spectrum

May 2018 Desktop Wallpaper

May 3, 2018/0 Comments/in Art, Desktop Backgrounds, Downloads, Online /by Betony Coons

Thanks for being patient with me on this months desktop wallpaper. Moving is a lot of work! I am running a few days behind. One of the unexpected joys I am finding at this new house is how loud the birds are in the morning! Tim has had to shut the window a few times in the morning because they were so noisy. I love it. So the artwork this month is inspired by our new noisy neighbors.

For the desktop, click on the image below to view the large size image.

This months poem is from a Newberry award book called The Girl Who Drank the Moon. I love it so much –

“The heart is built of starlight

And time.

A pinprick of longing lost in the dark.

An unbroken chord linking the Infinite to the Infinite.

My heart wishes upon your heart and the wish is granted.

Meanwhile the world spins.

Meanwhile the universe expands.

Meanwhile the mystery of love reveals itself,

again and again, in the mystery of you.

I have gone.

I will return.

Glerk”

― Kelly Barnhill, The Girl Who Drank the Moon

For the iphone wallpaper, navigate to this page on your phone and then click and hold on the image you want. Select ‘Save image to camera roll’. Then from your camera roll set your home screen/lock screen or both.

iphone wallpapers:

June 2017 Free Calendar Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper

June 1, 2017/1 Comment/in Art, Desktop Backgrounds, Downloads, Monthly Themes, Online /by Betony Coons

I cannot believe it is June already. Our family has all sorts of fun planned for this month – a dance recital, camping trip, a special birthday, summer camp, and more. Oh what a wonderful month June is. I hope you enjoy this new bright time and artwork for your screens. Happy summer!

For the desktop, click on the image below to view the large size image.
High Resolution Desktop Wallpaper:

For the iphone wallpaper, navigate to this page on your phone and then click and hold on the iphone images. Select ‘Save image to camera roll’. Then from your camera roll set your home screen/lock screen.

Abacus “Spectrum” Round Up

March 31, 2015/0 Comments/in Abacus, Almanac Adventure Days, Online /by Betony Coons

And there it goes, March is ending already. Spring is here!

I have found doing these round-up posts really helpful for me. It’s funny how I will feel so behind and like we haven’t “done” anything. But then, as I start to compile images from the month, it amazes me just how much we managed to pack in. I’ve found it to be such a nice way of keeping track of our days. I highly recommend it 🙂 The theme for this month’s Abacus project was “Spectrum” (ABACUS is our creative home curriculum centered on a theme). I am excited to share where we have been going with it! To see the whole list of projects we came up with (and resources) check out our original post, here. It’s been a March full of color.

Lots of rainbow drawing and experiments with color (Hattie (3) jumped fully into being an artist herself this month, rather than just observing):

Beatrice and I happened on a Marble factory with glass blowing demonstrations near Kansas City, called Moon Marble Company. We of course had to bring a few home with us. Each one is such a tiny world of light and color.

We started seeds indoors – mini red bell peppers and more (all from the glorious Baker Creek Seed Company). They are enjoying the sunshine of our window seat. All of now come up!

The city of Greeley is doing a whole lot of awesome lego themed events in anticipation of “Build Frontiers” coming to the Greeley history museum in June. We can’t wait! This week we went to a lego event at the library and also a whole art show of lego builds (Amazing rainbow lego tree house was made by the lovely Natalie Mash – part of the lego show at the Tointon Gallery).

We had a very “iridescent” morning making black rainbow paper (super fun, just need clear nail polish and black paper!) and giant bubbles. Thank goodness for sunshiny days.

Speaking of colors, we painted our very dark living room a lovely fresh shade of light blueish gray. “After” pictures still coming.

And, of course, sorted all the “things” by color. (I found these spools at a thrift store, does anyone know what they are for?)

We played with lots of colorful musical notes.

We harnessed the power of the sun to create Inkodye animal t-shirts. More of these coming soon! I “might” have gotten so excited about this amazing new product that I bought all the colors…I actually have some SA-WEET zippered pouches in the works to sale here.

The girls watched Wizard of Oz for the first time ever, and of course loved it. There were lots of discussions about future halloween costumes and who gets to be which character. Apparently I am the witch. Hmmmm….

We ate the color spectrum for lunch one day.

We also made these “favorite color” freezer paper shirts.

Artist Kelly Cook and I completed our Spectrum themed sketchbook for The Sketchbook Project

Harriet and I had a marvelous time one day making homemade play dough (my mom’s special recipe – which I will post someday) which we used to make rainbow cupcakes

We played with prisms and sunshine.

And finally, we whipped up a batch of Rainbow foam and had a “bike car wash”

That’s all folks! April’s theme is coming on Thursday!

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.

Sketchbook Project “Spectrum” Collaboration

March 26, 2015/0 Comments/in Art, Creative Process /by Betony Coons

This moleskin sketchbook was filled up in a color spectrum as a collaboration between Kelly Cook and me. She gave me the book as a Christmas present. We passed it back and forth between us, each adding bits and pieces. We gave each page a loose color theme. It was a fun venue to just experiment and play without worrying about the end result. The book was created to be part of The Sketchbook Project, a crowd-sourced library that features thousands of artists’ books contributed by creative people from all around the world. I am mailing it off tomorrow!

See more of Kelly’s art and process here.

Sketchbook Project “Spectrum” – Kelly Cook & Betony Coons Collaboration from Tim Coons on Vimeo.

“Spectrum” Favorite Color Shirts DIY

March 14, 2015/0 Comments/in Abacus, Art, DIY /by Betony Coons

This project is part of our March Abacus “Spectrum” theme. We spent the last week in KS hanging out with grandparents and my sister and her family from Canada, she has 3 kids ages 6,3, and 1. I saw that out shirts were getting old I visited this website to get new shirts. I wanted to do a simple but fun project that all the kids could do together and that could be a little keepsake from the week as well. We came up with these freezer paper “Favorite Color” shirts inspired by paint swatches.

Supplies Needed:

Freezer paper – looks like this:

Brush-able fabric paint (just not the puffy paint kind)
An Iron
Paint brushes
Water
Blank Shirts (or tote bags, hoodies, etc..)
An Exacto Knife
A scrap of cardboard slightly smaller than the shirt

1. Cut a simple stencil out of the freezer paper. You will need one for each shirt you are making. I traced my iphone case 3 times. Use the exacto to cut out the shapes.

2. Put a piece of cardboard inside the shirt to keep the paint from soaking through to the backside.

3. Iron the freezer paper stencil to the shirt (plastic side down so it adheres)

4. Have kiddos pick out favorite colors. This is a great time to learn about color mixing too.

5. Squeeze a small amount of paint onto a paper plate and paint in the rectangles. I folded the excess shirt under to keep stray paint off it (but we are also talking about 3 year olds here…).

6. Paint each rectangle a different color. I went in at the end and made sure they had each filled the whole shape. (don’t mind the shirtless-ness, just trying to keep the paint off their other clothes 🙂

7. Let the paint fully dry. If you are impatient like we were, break out a hair dryer to speed things along.

8. Once the paint is fully dry, peel off the stencil! All done!

9. Wait 24 hours before washing and then just wash as normal. Probably isn’t a bad idea to heat set the paint with a clothes iron too.

Note: I thought it would be cute to write their name/age + “favorite colors” at the bottom in small letters, but we didn’t.

This obviously does not have to be a kid only project. I kind of want one for myself too…

Abacus: “Spectrum”

March 3, 2015/0 Comments/in Abacus, Almanac, Art /by Betony Coons

Giants and Pilgrim “Abacus” is a creative home curriculum centered on a monthly theme. This month’s theme is Spectrum!
Read all about how to use this list and our heart behind this project here.

Below is our comprehensive activities list! Choose a couple to do with your kids to enrich the month or try to accomplish the whole thing!

Also, a few March Dates to keep in mind as you are scheming fun activities-

Pi Day = March 14th (3.14…)
St. Patricks Day = Mar. 17
First day of Spring = Mar. 20th

March: Spectrum

Listen:

Ludwig Von Drake – The Spectrum Song (disney)

Red Roses for Blue Lady by Jack Morgan

Our Spectrum playlist! (coming later this month…)

This podcast on Spiral dynamics (For adults – not kids)

Movies:

Any of these films with an intensely distinctive color palette: Amelie, any Wes Anderson film, Nanny McPhee, Hero

For St. Patricks Day:
The Secret of Roan Inish, and The Book of Kells

The Wizard of Oz (For its transition from black and white to color)

Science:

Play with prisms

Learn about plants and how they process light

Steve Spangler St. Patrick’s Day Science Kit (we bought this a few years back and now get it out every year. It was super fun. I would highly recommend it. We are needing a few refills, but mostly it lasts quite a while)

Bees, Ultra violet and other colors off our visual spectrum – we are hoping to take a field trip out to Illuman Apiary’s bee hives if it gets warm enough.

This Cool Density “rainbow in a jar” experiment

Take a trip to the Denver Natural History Museum – specifically to play with their infrared camera body scan

Learn about eyes – Anatomy, Rods/Cones, etc

Adventure:

Make a Treasure Map – Participate in our Isles of Green Adventure at the end of this month! (Here is last years)

Books:

Adult Reads:

Red: The Red Tent by Anita Diamont

Orange: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Yellow: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Green: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Blue: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Purple: The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Kids:
Older kids – The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, The Giver by Louis Lowry
Younger – Mix it Up by H. Tullet, Do You Know Colors by Katherine Howard, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? by Eric Carle, The Day the Crayons Quit by Oliver Jeffres

Art:

Freezer paper “Favorite Color” shirts

Paint Color wheels/Learn about color mixing/Spin art

Find some where to do a color coded Trash art installation like this –

Make dip dyed cloth or paper (or tie dye!)

Make layered paper jewelry

Garden/Outside:

Make Garden cold frames (or as I like to call them, “mini-greenhouses”)

Seed Starts

Visit the Wichita Botanical Gardens

Play with this:

Kitchen:

Make homemade play dough – recipe coming soon 🙂

Eat the Rainbow – this could make a fun grocery store trip that maybe helps convince my kids to try eating a few vegetables.

Make these edible rainbows –

Play with rainbow foam

Sort all the things by color (oh wait, I do that already…)

March 2015 Desktop and iPhone Wallpaper

March 1, 2015/0 Comments/in Art, Downloads, Online /by Betony Coons

Happy March! Here’s to the beginning of warmer days, the discovery of the first bits of green breaking out of the gray, the melting of snow, and the gentle warmth of spring sunshine. Here are some splotches of color to brighten your March work spaces. Click the small thumbnail below to download the large sized file. For the iphone wallpaper, navigate to this page on your phone and then click and hold on the iphone images. Select ‘Save image to camera roll’. Then from your camera roll set your home screen/lock screen. Enjoy!

Full Resolution Desktop image:

iPhone wallpapers (pick either color):

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