September 2010

MacArthur Foundation Awards "Genius Grants"

Have you ever dreamt of receiving a large sum of cash to pursue your creative dreams? You may have heard that the MacArthur Foundation just named twenty-three very surprised fellows as the recipients of this year’s “genius grant,” an unrestricted award of $500,000 to spend on projects of their choice. There is no application process [...]

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Sticky Autumn Collage

California has been hit by a heat wave, so staying inside our hot cave of a house is barely an option. Yesterday was full of swimming, a sprinkler run, a trip to the neighbor’s lemonade stand, and hitting a pinata at another neighbor’s house. So cute! Despite the heat, there’s a lot of fall madness [...]

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Craft Foam in the Tub

Here’s a clean creativity-booster that doesn’t involve scrubbing paint out of clothes or scanning the rug for bits of smooshy play dough. It’s also fabulous for folks with limited art-making space. I wish I could claim this idea as my very own, but when I saw this on Filth Wizardry (Leslie over there is so [...]

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Slapdash Slide

While I’ve been on baby duty this past week, my husband has been an incredible pal to our older daughter, and it’s been inspiring to watch them develop their own style of play and invention. We both believe strongly in paying close attention to our child’s interests and then helping her grow beyond her current [...]

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Flour and Water

We recently attended a back-to-school event at my daughter’s preschool, where her teacher shared a funny and inspiring story that involved a messy flour and water sensory activity. With my ears on the alert for fun and thoughtful creativity-builders, I knew immediately that this was something we had to try. It’s unbelievably simple and requires [...]

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Sponge Stamping

In the days leading up to the arrival of Baby I, I spent a lot of time in our garage in search of baby clothes, the car seat, and other long forgotten baby paraphernalia– and along the way I found a box of sponges shaped like letters, hearts, and flowers that I’ve been hauling around [...]

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Homemade Stickers

After sending our 4 year old friends Josie and Callie some stickers a few months back, they reciprocated by sending us a few sheets of mailing labels to make our own stickers. Brilliant!  Stickers have long been popular around here, they’re fun, and they seem to make their way onto everything from lunch bags to [...]

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We interrupt this program…

In case you’re wondering what happened to TinkerLab this week, I’m on an early mini-vacation at the hospital for the arrival of little girl #2!  At 36 weeks, our baby moved into a breech position, and after trying everything under the sun to turn her — External Cephalic Version, spending hours on a slant board, [...]

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Art Supply Organization

If your child’s art supplies are anything like ours, they tend to overflow into a state of disorganization pretty quickly.  As a self-proclaimed scatterer, I won’t profess expertise at organization, but in attempting to bring some order to my home I’ve landed on some decent solutions toward wrangling art materials in a small space.  And, in the [...]

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