crafts – Giants & Pilgrims

Forgive me for getting a little local-greeley-centric for a moment. But, at the end of this month, on small business Saturday, is my favorite local art event of the year; Indie Art Greeley’s Winter Market. This year there will be 35 artists showcasing their wares – many of whom are my closest friends. Giving and buying at this time of year can be hard. A beautiful season and holiday can sometimes get overwhelmed by consumerism. I think that is why I love the Indie Arts Market – I know firsthand the love and craftsmanship that goes into the gifts I buy there.

Here is the info for this year’s market. I love getting to design the posters for this event and am thrilled about how this years turned out!

The market this year is being held in the lovely Atlas Theater – which is doubly great because you can enjoy artisan coffee drinks made at John Galt Coffee Co. all day long.

Here is just a quick sampling of some of the goods that will be for sale from some of the artists/makers:

This year BOTH Tim and I will have booths. Tim will be selling his hand-crafted beard-oils, colognes, and after shave. Which, as a wife I can say truly I am OBSESSED. My husband smells AMAZING. I mean really good. He is taken, sorry ladies. Truly, Tim has a highly discerning nose and has crafted some mighty complex and delightful smells inspired by the era of his grandfather. He can’t wait to share them with you.

You might not know this about me, because I love making paintings. But I also LOVE getting a little crafty. Art markets give me the opportunity to play and create small batches of goods. This year, creative batch of goods will feature black & white illustrated pillows, handmade marbled kraft wrapping paper, sparkle star wands, and large wall art calendars. Excited yet? I am!!

I will also, for the first time, have ALL of the becoming series art prints available.

And if those are not reason enough to come, my little aspiring artist, Lucy, will be joining my table again with her painted sunshine and butterfly pictures.

I don’t know about you, but we have been loving having a theme this month for our Abacus project. All sorts of “mountain” projects have been created around here. To see the whole list of projects we came up with (and resources!) check out our original post, here. Below is a summary of what we have been up to so far this January.

We have done quite a few mountain painting projects. I suppose that’s what you get when you have an artist for a mom 🙂

This second set we used torn paper edges as a stencil which was a fun variation. (The idea came from the book “Make your Mark” by Margaret Poet)

We have been listening to lots of these two albums – The Secret Life of Walter Mitty soundtrack (we haven’t actually watched the movie yet) and the Mountain Goats “The Sunset Tree” album (I especially love “This Year”)

Tim came up with an awesome treasure map activity where he hid a box with trinkets in it and Lucy had to learn how to read a compass to find where it was located. (Isn’t this the coolest compass you have ever seen?!)

It took about a week to finish it, but we all watched and LOVED the Sound of Music (Lucy says her favorite part was the puppet show)

Had a whole week where “In the Hall of the Mountain King” was stuck in all of our heads because we watched several videos of it, Tim told the girls the story of it, and we marked it out on the piano so Lucy could learn how to play the melody.

We have been loving our “Adventure Logs” (We bought some basic sketchbooks that we decorated to use throughout the course of this whole Abacus year).
We wrote mountain shaped poems in them one peaceful morning.

I have been enjoying a guilty pleasure of my own as well: a jigsaw puzzle. Miraculously, I have had it set up in our dining room and my kids have not decimated it! They seem to have forgotten about it. I have no idea how that happened, but I’m holding my breath that I “might” actually finish this one!

One of the COOLEST Christmas presents we got this year was from my ever science-minded father. He got us a dissecting scope! It is seriously awesome. We looked at salt, sugar, glitter, snow, leaves, and rocks. Pretty cool. Can’t wait to look at some pond scum in the spring.

We sewed mountain shaped pillows.

We erupted an awesome plaster volcano we made from a kit and watched a video of a seriously cool lava expedition.

I have almost made my way through “Born to Run” (Ironic since I preach about how much I hate running). But, even I will have to admit it’s a fascinating read and it does have me itching to get out and give running a fresh start.

I found some geodes at Hobby Lobby. Which were a short but sweet discovery change-up after a long afternoon.

Phew, that seems like a lot when I list it all out like this! In reality, I have been loving these quiet days with this sweet family of mine. Still have 10 days in January for a few more. Hoping to head to the library today for some books, on the 29th we have a family climbing night scheduled at “The Rock” which we are all super excited about, a couple films still (Heidi, Unsinkable Molly Brown), and I’m still hoping to take a drive up to the actual mountains – since we do live so close to such a beautiful wonder. Happy Mountaineering to you and yours – Betony

If you want more info about this whole Abacus project, start here.

To jump in and connect with other families and share what you are working on, join our Abacus facebook group.

Or, to connect see our whole list of mountain project suggestions and resources list, head over here.

Update 2/17/15 – Here are our egg geodes – We used this tutorial