ema invented this technique and Adia named the technique, “Strawmania.”)
- You can use a qtip to make shapes
- You can add more colors
You can add more colors to your tile, blow them around or just let them mix 
Add more colors and blow them around - You can drip more rubbing alcohol to make really cool effects in the inks
- Next, let your tile dry
- After it’s dry you can add more ink colors, or you can add more alcohol and play around with it.
- When it’s all done and totally dry, you paint it with Modge Podge so the inks don’t disappear. Also to make it shiny. Also to protect the ink design
- When the ModgePodge is dry, you turn the tile over and put the felt circles on the corners (you need these so it won’t scratch your wall or your tables or tile)
- Then, glue on the hanger thingamajig with really good glue
Above is Adia’s finished triptych of tiles for her mom’s office. Adia writes:
My favorite part of making the tiles was Strawmania. That is what you do with a bendy straw when you blow through it onto the tile. It expands the ink blobs. You can blow colors together and mix them. Sometimes the color goes wherever it wants to go, which looks cool sometimes and other times it makes a big grey blob. If you get a gray blob, you can always add more alcohol and then add another color to make it colorful. That fixes it. This is something I will probably want to do again. Next time I will use less colors so my tiles don’t get big gray blobs. Here is my favorite tile (below). I am squirting the ink on it:
