Vol. 6, No. 8, February 28, 2026

I'm changing the rules. I couldn't keep up with creating something every day and then making a collage. So I am just going to find something to represent each day, to make the collage.

Week 8

Day 50 - Went shopping at Trader Joe's and found a new flavor of sparkling water to try, Cherry Vanilla.

Day 51 - I was a chaperone at the Minnesota State University Mankato High School Theater and Dance Day. We ended the evening by attending their play "The Cherry Orchard".

Day 52 - On four of the seven days this week, I celebrated extended family birthdays. 

Day 53 - One how per week is just not enough. Today I had a girls day and we went to see The Great Theatre's production of "Caberet".

Day 54 - Tonight I attended a class where we recycled sweaters, turning them into hats.

Day 55 - This evening was the last 9th grade boys basketball game of the season.

Day 56 - I was back in the art room this afternoon. The 4th Graders were using acrylic paint to paint their paper mache masks.

Vol. 6, No. 7, February 21, 2026

Week 7

Day 43 - Edible

With juice from pickled beets, pea flower tea, and lemon juice, I made an array of edible paints. It was fun to mix the paints and watch them dry on the paper. I never really knew what the finally color would be.

Day 44 - Shadow

After a quick search online for 'shadow art' I decided to try this one. They did a snowman on a blue background which was cuter, but my trees on a scrap of green paper served my needs.

Day 45 - Heart Shaped

A piece of junk mail had a beautiful heart on it. Why work harder when you can use your resources?

Day 46 - Green

With green acrylics and a sparkly green crayon on green paper, a created a scraped paint painting.

Day 47 - Soft

I pulled out the soft pastels and created a stencil using a heart corner punch. I then stenciled directly onto the background paper for my collage. I forgot to take a picture of the finished artwork before I made the collage, so here is a picture of the stencil instead.

Day 48 - Broken

I thought of ways of adding something broken to my artwork, but I didn't have any good options readily available. That's when I found a piece of plastic and thought I would draw cracks over it to look like a broken screen. Ultimately I decided to put the cracked design on a piece of shipping tape so that I wouldn't have to do any gluing. The texture under the crack is from the silicone mat i put the tape on while I drew.

Day 49 - Stick

I burned the end of a stick and drew stick people.

Vol. 6, No. 5, February 7, 2026

Week 5

Day 29 - Helpful

Once upon a time, phone books were very helpful. I was lucky enough to find an old phone book in my dad's office. It was from 2020, when we still had a landlines at our house. So I found the Hansen section and started doodling with some new to me gel pens.

Day 30 - Pointed

My sister invited me to attend her community art night. One of the activities they were doing was a sticker mural. They had a bunch of white stickers that people could color and add to the mural, many were Minnesota themed. When I was coloring this Pink Lady Slipper, I noticed all of the points it had and decided to save it for my collage.

Day 31 - Silhouette

Also at the community art night, I created a simple sunset silhouette with acrylic paint on paper. I think my painting inspired someone else, because after I hung my painting to try, I noticed someone working on a very similar painting. 

Day 32 - White

For this project I pulled out the plaster of Paris. I started by painting the plaster onto paper with a pallet knife. Then I remembered that I had some small silicone molds that would work.

Day 33 - Old

I looked through some old art that I had sitting around and chose a watercolor wax-resist leaf painting that I had made as an example for an Art Club project.

Day 34 - Sky

It may be double dipping, but I was feeling a bit lazy this week and I decided to use the other half of my silhouette painting for my sky painting. 

Day 35 - Pattern

As my 5th grade students worked on their patterned animals, I drew a small patterned design.

Vol. 6, No. 6, February 14, 2026

Week 5

Day 36 - Red

I used the end of a head of Romaine lettuce and red paint on red paper to create a floral texture.

Day 37 - Sharp

Using primary color tempra paints and a palette knife, I painted some leaves with sharp points.

Day 38 - Colorful

A student gave me this colorful drawing today. I decided it would loom great in my collage.

Day 39 - Round

The paints from Day 37 were new and had round seals on top. I pressed the seals together to create round rainbow paintings.

Day 40 - Grayscale

As the 5th graders continue on their Zentangle animals, I drew a small pattern with pencil on a test piece of paper mache.

Day 41 - Cheerful

There isn't much more cheerful than a sunrise or sunset. The 3rd graders were using watercolors today, so I painted this.

Day 42 - Heavy

I struggled with this one, then came across some small ceramic tiles in my craft drawer. I'm always up for recycling!

Vol. 6, No. 4, January 31, 2026

Week 4

Day 22 - Pattern

Today, I emptied some marker boxes. I decided to recycle one and draw Zentangle patterns on it. For inspiration, I looked at the handout I will be giving to my 5th grade students to use for their project.

Day 23 - Pretty

Today, I was cleaning out some paint pallets and I decided to to put the leftover paint to use. I went crazy, painting abstract designs, not even bothering to wash my brush. One stroke looked like a flower, and soon a small garden of pretty flowers had appeared.

Day 24 - Rough

One fun thing about acrylic paint is that is thick and can add a lot of rough texture to a painting. This is a corner of my "pretty" painting, that I layered clumps of mostly dried paint.

Day 25 - Lots

The 2nd graders are learning about Yayoi Kusama. She puts lots of dots in her art. I drew this mushroom by making lots of small dots with a ultra fine point sharpie.

Day 26 - Strong

Mushrooms seemed like a fun theme to continue. This mushroom was painted using very strong coffee. 

Day 27 - Hanging 

Using a scrap of newspaper that had been used as a messy mat, I created a paper chain of miniature flowers that I could hang.

Day 28 - Brittle

More mushrooms. These mushrooms were drawn of a dry, brittle leaf with a glue pen and sprinkled with glitter. The leaf was so brittle that it was breaking under the pressure of the pen.

Vol. 6, No. 3, January 24, 2026

Week 3

Day 15 - Asymmetrical.

I used a piece of scrap paper that had been partially run through a crimper. Then I drew a mini optical illusion example following my 2nd grade lesson plan.

Day 16 - Blue.

I had been hearing something scrape outside my house recently; today I checked it out and realized that my wasp trap was falling apart. I took it down and decided to repurpose the now blue paper. I colored it with oil pastel, crayons, and markers.

Day 17 - Giant.

I am currently in the middle of a dinosaur drawing unit with my kindergarteners. We began by reading "The Day of the Dinosaur" by Stan and Jan Berenstain. I've read the book so many times now that I nearly have it memorized and when I read today's prompt I immediately started saying..."The giant brontosaurus was seventy feet tall. Its name means ‘thunder lizard.’ It was the biggest one of all." So here is my brontosaurus drawn with markers on an old envelope. 

Day 18 - Tiny.

When I thought so something tiny, my mind went back to my embroidery and specifically to the ant. Since I couldn't cut the ant out of my project, I had to sew a new one. I found a scrap of fabric and opted for gold thread. The ant kinda looks more like a spider, but either way it is tiny.

Day 19 - Black and White.

Tomorrow my 5th graders will be beginning a unit looking at African Art and creating zentangle style images inspired by African patterns. Their drawings will black and white; so I created a mini zentangle to get in the mood for the lesson.

Day 20 - Curved.

A simple curved line drawing, that was created as a meditation during a workshop I attended a couple years ago.

Day 21 -  Mammal.

My first thought of a mammal was a squirrel and conveniently today is Squirrel Appreciation Day, so it made sense to draw one. Made with crayons on paper.

Vol. 6, No. 2, January 17, 2026

Week 2

I decided this would be photography week. All of the papers used in the collage were photographs that were printed to be entered in Open Class at the County Fair.

Day 8 - Sunset

While this isn't my favorite sunset picture, it was the best one I had printed that I was willing to sacrifice to a collage.

Day 9 - White

A winter scene much like today, with lots of white.

Day 10 - Ground

I believe this is a picture of a leaf in the water at Gooseberry Falls.

Day 11 - Green

The Northern Lights reflecting in a snowy field creating a green glow all around.

Day 12 - Wet

Wet rocks of a waterfall.

Day 13 - Smooth

A bowl of oranges photographed through vases of water, creating a refracted image. 

Day 14 - Symmetrical 

A mayfly on a car, creating symmetry in the reflection. 

Vol. 6, No. 1, January 10, 2026

The blog is back! My goal for the year is to make/find one small artwork everyday following the prompts provided in the Wild Kids Magazine Photo Challenge. At the end of the week, I will use those artworks to create a 3"x3" collage. I hope to put those 52 collages together into one large artwork at the end of the year.

Bonus Week

I realized after making this initial collage that I should have waited a full 7 days. Therefore, I incorporated the scraps from this bonus collage into my Week 1 collage.

Week 1

Day 1 - New

I decided to look through my art supplies and find something I had never used before. I found a KiwiCo Tinker Crate Spin Art Machine that was given to my many years ago that I had assembled, but never used. Fortunately, the paint still worked and the spin art was easy to make.

Day 2 - Broken

I always tell my students "broken crayons still color". So for this project, I pulled out my bin of broken "naked" crayons. I chose the same 4 colors I had used for the spin art, grated them on the the paper and placed it on a hot plate to warm. I also colored directly on the paper while it was heating.

Day 3 - Bark

This one took me a minute to figure out, but then I remembered that I has some birch logs in the garage that have been waiting to be used. I peeled off a small section of bark and then slowly peeled that apart into thinner sheets. After washing, drying and pressing the birch bark papers, they were ready to use.

Day 4 - Leaf

I considered doing a texture rubbing of a leaf, but then I remembered my collection of pressed flowers and leaves. I pulled out the box and carefully looked through each paper towel selecting my favorite leaves; I couldn't choose just one. I am fairly certain that some, if not all, of these leaves are relics of my childhood (pre-2007) harvested, placed between paper towels, and pressed within the pages of a JcPenny catalog with assistance from Granny, my maternal grandmother.

Day 5 - Shadow

I knew that I had some Nature Print Paper somewhere I my art supplies, and I was so excited when I finally found it. While cyanotype isn't exactly shadows, it does require the sun and essentially makes a print of the shadow of the objects laid on top of the paper. This is a print that I had made years ago and is ready for repurposing.

Day 6 - Rock

I had a snow (ice) day today, so I decided it was a good time to do a task that I had been putting off. When I travel to new places, I like to collect some sand to remember it and layer the sand in jars. It is fun to see the layers of different colors. Today I added 6 more layers of sand collected from various sites I visted while traveling to the east coast in September. The most course and rocky of these sands was collect from Lake Ontario, so that is what I will use in my collage.

Day 7 - Speckled

I went back to paint today finding some paint markers to make a quick splatter painting. I stuck to the same color scheme of blue, green, orange, and yellow that came with the spin art for a unified look to the final collage.