Vol. 3, No. 59, February 28, 2018

3059 - Happy Heart.

I am so excited that I am finally at the end of my month of hearts. I have decided that using the same theme for an entire month is too much for me. So from now on, my themes are only going to last a week.

To celebrate the end of Heart Month, I decided the enjoy the 40 degree weather and head out side to play in the snow. I walked a path drawing a human heart. Turns out it’s hard to make large drawings on the ground super accurate. It was also unfortunate that there was a shadow across the heart, but I knew if I waited for it to move, I'd loose the light.

Vol. 3, No. 58, February 27, 2018

3058 - Almost Finished.

In line with Keeping It Simple, I created hearts from the flowers that I was drawing with my 3rd and 4th graders today. I drew 4 flowers with each class. The ninth picture is of some patterned circles that I drew at the beginning of the school year and I decided it was time to erase from my board. I drew the design, then traced a heart on top and erased everything outside of the heart.

Vol. 3, No. 57, February 26, 2018

3057 - Fan Fun.

Today art Art Club, I had my students trace a high contrast black and white picture with Sharpie on a coffee filter and then paint it with watercolors. It could have been a lesson on positive and negative space, but we really just did it for fun. As cool as these look, I think my students had more fun holding their completed art to the fan for drying than they did actually creating the art. To stick with my heart theme, I decided to draw an actual heart for my artwork today.

Vol. 3, No. 56, February 25, 2018

3056 - Experience.

Today I got to experience the Crayola Experience with the Miller Littles. This meant about 4 hours of drawing, painting, sculpting, and chasing kids around. It was tons of fun an I came home with tons of art. I couldn't decide on just one picture to post, so I created a collage. As I created art today, I made a point to include hearts in my artworks. I think that my favorite station was the Melted Crayon Painting. The collage shows a dancing bat, digitized fashion, molded and labeled crayons, photo coloring page, melted wax painting, fairy coloring, Melted Wax Spin Art, painted "foam" finger,  and a puzzle.

Vol. 3, No. 55, February 24, 2018

3055 - Battle Hearts.

I spent a couple hours this afternoon playing Battleship with my sister. She won every time. I took a break between games to create a heart with the pegs. The design didn't quite fit on the grid.

Vol. 3, No. 54, February 23, 2018

3054 - I Tried.

I still had painted paper scraps sitting in my recycle bin at school so I decided to try a new craft with them, woven heart baskets. I had seen the idea multiple time, but I have never made one, I guess technically, I still haven’t. After much time spent getting the paper the right proportion and shape, I began to weave. I took me a couple tries to figure out a good order to begin weaving. I finally got a hang on the technique and was on my second to last strip, when it ripped out. I figured I could still make it work. Then as I shifted the woven strips down to make room for the final strip, the whole bottom ripped out, thus destroying the basket. I am pretty sure that a large part of my problem was that with the paper being covered in a heavy layer of paint, it was too thick to bend in the necessary way to be woven.

So in the end, the project was destroyed and went back to the recycle bin. But hey, at least I tried!

Vol. 3, No. 53, February 22, 2018

3053 - Julia Did It.

As I completed 2 more classes worth of seahorse collages and saw my recycle bin overflowing with paper scraps, I decided to do my own recycling. I salvaged a pile of scraps to bring home. Then I used my heart paper punch to cut out a bunch of paper hearts. Then with the help of my friend Julia, we folded the hearts in half and glued them together to make little heart shaped flowers. I added a stem to each and popped them in a vase.

Vol. 3, No. 52, February 21, 2018

3052 - Horse Hearts.

This week I am working with my Kindergarten, first and second grades to assemble their painted paper collages. This is a follow along activity, which means that for every class, I am also making a picture. Today after school, I lined up yesterday’s completed projects (two classes worth) in the shape of a heart. It was fun to see all of them together; just imagine what it would look like with all 14 classes.

Vol. 3, No. 51, February 20, 2018

3051 - Pointed Patience.

I started this project a couple weeks ago. It is a project example for pointillism Valentines that my 4th graders were making. I used this one as my demonstration, completing a little with each class. Today was the last day of the project for the last class, so before I cleaned out the paint trays, I decided to finish my project.

Vol. 3, No. 50, February 19, 2018

3050 - Minted Hearts.

Today we celebrate National Chocolate Mint Day. I had a Peppermint Crunch Andes Chocolate Mint on my counter left from Christmas, so I pulled out a knife and started carving. I was able to make three small hearts from the one candy. Two hearts are shown top side up and one is flipped to show the red bottom.

Vol. 3, No. 49, February 18, 2018

3049 - A Nerd’s Heart.

For Valentine’s Day, I received a large box of tri-colored Nerds. Today I spent time separating the colors and then created 2 heart mosaics; this one was my favorite.

Vol. 3, No. 48, February 17, 2018

3048 - Sectional Sets.

Today was the first Set Work Saturday of the season. In the gym across the hall from the theater, the Section 6A Gymnastics Meet was taking place. While sitting in the theater pretending to help with sets, I grabbed a scrap of wood and a knife and carved a little momento for one of my favorite gymnasts. I enscripted the back with her name and events.

Vol. 3, No. 47, February 16, 2018

3047 - Heart of Cheese.

Today as I wondered Target, I walked past the Marconi and Cheese aisle. I decided that Mac and cheese sounded really good, so I bought a box for supper. As I served it up, I carefully shaped it into a heart. In case you were wondering, it was as delicious as it sounded in the store!

Vol. 3, No. 46, February 15, 2018

3046 - Aftermath.

What do you do when you get a stack of Valentines from you students? Make a collage of course! Unfortunately, Valentine messages tend to all be very similar. Which means that there isn't a wide variety of words to choose from. I was able to  make it work though, in a fortune cookie sort of way.

Vol. 3, No. 45, February 14, 2018

3045 - Ashen Heart.

Today we celebrate the rare occupancy of Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day falling on the same day. To celebrate, I burned some old palms that I had at home and then used the ashes and a Q-tip to make this heart design.

Vol. 3, No. 44, February 13, 2018

3044 - Heart of Man.

While it feels a little like cheating, I am using it because it fits my criteria: keep it simple. So here is my complementary color man made from hearts, that I made last week and forgot at school.

Vol. 3, No. 43, February 12, 2018

3043 - Beautiful Batik.

Today for art club, I taught the kids about batik, a wax-resist fabric dying process. We made our batik style pictures using crayons, paper and watercolors. I’d done the project before, but couldn’t remember if I liked it. After seeing today’s results I know that I didn’t and I won’t be doing this particular project again.

To continue my heart theme, I did my example as a butterfly with heart-shaped wings.

Vol. 3, No. 42, February 11, 2018

3042 - Playwright.

Today I had the honor of attending SPLaSH!, a short play showcase, featuring plays written Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota students including my baby sister. After the show, I used her bio page in the program to make an origami message heart. When the heart edges are pulled out, her bio is revealed in the middle. Unfortunately, I was on a time constraint, so I didn’s quite get it centered and her name is cut off.

Congratulations Margo! I can’t wait to see your next play!

Vol. 3, No. 41, February 10, 2018

3041 - Be My Valentine.

I went out for some Miller time today and when I arrived I was ushered to the car for a Walmart run to get Valentine Box supplies. I ended up spending about an hour helping Middle Miller create his Vending Machine Valentine Box for school. It was really hard to give up control of the puffy paint lettering to a 6 year-old.

While I was working with Middle Miller, Mom was helping Oldest Miller with her box. This left Littlest Miller feeling very left out, and desperately wanting her own box. She was going to be making a box at school, but I decided to give her a little fun today as well. After the vending machine was done, I folded an origami box for Littlest Miller and helped her decorated it, making sure to throw in at least one heart. Fortunately for my mental state, she couldn’t manipulate the puffy paint well enough on her own to do the lettering, so she let me do that part.

Vol. 3, No. 40, February 9, 2018

3040 - Rose Hearts.

Today after mixing my last complementary color combination of the year, I used my paints to make a rose inside of a heart cutout. It looks a lot more rose like from far away, but it’s still pretty close up. The funniest part of this project is that just like yesterday, I forgot to take a picture of it before I left school. Fortunately today I remembered before I left town, so I was able to go back.

Vol. 3, No. 39, February 8, 2018

3039 - Revised.

Today I painted a cute little heart man at school and then I forgot to take a picture and left it on the drying rack. I won’t be back to that school until Monday, so I had to come up with a new project for today.

Tonight was Litchfield’s last regular season home gymnastics meet, so while sitting there, I sketched 3 silhouetted gymnasts creating hearts with their bodies. They didn’t turn out great, but it turns out bodies and heart shapes don’t mix very well.

Vol. 3, No. 38, February 7, 2018

3038 - Born With It.

Today is the beginning of Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week. My baby sister has a Congenital Heart Defect. Due to CHD and other health issues, most of which are all connected, she has endured more surgeries and doctors visits in her 20 years than many people do in their entire life. So for My sister and others touched by CHD, I am continuing to make hearts.

Today’s heart is another complementary color tree project demonstration from school. I had a tree with heart-shaped leaves, so rather than painting on extra paper, I decided to paint this tree today. I chose red and green as my complementary colors.

Vol. 3, No. 37, February 6, 2018

3037 - Negative.

As my heart journey continues so does my complementary color lesson. I planned ahead today and taped a heart on to my demo paper today. When I was finished with my classes, demonstrating how to mix complementary colors (today I choose blue and orange), I removed the heart leaving the negative space behind. I outlined the heart with Sharpie and called it a day.

Vol. 3, No. 36, February 5, 2018

3036 - Britto Beauty.

Today at art club, I introduced my students to the work of Romero Britto. We made our own sunrise heart pictures using watercolor wax resist designs.

Vol. 3, No. 35, February 4, 2018

1. 3035 - Superb Owl.

Tonight my family sat down to our traditional Super Bowl meal, Taco Bar. I “decorated” my taco with a heart design.

Vol. 3, No. 34, February 3, 2018

3034 - It’s Electric.

I kept it simple today. Well actually it was slightly challenging. Yesterday, unsure of what I was going to do for my project, I took a picture of a drawing I had made that will be used for a grade 4 pointillism project. Later I changed my mind and did a painting project. So today, I decided to go forward with the drawing. I used the contour drawing as a digital coloring book page. Turns out it is pretty challenging to color something on your phone.

Vol. 3, No. 33, February 2, 2018

3033 - Complementary Heart.

Some of my students in grades 3 and 4 were painting trees using complementary colors. I demonstrated how to mix the complementary colors to make more neutral colors. When I was finished, I realized that my demo paper resembled a heart. So I cut it out and took a picture.

Vol. 3, No. 32, February 1, 2018

3032 - Snow Cold.

February is American Heart Month, a time to bring attention to heart disease. My family has been hit with heart disease in multiple forms, so this month I am focusing on hearts.

Today, I took a break from laying in bed battling the flu, to go outside and quickly shovel my sidewalk so that it was ready for when I leave for ,work in the morning. I wasn't planning on making my art out there, but the light dusting of snow was too pretty not to draw in. So I grabbed a stick and quickly drew out a heart complete with some interior patterns.