Our First Workshop

Robbie here egg-in!  
Last egg post for a while... I promise!

We did it.  
The day before Easter we invited a few of our friends together with their children for an egg decorating workshop/gathering.

 

After months of experimenting we were super excited to share what we had learned.

 

This time we used 6 different natural dye baths and we did it outdoors on a propane camping stove. 

It was just too beautiful of a day to be indoors! 
Holly even donned the rabbit ears.

Our selection of natural dyes included: 
Onion skins, Red Cabbage,
 


Beets, Mint leaves,

 

Turmerick and Coffee.




Thanks to everyone who came out!  
We had a wonderful time and we learned so much!

 

Eggsperimenting

Robbie here.  

Easter is approaching fast and Holly and I have been exploring some new, natural egg dyes to use in an upcoming workshop.  

We can't help ourselves.  It is too much fun!

This go round we had some hits 
(beets, mint leaves and coffee)

...and some misses (paprika, pomegranate)  

 Luckily even the misses are hits.  
The results are always surprising.

Space Age Snail Mail meets Valentine's Day

Robbie and I were thinking about projects and he mentioned that he likes to make postcards to send to his friends. Do you remember how it felt to open the mailbox and find something special and unexpected hiding between the bills?

We found a small pile of these postcards, unsent and they inspired me to create a small experimental series of my own collaged Valentines cards.

Now you will begin to notice that although we share a great many enthusiasms, Robbie and I have some striking differences too.

Where he simplifies... I complicate

 

Where he can spell and adhere to some common linguistic rules.

I resize, cut up and stick words instead in paintings where they remain free of  ANY code except for the secret ones I make up. 

 

 

 See?
 

There are all sorts of ways that we can express love and appreciation for our friends, we think that reaching out in your own unique way is what it's all about.



Robbie here. 
We used to write letters to each other and it was different and better. 
You can do wonders with a glue stick, an old magazine and a piece of cardboard. 
This last one is my favorite. 
I call her Wildfire.

Project Menu 2

Projects and workshops 2

Painting on Cardboard

Introduction to oils

Felting fun

Make your own comic book

The fundamentals of drawing

Upcycled flowers

Outrageous Robots

Hand Made Tattoos

Project Menu 1

This is our first 'menu' with visual examples of some of the projects and series we can lead. The projects are also listed below.

We encourage you to print this image out and let your children have fun trying to find all the things hidden in there. Then, you can hang it on your wall as a reminder that there is a world of making out there just waiting for you. 

More will be posted soon.

PROJECTS AND SERIES OF WORKSHOPS 1

Animal portraits in pencil

Beetlemania

Block Printing

Cardboard wall houses

Material monsters

Milk carton flowers

Pattern making

Parent child collaboration

Collage 

Photo stories

Soap sculpture

Workshops are 1 1/2 hours each
Contact us for more details: thelittlestarmail@gmail.com

This is Robbie

This is Robbie. 

This is Holly talking about Robbie.

You know how some things in your life stand out and make you feel warm inside - like you have a purpose and your potential has what it needs to be realized?  Those times that you ARE NOT fighting everything - school schedules, your own failed plans, your body or the people around you.

Think about the memories that erase all that negative, weighty and tiresome chatter. Those memories are what make your life rich - that give you hope and some levity.  

Every year Robbie grabs a bunch of friends from San Francisco to San Diego and goes camping with them in the back country.  Because they are all really creative - the whole thing becomes this dreamy music and art filled weekend - shrouded in what ever elemental event is occurring at that time: wind, drought, fog, just missed fire.  It is a time when you can stop and just experience the details of your surroundings and the people around you in what ever way you want.  It feels like a complete break from life as you know it...you have room to be who ever you are - and play.

It is a place and time in which you can let your defenses down and absorb: the dust of the creek bed, the crackle of the fire, ground bees, waste deep mud holes, and the continuous stream of music - as old band mates play together - this time, often, accompanied by their children. You carry on singing and laughing and being together until exhaustion or grey meat take you down, and then you do it all again. 

Robbie is responsible for this.  It is silly, it is magic and it is generous. What a great way to get to know new people - to be sitting in the dirt next to them hearing them play...the guitar, the ukulele, the keyboard...sharing the heat of a fire when the sun goes down, sharing food.

I wanted to introduce Robbie in this context because all of this is behind our shared vision for these project series that we're pulling together.

We believe in creating community by being in our bodies together, sharing things that I've described above, and more, unplugging and reconnecting to the world around us with all of our senses firing. 

We believe that art and music are both practices that facilitate this kind of connectivity and growth. They hone our senses, grow our attention and ultimately give us better tools with which decode the world around us and communicate with our fellow human beings.

Can you tell me what is more important or life affirming than that?  

And More Egg-in

 

Robbie here again. 

Listening to LOVE and making bad puns.

 

Our New Year's Day Egg project left us with so many new ideas. 

 

So many natural dyes left to try.

 

...and then blueberries went on sale.

We learned a lot from our first rodeo.

We got a nice tint from the blueberry bath.

 

The leaves and flowers act like a silk screen.

 



Not just for Easter anymore.

 

Stay tuned for egg workshop details!

Watercolor on Brown Bag Tip

Hello from Holly tea side!   I think the first cup of tea of the day is always the best. 

My English grandparents always had a little stove, teapot, 2 cups and the fixings for tea in the back of their car...ALWAYS.  They would just stop by the side of the road and make a cup as they felt they needed it. 

I would highly recommend a tucking a little hand made paper bag sketchbook, a Windsor and Newton water colors set, 3B pencil, nibbed pen and ink, and a pot of white something or another - along side your mobile tea unit and enjoying a sketch or two of your chosen road stop while you sip.

Paper bags are the best! They are an inexpensive and an environmentally friendly source of sketching paper, with a mid-tone base that allows for classical looking drawings with exciting contrasts.

I like working with the "every man's" tools. I really do - and i return repetitively to reused and upcycled materials because i have to say it has always thrilled me to do a gorgeous drawing on such a marginalized surface, or make something really cool from nothing. 

We're getting a menu of workshops together now - and paper bags and watercolor and or uses for a paper bag will be one of them. Keep it in mind, tell your friends and we'll make doing it as easy as possible as soon as possible!

Travel Diary Fun

Greetings from Holly's garage - the little, behind a little space - space that has absolutely no storage and lot of big ideas. Mixed in that space, in that box of ideas are some memories - many pressed, taped or penned into the pages of some old sketchbook.

Open them up and what comes tumbling out but the sound of cicadas, the smell of dry grasses, lavender fields and cobbled streets. Ducks in the fountain in the middle of Madrid, chocolate anticipation in Edinburgh, the divinity of Cornish clotted cream and so on. 

I am SO glad i took notes in my travels - most meaningfully in sketches. One workshop we offer will be all about travel and mobile sketching - materials, methods, supplies on the fly...the best places for sketching faces and how to know when to run from a field full of cows. Maybe Robbie can teach us an old sailors song or "Non, je regrette rien..."a little Edith Piaff to stick in our ukulele repertoire.  MAYBE.

A Cornish kitchen at midnight...jetlag.

Garlic in Provence.

A Bakery in Scotland.

Don't forget...you can treat your day to day life with the same reverence, the same attention to detail. Turn your every day into the adventure of a lifetime. Take time to sit and absorb the gorgeous details of the world around you, because whether you recognize it or not, it is magic.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! 

Robbie here. 

Growing up as a kid in the 70's we were

always doing one craft or another. 

These were crafty times. 

Sand candles.  Macramé.  Pet Rocks.

Homemade kites.  Dream catchers.

One year as Easter approached my mom announced that we would be trying a new method of dyeing Easter eggs that she had read about in a magazine. 

Gone were the store bought dye kits. 

These were replaced with leaves and flowers from the garden and other strange ingredients like coffee grounds and crepe paper streamers.

The results were mind blowing. 

Through this process the leaves and flowers

 would leave detailed impressions on the eggs. 

Sometimes the results were photo-realistic. 

Other times more abstract.  Always amazing.

Fast forward to New Year's Day 2017. 

Holly and I had talked about adapting this method for a workshop session. 

We wanted to get rid of the artificial dyes and replace them with natural ones.

The results were even better than we dreamed. 

A new tradition was born. 

New Year's eggs.

We are now scheduling egg dyeing workshops for both adults and children for early April.

Contact us for more information

and to make reservations.

Welcome to the Little Star Project

Welcome to the Little Star Project!  We are Holly and Robbie; two Santa Barbara artists/musicians who met in High School.  

We believe that everybody has the ability to make art.

Our goal is to create workshops for children (and adults) that inspire confident creativity and that are both fun and instructional.  

We will employ a wide range of techniques with the intention of planting artistic  seeds that will continue to grow throughout a lifetime.

The musical aspect of our program will provide beginning ukulele instruction. The ukulele is an easy first instrument that any person can learn to play.

We are excited that you are here and eager to share our passion with you.   Stay tuned.