We're celebrating Put a Bird on It month with 12 hours of free projects, techniques, and eBooks featuring our feathered friends today.

The vestiges of last week's snowstorm still linger in crusted mounds all over our yard. But I can ignore them because of the unmistakable spring sound of birdsong that has been filling the air the last few mornings.

Paint has always been part of the mixed-media repertoire, but right now, painting is hot, hot, hot. Everyone seems to be painting, learning about painting, or has painting on their creative agenda.

When I need a quick fabric fix, I turn to felt. Felt crafts are like comfort food for me. Working with felt is easy and satisfying, because it comes in a huge array of colors, has enough heft to stand on its own, and the cut edges don’t fray.

My children are past the Valentine party stage (insert eye-roll here), but I'm not. I'm thinking of throwing a little Valentine art party for my friends. A mixed-media make-and-take, some grown-up punch, and a light dessert sounds perfect to me.

Honestly, this year I really did start early on my holiday crafting. But here it is Christmas Eve, and I still have a couple of last-minute presents to create. If you're in the same boat, don't despair! I have few collage projects you can use for 11^th hour gift-making.

This is when the gift-making season goes into high gear, so I thought I would round up some of my favorite easy gifts to make from around the Cloth Paper Scissors community. There's sure to be something here that you would like to make for your friends—or yourself!

One of the things I love about interviewing artists is the chance to get inside their heads, ask all kinds of questions about how and why they work the way they do, and give them the opportunity to open up and share that information with the world. My fellow online editor Courtney Jordan did just that with a fascinating mixed-media artist, Kiki Smith in the Fall 2012 issue of Drawing magazine.