Sentimental art

In two of the baby showers I hosted, I facilitated an art activity in which all of the guests painted something wooden to be attached to a canvas for nursery art.  For Erin we did crabs on a chevron background, and for Sandi we did the alphabet and a little dino.

I loved both the process and the result, but struggled about the actual figure to be painted.  There's no real theme in the room, just sort of a motif maybe, so my first thought was a simple shape.  I tried to find triangles in the hopes of gluing them on the canvas like flag garland, but sadly I couldn't find any the right size in a reasonable price range.  What I did find were circles, some very large, others in a pack of a variety of small sizes.  I was thinking I could do a sort of Chinese paper lantern design at the end, so I went ahead and pulled the trigger.

At my Florida shower, I had my aunts, cousin, mom, mother-in-law, Jeremy, and myself paint some the night before the shower when we all had time together.  People were reluctant at first, but once the creative juices were flowing, there was no stopping us!  I originally bought enough for everyone at both showers to do one, but people were having so much fun being creative that I figured I could just buy more circles later and choose one per person.

Here are a couple done at that shower, the fox by my mom, the orange and blue by Jeremy, the small rose by Jeremy's mom, and the rainbow by me

At our North Carolina shower I introduced the activity after most of the guests had left, but all of my closest were still there since they were all staying with us (except Erin, she was sent home with homework!).  Again with the amazing creativity, a few people chose to do a couple of them, Julian decided to go 3D, and Sandi whipped up a couple that can only be described as amazing, including Sailor Moon and a replica of the cat quilt I made her years ago!

Even Lark got in on the fun, proudly painting no less than five circles (I made five, Aunt Bee!!), and she was no doubt inspired by her talented parents.  Sahil, of course, did three Star Wars characters, and Katie made us a forest scene featuring a sweet little fox.  Even her initials are in the tree trunk, can you stand it?!

In the end I decided to get a bigger canvas so that I could incorporate as many of the circles as possible, and abandoned the Chinese Lantern pattern idea for the layout.  I just arranged them according to color and size, although I did try to group by family a little.  I labeled all of them with names or titles, writing "Mom" by mine, "Dad" by Jeremy's, "Aunt Katie" by Katie's, etc (which, let me tell you, was nutty!  I think that may be the first time I officially referred to us by those names, but anyway).  

Here it is, in all it's lovely beauty!!

I will add Erin's to the lower right corner whenever she gets it to me, but I know with two little ones there is no rush :-).  Right now it is hanging to the left of the crib above what will be her little reading nook, once we get the bookshelves up and the pouf in that spot.

Special thanks to everyone that contributed!