Staying up late

The Olympics are over and I will finally get in bed before 2am. I enjoyed every minute.

I have been wanting to creating some shadow puppets when quite by accident I stumbled upon the awesome etsy shop owlyshadowpuppets. Check out the puppet screens here. These super cool puppets are created by Chicago artist Andrea Everman who offers instruction for making your own puppets on her website. I hope to create my own this week.

The Perfect Repurposed Jar- Peanut Butter Jar

My family has a serious love of peanut butter. My husband considers himself a master at creating the perfect jelly to peanut butter ratio. Therefore I have a steady flow of peanut butter jars. I use them all the time. I love my jelly jars too but these plastic jars are just awesome for holding a wide variety of items.

They are useful water containers for water coloring because you can take it anywhere and you can use the lid to create a wash. If you add a rubber band to slip in your paintbrushes, pencils and other tools you have a nifty watercolor kit.

Perfect Snack containers for holding my vanilla macaroon granola.

Yarn Cup Revisited

I received a question about the yarn cup weaving project I posted about some time ago. The instructions are a bit unclear so I thought I would give a more detailed tutorial on the project. I enlisted the help of my older girl, she looks jazzed!

Supplies:

Variety of yarn pieces

Plastic Cup

Scissors

Sharpie

Template

You can create a template by tracing the top of your plastic cup. You need an odd number of strips to weave the yarn through. My template was for a 16 oz cup. You can use a variety of cup sizes just create a template where there are an odd number of equally spaced strips. The more strips you have the tighter the weave, but if you have a younger child then you may want fewer strips.

mark on the cup with a sharpie where each line should be cut.

Cut straight lines down the side of cup to the bottom. This is how you create the strips you will use to weave.

Once all the strips are cut you can choose your yarn. I like to begin with smooth yarns because they are easier to work with. Save the bumpy, frizzy, speciality yarns for when you have the hang of it. Always start with the yarn tail on the inside of the cup.

Now that you have your start you can weave the yarn in and out of the strips of plastic.

the first length of yarn can be frustrating. The first couple of rows may look like the one above. Take a break after every row or two to tighten the rows by pushing the yarn down.

When you run out of the first yarn piece end with the tail tucked inside the cup. Start the new piece of yarn where the last piece should have come out.

Keep on weaving. Now that you have some experience add the fun yarn if you like. You may think it works up really fast but really you will need to tighten it up often. Keep pushing the yarn down in order to have a nice tight weave.
My girl finished her cup in under 2 hours.

when you are done simply clean up the inside of the cup by trimming all the tails with scissors. With the wide variety of speciality yarns the options are endless.

Tips:

the plastic may splinter causing these little thorns that will catch on the yarn. Pull or cut them off.

The beginning can be frustrating. It just takes a bit to get accustomed. I did this project with our Girl Scout Troop and all 11 girls finished a cup and then another. Just a bit hairy to begin with.

I got the cup started and then remembered my daughter is left handed and started it out weaving right. If you have a lefty just weave in the left direction.

Washer Dial

You know when you buy a shirt and it's the perfect length and fit then after laundry day it's 2 inches shorter and all snug? Maddening!

So I end up line drying a majority of my shirts which brings me to my real problem, I constantly forget to line dry things! I miss something, or I swear it wasn't in the washer to begin with, or I left them in the washer so long I really can't remember what's all in there. All of which leads me to tears in the laundry room because I had found the perfect black tee only to shrink it up!

Well, I made a little tool to help and want to share in case there are others out there like me. Poor souls tormented by the shrinking tee.

You can download the templates from my flickr page here.

Use a brad as a pointer. Then you can keep up with how many items are in the washer that need to line dry. I used some handitak to stick it to the washer.

I want to laminate it but haven't gotten that far yet.

Sculpey Fun

I was looking through the Dick Blick site again and I noticed this project. I liked the idea of pressing crayons into the sculpey and then melting it but wanted something my toddler could do.

I took balls of sculpey and let my 3 year old just pick up crayon shavings with it. I took several pictures of the process that you can see here you can click on the photo for a description if you like. Once the pieces are ready I baked them at 325 degrees for around 10-15 min.

It was fun for Allison and super easy to do. They can make a lovely pendant or stones to place in flower pots. I especially like the metallic green crayon one.

Glue Fun

My oldest daughter is going into the 4th grade. As she gets older it's fun to share things from my elementary school experience. When she emptied out her old school supplies she had scraped off all the pencil paint down the the natural wood and it reminded me of how I use to do the same. I shared with her how I would paint glue all over my hand and then peel it off like skin. Good times. It also reminded me of how we use to change the color of our glue. Doing this took me way back.

First you need regular school glue and a marker

Then pry off the end of the marker using your scissors

Pull out the marker fiber inside. I sniped the plastic wrapping a few times to help the process along.

Insert maker tube into glue container

Wait a little while and then shake, shake, shake.

Voila purple glue.

***My daughter tried making some more this morning and they didn't turn out as vibrant, We realized for the purple (above) we used crayola non washable markers. I think it made a difference. For the washable marker kind we ended up adding two marker innards. We really sniped the marker tube up to let the fiber hang out (it's where all the juice is).

Quite a Bit

Sometimes you fail to blog for a bit and then it turns into quite a bit.

It's been an eventful several weeks. I turned 30, my little one broke her elbow, we took a lovely vacation to California.

I was unable to hold my summer art classes but want to share the projects I had planned. My niece is in for a visit so we will have a guest artist to work with.

I saw this amazing video for the first time yesterday and haven't stopped thinking about it.


MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

New Art and Camping

Happy Mother's Day to all you Moms out there. On Mothers Day we visited our property we plan to build on next year and did a little camping. The town is small but there are two art studios in town. Victoria Miller is an artist who runs a studio from town . There is a metal smith who has wonderful metalwork in the window, I haven't had a chance to visit there yet but I will soon. My husband ran me by Victoria's studio and let me have my choice of artwork for mothers day. I decided on this piece...

The Victoria Miler Creation's website is down right now but I will share it when it is up and running. Camping was fun , especially for the puppy who saw our cows for the first time.

After that she was busy which made her very hard to catch!

Jaw Dropping Good

I logged on to etsy the other day and spotted these...

they are from the collection at nectarjewelry. I adore them.

Birthday Celebrations

My youngest daughter turned 3 on earth day last week. I really enjoy birthdays. I mean any reason to have friends over and have a Cinderella cake is awesome. I made a fun little garland by stringing craft pom poms on embroidery thread. I used whatever needle was handy and it broke so if you make one I would suggest using a strong needle. It turned out pretty cute and I think I will use it in her room now that the party is over. Mid way through the project I thought it was a bit of a pain. I worried about it getting all tangled up. I ended up stringing them all on one after another. I then stretched out the thread having a helper hold the ends then I spaced out pom pom however I wanted. To ensure it wouldn't get tangled I wrapped it around a cardboard box just like I would Christmas lights. My advice would be don't do this around your soon to be 3 year old. It turned it to a limbo game.

A tangled frustrating limbo game.

I wish I had a picture of the turkey wraps I made for the party but I didn't snap one. They were super delicious so I thought I would share anyway. They looked very much like these.

I used the mission brand tortillas in tomato basil and Spinach and Herb

I smeared some garden vegetable cream cheese over the tortillas.

I then topped the tortilla with provolone cheese, shaved turkey meat ( I really piled the turkey on) , lettuce, and a few tomatoes.

the picture I used included bacon which would have been great too.

Roll that baby up and give it a diagonal cut.

My 3 year old had her very first art show this weekend. I love to see preschool programs embracing the arts. It was such fun to see all the kids excited about their art. My favorite artist was this little girl.

The cutest, right?

Finger Knitting Fun

I am working on some projects for summer camps I am planning on offering this summer. I am super excited to be planning a Fiber Art class full of cool activities. I was running some ideas by my older girl and she wanted to give the finger knitting idea a try. We used a very helpful YouTube tutorial here. She learned after school around 3:30......

and 3 hours later she was on her third project...

It was so easy to learn. We just watched the video several times and then grabbed the yarn and watched again pressing pause after each step. The next day two friends came over and she taught them how and within minutes they were all doing it. She added some beads and turned her yarn chains into a necklace for her sister and then made a extra long scarf for me.

Fresco Revisited

I have blogged about the lesson on fresco painting before but wanted to post about it again. I had the pleasure of doing the activity with my group of girl scouts this last week and they turned out great.

We only meet for 1 1/2 hours so to save a little time I pre-cut out the burlap and stapled them to the paper plates and it worked out really well.

I read a little history about fresco painting from the into to the lesson plan. I also showed them some pictures of ancient frescoes from my art history books you can find some images here. I poured out the plaster and while we waited for it to dry up a bit they worked on their designs. I let them use a mixture of soft and oil pastels. They turned out great and I know they all had fun working on them.

After we finished the other co-leaders and I discussed how this has so many possibilities. They look so cool when finished especially when you antique it by creating cracks.

Photoshop Express

I have not been able to play around with Photoshop Express but after reading Carrot Revolution it appears Photoshop is offering a very limited web version for free. I do love my Photoshop and Illustrator Software but it is an expensive investment and if you just want to have fun with photos and such this might just be the place to do so. You can Google photshop express demos and find a variety of videos.

Foreground /Background with Mona

I have a fun activity for young kids learning about foreground and background. You can download the worksheet and my notes here. Download and then print out the picture of Mona Lisa. Explain to your little artist that Mona is in the foreground. The artist wants the viewer to see things in the foreground first. Everything around Mona Lisa is the background. You can then color the Mona Lisa and cut out her figure carefully. Create another background for Mona Lisa anything you want and put her in it. Mona can be anywhere you want. She can be in your room, the grocery store or the moon. I had fun with a room full of kindergartners and this project they love saying her name Mona Lissssssssa.

Background above provided by a sweet little almost 3 year old who just told me, "I want pancakes in my tummy!"