Art Day Envelopes

Apparently my children can't help but create. First thing in the morning, Aleks sets to drawing just about every day. He works at the coffee table and fills sheet after sheet of clean white paper, leaving all those with printing on but one side utterly neglected. The drawer in the printer cabinet spills corners of creature cards and lists of ideas. I've yet to find a satisfactory way to store and sort the vast amounts of art that litter the house (though I have plans, I just lack time and momentum). Every single day the table and floor are covered with gobs of tape, markers, crayons, pens, pencils, the varying contents of the box of extra office supplies, scissors, and tons of tiny bits of confetti, cut from the corners and edges of his life's work.

He's recently spent weeks perfecting his Christmas list (as well as that of his brother and assorted friends) by copying and pasting images from online toy stores into Publisher documents, which he then prints (after several attempts at just hitting random buttons on my printer thus changing the on-screen language to Russian and spitting out page after page of test sheets that drain the 80-dollar-a-piece color cartridges). He cuts these out and tapes them down to the ever-growing, ever-changing lists. Other times, the images are just clipped and left about the room.

I cannot say enough how proud it makes me that his creative urges are so strong, that he draws fearlessly, constantly, whenever the mood strikes him, that his ideas are huge though his practical ability is limited, and that for our family art is essential. It proves that for us art really is everyday and limitless.
My youngest boy is beginning to follow in Aleks' footsteps in yet another regard. While I was still bleary-eyed, Bastian broke out the watercolors. I helped get him started almost before I'd gotten the coffee made.He did lots of handprints. I thought they looked awesome with all the colors and realized this beginning to our day would be perfect for making envelopes with when the others arrived for Art Day.
Bastian doesn't really draw yet, though he can make a circle if prompted. He and I held the marker together to write this fish letter to Otto.
Then we used an envelope as a template to make more colorful receptacles for our mail.
Off to Otto...
We only really used the handprint paintings that Bastian made for the envelopes, though I did squeeze in one collage envelope. Aleks had zero interest in folding and cutting, but did write a letter to Max.