Eat Your Heart Out Jackson Pollock
Just in time for John’s 27th birthday, Burger whipped up an original paw painting for his doting dad. He’s a regular Jackson Pawlock, I tell ya.
It was actually a cute little project that Burger and I took on together, and he had an inordinate amount of fun throughout the process (even afterwards at bathtime). I grabbed an 8.5×11 piece of white cardstock to serve as the canvas and some water based craft paint (which I squirted onto a plate). Then I just carefully dipped his front right paw into the paint puddle and let him dance it out on the cardstock.
The only important point to mention is to be sure you snatch up your pooch after his stompfest and thoroughly wash that paw before he scampers off onto the rug or the couch (we did the whole thing in the kitchen on the wood floor) and if you have a bigger pup you can always close doors or otherwise block off doorways to rooms that are less wipe-able in case puppy makes a break for it.
Slipped into a crisp white frame with a generously sized white mat (Target, $12) it actually looks like real art:
And although John adored his artful little puppy painted prezzie, I also got him a few practical and borderline professional (by our standards anyway) gifts for fun in the kitchen. The first being a 12″ Cuisinart Green Gourmet skillet coated with Ceramica, a new eco-friendly nonstick coating (similar to glass or ceramic) which keeps food sliding right off without any harmful off gassing or food leeching like Teflon. It certainly wasn’t cheap but as John’s mom so eloquently pointed out as I pondered whether I should spring for it, we’ll have it for years. And we love it. We’ve never had quality cookware before, so consider us smitten.
And along the same “quality cookware” theme I also bought two super sharp J. A Henckels knives
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Comments
I’ve been wanting to do something like this ever since our dog grabbed a (wet) paintbrush when we were getting ready to move in and carried it all the way from the living room to the basement (leaving a white trail the whole way of course). I’ve been wanting to give him a more “controlled” creative outlet ever since! hehe.
OMG! I’m going to do this hopefully this weekend. I have three animals, a dog and two cats. I think I will do one animal at a time allowing each layer to dry in between and have each animals be a different color. Hopefully it will turn out as great as yours and not look like a sloppy mess. hehe. Thanks for the inspiration. I’ll let you know how it turns out! I am a new fan of your blog and I’m literally addicted.
Happy Birthday John!
I love the ‘pup art’. It may be hard to try this with a 100 pd chocolate lab, but it is worth a shot (we will have to wait to do it outdoors when it is warmer though). My husband is also the chef in the family and we got Henckels knives for a wedding gift and we love them. And thanks for sharing the eco-friendly cookware; it’s new to me.
I didn’t know about this eco-friendly cookware, thanks for posting.
The Pawlock painting is adorable… I don’t even want to think about what it would be like trying to get my cat to do something like that!
I am asking for that cookware for Christmas! I was just looking into the Stainless Steel that you recommended but this sounds better since I’m lazy when it comes to washing dishes. Thanks!
I love this so, SO much! I actually bought the book Why Cats Paint last year intending to do with with my cats then forgot all about it! Now I know what Lil can make for her Dad this year! Thanks tons. I’ll be linking.
good call on the quality cookware — we bought a full set of surgical-quality stainless steel (it’s naturally nonstick with minimal oil because it doesn’t have the impurities of regular stainless steel - which is what your food sticks to). TOTALLY worth it. If you’re ever going to eat anything besides takeout, I thnk it’s a great investment.
I recently discovered your webpage and I just love it — we haven’t bought our first house yet, but I call my husband on a regular basis to talk abut my ideas for decorating the future house now! :)
We may have one of the smartest dogs in the world, but I don’t even want to think about what it would take to get our Border Collie to do this.